Colonial Park Cemetery: History, Graves, Hours and Ghost Stories

Here is the practical picture in one place. The cemetery sits in the heart of the Historic District, so most visitors reach it on foot between squares. Hours differ by season, and it closes every night, which shapes how ghost tours handle it.

Colonial Park Cemetery opened in 1750 as Savannah's municipal burying ground. Over the following decades the city expanded it three times, reaching its current roughly six acres by 1789. For just over a century it took the city's dead, then burials ended in 1853.

That record makes it the oldest intact municipal cemetery in Savannah.

Its century of use spanned the hardest chapters of early Savannah. The 1820 yellow fever epidemic killed so many residents that more than 700 of its victims are buried here,. The Revolutionary War era left its own layer, including men who fought on both sides and at least one famous duel.

Through the Civil War

When Union troops occupied Savannah peacefully in December 1864, the cemetery passed through the war still intact, though not untouched.

You can walk the whole ground in well under an hour, but a handful of markers draw most of the attention. This table covers the names people come looking for and why. Note the honest caveat on Gwinnett, which guides will tell you themselves.

The Greene and Maitland story is the strangest in the ground. Major General Nathanael Greene, the American commander, lay in the Graham vault from 1786 until 1901, when his remains were moved to Johnson Square. The British officer John Maitland, his adversary in the southern campaign, shared the same vault for far longer, with his remains returning to Scotland only in 1981.

If grave hunting whets your appetite, the largest and most ornate cemetery experience in Savannah sits a drive away at Bonaventure, reachable on the daytime Bonaventure Cemetery Golf Cart Guided Tour.

After Union troops occupied Savannah on 24 December 1864, several hundred soldiers camped inside the cemetery. The story goes that they damaged markers while camped among the graves, and that some of them altered dates on stones, changing ages and sometimes adding years to the carved inscriptions. Guides tell the story as they pass the cemetery walls.

How much of the story holds

The encampment itself is documented history, and the altered dates are the standard account repeated across the city's tours. The word usually attached is allegedly, because nobody has a complete record of which stones were changed and which were simply carved wrong in the first place. Guides who know their material present it the same way, as a well-grounded story with gaps rather than a settled fact.

It is the kind of burial-ground story the Dead of Night Adults-Only Ghost Walking Tour tells, for ages 16 and over, about the Historic District after dark.

Here is the honest part. Colonial Park Cemetery is closed at night and no tour enters after hours, so everything ghostly about it is told from the street or the sidewalk. What the ground offers is history heavy enough that guides need little invention: an epidemic that filled it with the young, a duel that killed a signer of the Declaration, soldiers camping among the graves, and stones whose dates no longer add up.

The stories guides tell usually circle those facts. Guides speak of the fever victims of 1820 and the altered stones left by the Union encampment, and visitors report their own feelings among the old markers. Treat all of it as legend and atmosphere, not record.

The cemetery's real draw is that the documented history is already strange enough without embellishment.

If you want the fuller haunted picture of the neighborhood around Abercorn Street, including the Sorrel-Weed House a few blocks away on Madison Square, see our guide to Sorrel-Weed House, Savannah: History, Tours and the Molly Story. The Molly story there, like the altered stones here, is a legend with thin evidence behind it.

The cemetery is a straightforward daytime visit. It sits at 200 Abercorn Street between the Historic District squares, and the gates open every day of the week. Plan around the seasonal hours, because the early 5 pm close in the colder months catches people out.

• Open 8 am to 5 pm from November to March
• Open 8 am to 8 pm from March to November
• Closed every night, with no after-hours entry for tours or visitors
• No admission price is stated in the city information, and the visit is self-guided
• The cemetery is inside the walkable Historic District, near Oglethorpe Avenue and Abercorn Street

Etiquette inside the gates

This is an active historic burial ground, not a park, so treat it as such. Stay on the paths, do not climb or lean on the stones, and keep your voice down near anyone else reading the markers. Photography in daylight is a normal sight.

Parents visiting with children may prefer to pair the stop with the Fraidy Cat Family-Friendly Ghost Tour of Savannah, which covers cemetery lore in a playful register designed for mixed ages.

Colonial Park sits in the middle of a cluster of the stops every ghost walk talks about, which makes it an easy anchor for a daytime walk of your own. The cemetery fronts Abercorn Street and Oglethorpe Avenue. A few blocks south on Abercorn, Lafayette Square holds the Andrew Low House, built in 1849 for the father-in-law of Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon Low, which the Ghosts and Gravestones trolley enters at night.

To the east, Columbia Square has the fountain where the family ghost walk meets and the Kehoe House, an 1892 house that served as a funeral home for part of the 1900s.

Madison Square and Wright Square

West of the cemetery, Madison Square holds the Sorrel-Weed House, where Matilda Sorrel died by suicide and where the unverified Molly legend is told. North of it, Wright Square was laid out in 1733 and holds the grave of the Creek leader Tomochichi, buried there in 1739. Ghost walks tell that Alice Riley, hanged in the square in the 1730s, still haunts it, a legend rather than a record.

Our self-guided walk strings these squares together with the cemetery in walking order.

A one-hour route inside the gates

Enter from Abercorn Street and start with the Gwinnett monument, then look for the Bulloch gravesite and the marker for Captain Denis N. Cottineau, whose dates run from 1745 to 1808. The Duelist's Grave remembering poet James Wilde is the stop most guides mention by name. Leave time for the brick vaults: the Graham vault held Nathanael Greene from 1786 to 1901 and his rival John Maitland until 1981.

Read the dates on the older stones as you go, since the story of altered numbers from the 1864 encampment is easier to judge in front of the marble than on a tour bus.

Before or after a night tour

A daytime visit makes a night walk better. If you have already read the names on the stones, the stories told from the sidewalk after dark land harder, and you know which parts are record and which are legend. Most night walks start within a few blocks: the candlelit walk faces Chippewa Square, the adults-only walk checks in at Johnson Square and the family walk meets at the Columbia Square fountain.

On some holiday dates the Ghosts and Gravestones trolley leaves from 250 MLK Blvd and makes a stated stop at Colonial Park Cemetery itself, the only listing compared here that names one. Check that listing's booking notes for the dates before you plan around it.

Photographing the cemetery

Daylight is the only light you get, since the gates close in the evening, and the oak canopy keeps much of the ground in shade. The brick vaults and iron-fenced family plots photograph best from the paths. Keep the camera off anyone else's graveside visit, never step onto a grave or lean on a marker for an angle, and remember the stones are fragile after more than 170 years without new burials.

No tour enters Colonial Park Cemetery after dark, so the night walks and trolleys tell its stories from the street as they pass. Which one suits you depends on budget, group and appetite for the darker material. The walk formats cover the ground closest to it, while the trolley reaches it as one stop among several.

The candlelit walk is the closest fit for most visitors, running lantern-lit departures through the Historic District squares, and the Dead of Night walk covers the same ground with grimmer stories for ages 16 and over. The Ghosts and Gravestones trolley suits anyone who would rather ride, adding entry to the Andrew Low House and the Perkins and Sons Ship Chandlery. Whichever you pick, book the evening slot ahead in October, when several listings already carry a likely-to-sell-out flag.

Visit Colonial Park Cemetery by daylight for the history, then hear it again after dark from the guides who know the stories best. The night walks cannot take you inside the gates, but standing outside them by lantern light, with the altered stones and fever graves a few steps away, is how Savannah has always told this story. Compare the night ghost tours in Savannah GA to pick the walk that fits your evening.