Crowds tour Myrtle Hill
More than 150 turn out for the Walk to History at the historic cemetery.
Romans meandered across the roads and paths of Rome’s historic Myrtle Hill Cemetery during a Walk to History Friday. The event, sponsored by the Rome-Floyd Planning Department and Harbin Clinic, harkened back to a time decades ago when public cemeteries actually were public parks.
“It was a very good turnout,” said historic planner Brittany Griffin. She estimated at least 150 people participated in guided tours of the cemetery while others just walked the hill on their own.
Anne Culpepper, who has led hundreds, if not thousands of people on tours through the cemetery through the years, told a crowd the cemetery was originally owned by one of Rome’s founders, Zachariah Hargrove. Culpepper said she was glad that Hargrove’s suggestion for the name of Rome — Hillsboro — didn’t stick, although it was the name given to the community around the cemetery when it was chartered in 1856. In 1864 it became known as South Rome and in 1888 it became part of Rome’s old Fifth Ward.
Hargrove ultimately sold the cemetery to Colonel Alfred Shorter who later donated it to the city for a cemetery.
Culppeper recalled reading tales of people wondering why a cemetery would be developed on such a steep hill, but said that when many of its earliest occupants arrived by boat, “they were high and dry” once they got to Myrtle Hill. The top of the cemetery is 726 feet above sea level.
Today the cemetery is the final resting place for more than 20,000 people, including Daniel Mitchell, another of Rome’s five founding fathers who actually did suggest the name Rome, a large Civil War section and former First Lady Ellen Axson Wilson.