I enjoy discovering small, tucked away cemeteries. But I’ve got to admit, sometimes I love “hopping large”!

Myrtle Hill Cemetery came to my attention last year when I wrote a post on famous ladies who are buried in Georgia. So when my husband announced he and our son were going on a “guys only” road trip in May, I made a mental note to visit Myrtle Hill while they were away. My fellow Church Chick, Sarah, agreed to ride shotgun.

I hadn’t been to Rome since the 80s when I visited my high school friends Melissa and Valerie, who were attending Berry College at the time. I’ve seen Melissa several times since then but haven’t had much contact with Valerie. As it turns out, she recently returned to Rome to become pastor of a Methodist Church. Via Facebook, we arranged to meet for lunch during my visit.

At first, Sarah and I weren’t sure things would go well because it started to rain about 10 miles outside of Rome. But little will deter a cemetery hopper when she’s got her mind set on something. We parked in the lot beside the bridge that leads into downtown Rome and with umbrellas in hand, started out.

Myrtle Hill was a battle site long before it became a cemetery. In 1793, along with about 800 troops, General John Sevier (in an unauthorized plan) pursued a band of about 1,000 Cherokee Indians to nearby Cartersville seeking to avenge the scalping of 13 settlers near Knoxville, Tenn. (among other reasons). The result was the Battle of Hightower. Sevier later became governor of Tennessee and the town of Sevierville (outside Pigeon Forge) was named after him. A monument in his honor is on the edge of the cemetery.

The Cherokee created a defensive position on Myrtle Hill and used a guard to try to prevent Sevier from fording the Etowah River below. Ultimately, the Cherokees failed and after their leader, Kingfisher, was killed, they fled and Sevier burned down their village.

In 1850, nearby Oak Hill Cemetery had filled up and the need grew for a new cemetery in Rome. The hill, known for its Vinca minor (trailing myrtle), was an early candidate. The land was purchased from Shorter College (formerly Rome Female College) namesake Alfred Shorter. In 1857, Myrtle Hill Cemetery opened.

The cemetery was soon put to use during the Civil War when an earthwork fortification named Fort Stovall was built atop it. Today, the Confederate dead monument stands atop Myrtle Hill where the fighting most likely took place, while the actual Confederate dead are buried down by the cemetery gates.

A monument honoring controversial Confederate Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who saved Rome from Union forces in 1863, was originally situated at a downtown intersection. I’ve heard that it distracted drivers so much that it had to be moved to the cemetery, where it now stands.

The structure of Myrtle Hill can be compared to a wedding cake with graduated layers leading to the stop. Lines of grave markers are situated along these “layers”, watched over by a canopy of trees and other greenery. This photo by Drew Tyndell does it more justice than my iPhone can.

One of the graves I most wanted to see was that of First Lady Ellen Axson Wilson. She was the first wife of President Woodrow Wilson and the only First Lady buried in Georgia. Her monument was even lovelier in person than photos indicate, with beautiful roses placed at the base. Mrs. Wilson was an artist herself and I think she would have appreciated the work that went into the stone.

Another famous resident of Myrtle Hill is Dr. Robert Battey, the first physician to successfully perform an oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries) on Julia Omberg. The procedure was supposedly performed on the patient’s kitchen table and afterward, Dr. Battey remained at Omberg’s side for the next several days until her recovery was assured. My research indicates a lynch mob waited outside in case this did not happen. Happily, Mrs. Omberg lived well into her 80s, thanks to Dr. Battey. His tomb is near the top of the hill.

For some reason, there was an empty tampon box at the foot of Dr. Battey’s tomb. Considering that he performed the first operation removing a woman’s ovaries, we couldn’t help laughing.

The terraced sides of Myrtle Hill fascinate me. After lunch with Val, when the rain stopped and the sun came out, I explored them. Some of the stones are in better shape than others, but all in all, it’s a lovely forest-like setting.

One of the more intriguing people whose grave I photographed was Charles Jacques Warner, a native of England who came to America 1848. He married Elizabeth “Bittie” Brown in Virginia, where they had two children. They purchased a photography studio in Rome and with Bittie’s help, it became a success. Charles was also a talented musician who gave lessons.

According to a wonderful blog post by Lee Eltzroth, Charles left town around 1880 with one of his beautiful female pupils (and dragged his daughter Lula along) to pursue his dreams in New York City.

Bittie, however, did not sit at home and weep. She tracked Charles down. While he and his young lover had taken jobs in a minstrel show, young Lula had been forced to perform in a stage play, which horrified Bittie. Eventually, Bittie got full custody of Lula and returned with her to Rome. Oddly enough, Charles is listed in the 1900 U.S. Census as again living with his family in Rome, so Bittie must have taken him back. Despite Charles’ “midlife crisis”, Lee reports that when he died on Nov. 29, 1906, the newspapers in Rome called him “an old and highly respected citizen of this city.”

Myrtle Hill Cemetery is also home to some of the most interesting angel monuments I’ve ever seen, with quite a variety of expressions. I’ll share a few and you can judge.

There’s a lot more to Myrtle Hill Cemetery but these are the highlights that I enjoyed the most. High on that list is reuniting with Valerie, who is just as sweet and funny as I remember her being.

It was the icing on the “cake” of my visit to Rome. 🙂

The death of New Orleans socialite Mickey Easterling made headlines in April. At her wake, she was posed amid a garden tableau resembling her own backyard, sitting with a glass of champagne in her hand, a pink boa swathing her neck.

Then there’s David Morales Colón. Funeral home staff placed him on his favorite motorcycle in a unique “viewing ceremony” that his family requested after he was shot in San Juan, Puerto Rico in May 2012.

These example of “extreme embalming” can take hours of painstaking work. According to Caleb Wilde, a funeral director who writes one of my favorite blogs, “Most funeral homes, the most extreme thing they might do is dressing the deceased in shorts. So it’s a very rare thing.”

When it comes to extreme embalming, the pioneer personality of this trend has to be Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. You can still visit his tomb today and see his body, which many do.

As leader of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1917, Lenin also served concurrently as Premier of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death. Under his leadership, the Russian Empire was toppled and became the Soviet Union, a one-party socialist state. Industry and businesses were nationalized.

According to a Jewish World Review article, when Lenin died of a stroke and heart attack in 1924, his widow said he wanted to be buried next to his mother in a simple cemetery plot. However, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and Felix Dzerzhinsky (head of the secret police) pushed for the preservation of Lenin’s remains. With the notion they would freeze their revered leader, they ordered a special freezer to be built in Germany to do the job.

Unfortunately, building the freezer took too long and Lenin’s body began to deteriorate. By using a then untested chemical process, Lenin was embalmed and his skin gently treated to preserve a life-like appearance. A team led by Vladimir Vorobiov, an anatomy professor from Ukraine, did the work. Had they failed, it probably would have resulted in their death.

Today, Lenin is entombed in a massive granite and marble mausoleum in Red Square. Sealed in a glass sarcophagus, Lenin’s body is maintained at 61 degrees, with the humidity between 80 and 90 percent.

Yuri Denisov-Nikolsky has been helping keep Lenin in the pink since the 70s. “He looks quite fine, as good as he did 30 years ago,” he said in 2004. “He looked terrible when he died, but what you see now is Lenin’s face, not someone else’s.”

Filtered lighting gives Lenin’s face a warm glow. Botox, collagen and modern cosmetics aren’t used, Denisov-Nikolsky said. A mild bleach is used to fight off occasional fungus stains or mold spots on Lenin’s face.

According to Denisov-Nikolsky, Lenin’s skin is examined closely each week, using special Russian-made instruments that measure moisture, color and contour. He said dehydration and time are the main enemies.

Lenin gets an extreme makeover every 18 months. The mausoleum is closed for two months and the body is immersed in a bath of glycerol and potassium acetate for 30 days. The skin slowly absorbs the solution, regaining its moisture and elasticity.

Ilya Zbarsky worked on the body from 1934 to 1952. His father, Boris, participated in the original embalming in 1924. According to Zbarsky, Lenin’s blood, bodily fluids and internal organs were removed as part of the initial embalming. His eyebrows, moustache and goatee are his original hair.

The whereabouts of Lenin’s heart are unknown. But his brain was supposedly examined by a renowned German scientist to find potential clues to his alleged genius. It’s kept at a Moscow institute. But according to Zbarsky, it’s not easy to see it. “It’s mostly dissected.”

During World War II, the Soviets feared a direct hit by the Nazis. So they secretly shipped Lenin, whom they code-named “Object No. 1”, to a warehouse in central Russia. He was returned to the mausoleum in March 1945.

When Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin died in 1953, he was embalmed by the Zbarskys’ former assistants at the mausoleum. Stalin shared it with Lenin for eight years. Then he was officially discredited, removed and buried under the Kremlin wall. According to Ilya Zbarsky, Muscovites made up a new saying: “Don’t sleep in a mausoleum that doesn’t belong to you.”

With the Soviet Union breakup in 1991, the Russian government stopped financing the preservation of Lenin’s body, Denisov-Nikolsky said. Private donations pay for his 15-person staff at a research lab called Medical Biological Technologies.

The mausoleum staff also visits Vietnam to check on the body of Ho Chi Minh, on display in Hanoi. Denisov-Nikolsky was on the Soviet team that secretly embalmed “Uncle Ho” in a North Vietnamese jungle cave in 1970.

According to a recent poll by the Public Opinion Foundation in Moscow, nearly 60 percent of Russians younger than 50 want Lenin to be removed and buried. “Only people over 50 more frequently reply that they’re against Lenin’s burial,” said Foundation President Alexander Olson. This age group views “suggestions that the body be removed as blasphemous.”

Some argue that an emerging democracy, even if it’s a democracy in name only, should stop maintaining monuments to a dictator responsible for decades of suffering and millions of deaths.

“The body should be removed, yes, and it should cease to be an object of worship,” Zbarsky said. “It should be buried or kept in a laboratory somewhere.”

I would have to agree.

You may remember that back in February, I took a short but memorable trip to Savannah. My journey included a stop at one of the South’s oldest burial grounds — Colonial Cemetery. It’s a wonderful place to amble through, chock full of history. But it also has a few secrets it seems reluctant to part with.

Sitting in the center of the Historic District, Colonial is thought to be the oldest cemetery still in existence in the city (which was established as a British colony by General James Oglethorpe in 1733). When you walk through the gates, it doesn’t seem like there are that many grave stones present. But while there are about 600 or so visible markers in Colonial, it is home to an estimated 10,000 graves. Historians aren’t even sure if the markers that remain are placed where they were originally due to so many changes to the place over the years.

Colonial opened for burials in 1750. Over the years, it expanded from a few acres to its current six. At one point, it was larger than its current borders would indicate. So when construction occurs in the area, bones from those unmarked graves are often found. Eventually, Colonial closed to burials in 1853 for lack of space.

What you’ll immediately notice as you stroll down the paths is that there are a number of brick tombs. I had only seen a few of these before and they were at Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta. During Savannah’s early years, the city did not have access to the fine marble crypts that later Savannah cemeteries like Laurel Grove Cemetery have. Brick was what they had to build with, so I am guessing that’s why they favored it.

In 1999, the Chicora Foundation (a non-profit heritage preservation organization) was hired to do an in-depth study of Colonial Cemetery. Of special interest were these brick tombs and their construction. You can read the report here.

What I learned from Chicora’s report is that these tombs were made primarily with two kinds of bricks. “Savannah Grays” were actually more red and brown than gray, locally made, large and not well-fired. By contrast, “Philadelphia” bricks were slightly smaller and very hard by comparison. These were probably imported from the North and were also being used in many of the buildings taking shape in the city at that time.

One of Colonial’s more famous former residents was General Nathanael Greene, a decorated Revolutionary War hero and friend of President George Washington (who visited Savannah in 1791). A native of Rhode Island, Greene is best known for his successful command in the Southern Campaign in which he forced British General Charles Cornwalis to give up the Carolinas.

Greene was buried in Colonial after his death at his Georgia estate, Mulberry Grove, in 1786. However, in 1901, there was a push to have Greene’s remains buried in Johnson Square under a monument in his honor. The problem was, nobody was quite sure which tomb he was buried in!

Col. Asa Bird Gardiner, president of the Rhode Island State Society of the Cincinnati (an organization for descendants of military officers of the Revolutionary War), was assigned the task of finding Greene’s remains. From notes left by Greene’s grandson, all they knew was that the man was taller than average and had a wide, prominent forehead. Not much to go on compared to the forensic technology we have access to today.

But Gardiner (with help) eventually had success:

He heard something clatter inside the sieve and plucked from it three metal buttons with a patina of green. He wiped one button clean and saw the faint outline of an eagle. Gardiner recognized these as buttons worn by officers of the Revolution. Keenan then found a French silk glove filled with finger bones. French silk had been a luxury during the Revolution. Keenan found a second glove full of bones. He then found a third glove stiff with finger bones. Obviously more than one person had been entombed on this side of the vault. (From the article “Recovering the Remains of General Nathanael Greene” by Gerald M. Carbone.)

The second person turned out to be Greene’s oldest son, who drowned at the age of 18. The elder Greene’s identity was also confirmed by the discovery of an engraved nameplate on the coffin. Both Greene and his son’s remains were removed and now rest in Johnson Square underneath a large monument.

As a result of its hot, humid climate and (in its early days) unsanitary conditions, Savannah had the dubious honor of enduring several Yellow Fever epidemics over the years. Thousands of people who died during those epidemics are buried in Colonial Cemetery. Many of their graves are unmarked.

One of Colonial’s most fascinating and enduring features is its long wall of old broken headstones salvaged from the past. They are a result of one of Colonial’s periods of renovation in 1895 when the Park and Tree Commission took over. Their efforts to shape the cemetery into something akin to a public park included planting masses of foliage over many of the tombs and gravestones. Why? I have no idea.

Some of the markers have altered dates on them, but I did not see many. The story goes that Union Soldiers who camped in Colonial Cemetery during the Civil War did it in an attempt to get back at the Confederate Forces. Many of them reminded me of the stones I saw in Charleston, especially the ones with the weeping willow motif. So many of those buried here died young, some even shortly after they were born.

Finally, one last thing I should mention is that several prominent Savannah gentlemen are buried here as a result of the “dueling era” that took place from the 1730s to the 1870s. Some of them were fought for the flimsiest of reasons. Many even say some of these duels took place in Colonial Cemetery itself, but that is a bit of a mystery.

In the case of Button Gwinnett, who signed the Declaration of Independence and is the man for whom Georgia’s Gwinnett County is named, he died as the result of his wounds from a duel he fought with his political rival, Col. Lachlan McIntosh. Why a duel? Gwinnett tried to lead a campaign against British-controlled East Florida in order to secure Georgia’s border, but McIntosh was against it. Gwinnett challenged his enemy to a duel and while both were wounded, Gwinnett died.

There are a number of ghost stories surrounding Colonial but they really don’t interest me much. The history of the place is fascinating enough. When I was there, I felt rather solemn. The awareness that so many people were buried there during Savannah’s tumultuous early years was great.

And many took this city’s secrets with them to the grave.