Effort underway to preserve Oothcaloga cemetery site
One of Calhoun and Gordon County’s most significant historical sites is in danger of becoming largely obscured by the rapid progress and growth of its surroundings. There’s a group, however, working to change that before it’s too late.
The Oothcaloga MissionMorrow Cemetery Preservation Project is currently working to preserve a site located on a hill off Belwood Road, just north of the Union Grove Road intersection.
From 1822 to 1833, the Moravian Church — one of the oldest Christian Protestant denominations — offered formal education and religious instruction to Cherokee people at a two-story wood building at the site.
“The Cherokee community of Oothcaloga was one of the most prosperous in the Cherokee nation,” Matthew Gramling, Museum Manager of the Chieftains Museum/ Major Ridge Home told Gordon County Commissioners during a recent presentation. “Many elite Cherokee families had plantations and farms along the Oothcaloga Creek valley.”
Coming from the Spring Place Mission in present day Murray County, John Gambold established the mission in what is now Gordon County. The structure had been built by John Crutchfield around 1821, according to historical records, and sold to the Moravians the next year.
Gambold’s grave at the cemetery on the site holds additional historical significance due to the fact that he served in the Pennsylvania militia during the American Revolution, warranting a Daughters of the American Revolution gravestone. He died and was buried on the site in 1827.
Other notable missionaries who served the local Cherokee at the site included J.R. Schmidt, Franz Eder, and Henry G. Clauder, according to historical records.
By 1833, due to the Cherokee Land Lottery of 1832, white had already moved into the area that is now Calhoun more heavily and the mission soon closed, becoming a private residence until it eventually burned in 1976.
ELIAS BOUDINOT AND THE CHEROKEE PHOENIX
Born into a prominent family in Oothcaloga near present day Calhoun, Gallegina “Buck” Uwati became known as Elias Boudinot once he entered school in Connecticut.
Earlier in his life, a young Uwaiti had been educated at the Moravian mission not far from his childhood home. Having already led an effort to translate the New Testament into Cherokee in 1824, he was chosen by the Cherokee General Council to head up a new newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix upon his return to New Echota.
Missionary Rev. Samuel Worcester and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions helped Boudinot secure the funding needed to build an office and buy equipment for the newspaper. Boudinot’s brother Stand Watie, and fellow Cherokee leaders John Ridge and Elijah Hicks, also raised funds. A replica of that office can be seen today at the New Echota State Historic Site, and the Cherokee Phoenix is still an operating newspaper based in Oklahoma.
MORROW AND STEVENS
FAMILY BURIALS
Adding another layer of historical significance to the site are the graves of members of the Stevens-Morrow family who occupied the site
after Cherokee removal.
“Thomas Stevens was a wealthy planter who owned additional plantations on the Chattahoochee and Ocmulgee rivers,” Gramling said, adding that the former mission site in present day Calhoun was the family’s primary
residence and the eventual burial site of Thomas, his wife Edith, and their son Decatur.
According to a June 10, 1874 article in the Calhoun Times, Decatur died the previous Monday at the front gate of the property while
talking to a neighbor at the gate leading to the home. The article states his father Thomas had died much the same way and in the same place on the property more that 30 years before.
PRESERVATION PROJECT
GOALS
Rapid development in the area over the past several years has steadily seen the once quiet country road become one of many hubs in the South Highway 41 area of Calhoun for large industrial buildings and increased traffic.
The preservation project aims to create a pocket park site at what’s left of the former mission property, which today is a small, partially overgrown cemetery with several headstones in need of repair and a steep dirt road that requires a vehicle with four wheel drive and plenty of ground clearance, especially in wet conditions.
“I think such an important site in the history of Gordon County, Northwest Georgia, the Cherokee Nation, and the Southeastern United States really deserves much better than just falling into obscurity due to surrounding development,” Gramling said.
A plan for the site includes clearing overgrowth and fallen limbs, defining boundaries, repairing and improving the dirt portion of the road leading to the cemetery, placing historical markers with information about the site, as well as cleaning and repairing graves in need of attention.
Eventually, a plan also calls for the construction of benches, and a beatification effort to include flora and ornamental shrubs and plants related to Cherokee and Moravian history.
It is also a goal of organizers to obtain and post Georgia historic site signage next to the cemetery driveway and officially have the site added to the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail.
Currently, the only marking at the site is a state historic marker in the Belwood Road right-of-way below the driveway entrance erected in 1959 prior to the loss of the mission structure.
Just shy of one-third of an acre, Gramling said his research shows the site is currently designated as “abandoned cemetery,” according to tax records.
“Georgia code 36-72-3 does empower county governments to make preservative action to preserve such important sites,” Gramling said. “The total project cost would be about $5,000, according to my estimates.”
The Spring Place Moravian Mission site near Chatsworth is currently set up in a similar way to the proposed plan for its sister site in Gordon County.
“The site connects Gordon County’s story to multiple sites in Rome and Floyd County, and also in Chatsworth and Murray County,” Gramling said. “It’s incredibly significant, but I don’t think a lot of people know about it because it’s relatively obscure.”