Georgia's landmarks, memorials and legends, Volume II, Part 7

Author: Knight, Lucian Lamar, 1868-1933
Publication date: 1913
Publisher: Atlanta, Ga. : Byrd Printing Co.
Number of Pages: 1274

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Here General Greene died suddenly, on June 19, 1786, of a congestive chill; and, on the following day, his re- mains were taken by boat to Savannalı, where they were interred in the Colonial Cemetery belonging to Christ Episcopal Church, in the very center of the town of Sa- vannah, with imposing civic and military ceremonies. The Georgia Gazette, of June 22, 1786, gives in detail the ceremonies at the obsequies and mentions the Society of the Cincinnati in Georgia at that time, but since ex- tinet, as the principal mourners. The entire town united in showing honor to the remains of this distinguished patriot, who, next to Washington, had shown himself the greatest of our Generals in the War of the Revolution. The Georgia Gazette, with reference to the place of in- terment, merely uses this language:

"When the military reached the vault in which the body was to be entombed they opened to the right and left and, resting on reverse arms, let it pass through. The funeral services performed and the corpse de- posited, thirteen discharges from the artillery and three from the mus- ketry closed the scene. The whole was conducted with a solemnity befitting the occasion, "

GEORGIA'S LANDMARKS, MEMORIALS AND LEGENDS

It is noticeable that the particular vault in which the remains were deposited is not mentioned. The cemetery was surrounded by a brick wall, twelve feet high, of which but one side now remains. To the erection of this wall, General Washington contributed. Several years ago Christ Church gave this cemetery to the city of Sa- vannah, to be made into a park, on condition that the remains should not be disturbed by the city authorities. Thereupon the wall was taken down on three sides, leav- ing but the rear wall on an alley-way, separating the cemetery from the police barracks, and, in lieu of trees, shrubs were planted and walks laid out.

When General W. T. Sherman's army, on its march from Atlanta, Ga., came to Savannah, many of the vaults were opened by the soldiers in search of valuables and much wanton destruction of monuments and tablets en- sued, so that to-day many of the vaults are without means of identification. Some of these were erected before and some after General Greene's decease. There are, how- ever, four well-known Colonial vaults, in a row, at that part of the park which would be intersected, if Lincoln Street were prolonged.

It is remarkable that within a few years after 1786 there should have been a doubt as to the location of Gen- eral Greene's remains. One might suppose that General Greene's widow and immediate descendants who were at Mulberry Grove when he died would have known of the location. However, a very few years after his decease, Mrs. Nathanael Greene married Phineas Miller, Esq., and removed with her family to Dungeness House, on Cum- berland Island, distant one hundred and twenty miles from Savannah; and for upward of forty years none of the Green family resided in or near Savannah.

Mrs. Phineas Miller, the General's widow, died at Dungeness House, on September 2, 1814, when the estate became the property of her second daughter, Mrs. Louisa Shaw. Climatic and local conditions at that time in Sa- vannah were not conducive to longevity and many of

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the residents there in the Revolutionary period soon passed away. The place where General Greene's remains were deposited was not indicated by any tablet and, in a few years, many of those informed on the subject were deceased.

Accordingly, in 1820, the council of Savannah ap- pointed a committee to make an inquiry. The report made by this committee was only a brief and partial one. They did not discover the locality and, owing to obstacles in the way, they did not examine the Jones vault, one of the four Colonial structures to which reference has been made. The council immediately appointed another com- mittee, which, however, appears never to have done any- thing. In 1840, the late George H. Johnstone, of Savan- nah, who married a grand-daughter of General Greene, and the late Phineas Miller Nightingale, grand-son to General Greene and half-brother to Mr. Johnstone's wife, made another search, which was also very inconclusive.

Thereupon tradition, ever unreliable, invented several theories as to the disposition of General Greene's body. One was that the remains had been deposited in the vault of former Lieutenant-Governor Graham, whose estate had been confiscated and awarded to General Greene as aforesaid, and that the sister of Graham's wife, Mrs. Mossman, returning to Savannah several years after the Revolution, had directed the negro slaves to remove the remains; and one traditional story said that they had been thrown into Negro Creek, while another said that they had been buried in the cemetery at night.

To support this latter theory, a gentleman named Wright, now in his ninetieth year, residing in Atlanta, who has been a member of the Chatham Artillery for seventy years, stated that when a boy he played in the cemetery and that he and his playmates understood that

GEORGIA'S LANDMARKS, MEMORIALS AND LEGENDS

a certain mound, near the corner of Oglethorpe Avenue and Bull Street, covered the remains of General Greene. Last August he came to Savannah, and, although the mound had been leveled, he indicated where, after a per- iod of seventy-five years or more, he thought the mound had stood.

Another tradition was that the remains had been taken secretly to Cumberland Island by a member of the fam- ily, and several persons asserted positively that they had seen the tombstone there. But this tombstone is that of General Greene's widow. In the center of the epi- taph his name appears in large characters, and, there- fore, from a cursory observation, gave rise to this belief.

The late President of the Rhode Island Society of the Cincinnati, Nathanael Greene, M. D., L. L. D., grand- son of General Greene, was born at Dungeness House, Cumberland Island, Ga., June 2, 1809, and died at Middle- town, R. I., July 8, 1899, in his ninety-first year. He re- membered his grandfather Greene and had spent much of his earlier life in Georgia and, except during the per- iod of the Civil War, was for about seventy years accus- tomed to visit there every year. He was very desirous of having a more thorough search made for the remains of his grandfather, and frequently gave me, as told him by his own father, Nathanael Ray Greene, a description of the remarkable head of his grandfather and its unusual brain development.

Recently, the subject having again been agitated in Savannah as to the whereabouts of General Greene's re- mains, the Rhode Island Society of the Cincinnati adopted resolutions for an inquiry, which in substance, are as follows :

"Whereas, after diligent inquiry it is believed that full investiga- tion has never yet been made to ascertain definitely where the remains of Major-General Nathanael Greene, President of the Rhode Island

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State Society of the Cincinnati, were finally deposited after his decease at Mulberry Grove, in Savannah, Ga., in 1786;

And whereas, it is believed that a thorough search of the four old burial vaults in the old cemetery forming a part of Colonial Park, Sa- vannah, Ga., will determine whether the remains are deposited in a certain one of said vaults, as believed by persons well informed in matters of local history and as substantiated by authentic record;

And whereas, it is particularly appropriate that the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations should do whatever may be necessary toward ascertaining the burial place of its first president, the great patriot and soldier, who, next to Washington, aided so potentially in securing the independence of the United States;

Therefore, be it resolved, that a committee to make a thorough in- quiry into the whereabouts of General Greene's burial place in Savannah, Ga., be appointed, etc."

This committee consisted of the following members : Hon. George Anderson Mercer, President of the Geor- gia Historical Society; Hon. Walter G. Charlton, Presi- dent of the Society of Sons of the Revolution in the State of Georgia; Philip D. Daffin, Esq., Chairman of the Sa- vannah Park and Tree Commission; Hon. William Har- den, Secretary of the Society of Sons of the Revolution in the State of Georgia, and Librarian of the State His- torical Society; Alfred Dearing Harden, Esq., of the Savannah Bar, member of the South Carolina State Society of the Cincinnati, with myself as chairman.

These gentlemen entered heartily into the subject of the inquiry and carefully weighed and considered every- thing of a traditional nature on this subject, in order that, if the special search should prove ineffective, then such weight should be given to the traditional stories as might be deemed proper from the evidence. The direct intention of the committee was from the outset to examine one particular vault; but, as a matter of punc- tilious courtesy, the examination of this vault was de- layed until the last, in order to communicate with the descendants of the original owners.

GEORGIA'S LANDMARKS, MEMORIALS AND LEGENDS

The greatest interest was manifested by the people of the city of Savannah. Several members of the com- mittee were always present, besides a large concourse of citizens. The committee was continually assisted by Robert Tyler Waller, Esq., who is a grandson of ex- President John Tyler, and who married Major-General Greene's great grand-daughter. He resides in Savannah, and represented the junior branch of the Greene family. Although not descended from General Greene, I rep- resented, at their request, the elder branch of his de- scendants, resident in Rhode Island. Otis Ashmore, Esq., Superintendent of Schools, and Edward J. Kelly, Esq., of Savannah, also continuously assisted.

The committee's attention was first given to an éx- amination of the many vaults where tradition said the remains had been deposited. Some of these were found to be in very bad condition, for want of proper repairs ; but the most careful scrutiny was made in a reverent and proper manner, and records kept of the coffin-plates which were found, to the gratification of many people in Savan- nah, who in the absence of distinguishing marks to these vaults-owing to the vandalism of which I have spoken- did not know with certainty where the remains of par- ticular relatives had been deposited. When the exam- ination was over, each vault was immediately reclosed with cemented brick before opening another.

Finally, there remained but one vault to be examined, namely, the Jones vault. This had been erected by Hon. Noble Wymberley Jones, who died in Savannah, Ga., January 9, 1805. He had been Speaker in Georgia of both Colonial and State Legislatures, had been twice a Dele- gate to the Continental Congress, was made a prisoner of war at the capitulation of Charleston, S. C., May 12, 1780, and was a tried patriot and friend of Major-Gen- eral Greene.

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On Monday morning, March 4, the vault which was perfectly well-known as the Jones vault was opened .* The late George Wymberley Jones DeRenne, Esq., senior representative of the Jones family and Vice-President of the Georgia Historical Society, many years ago opened this vault and found and identified the remains of all the members of the Jones family deposited there, and thereupon removed them all to Bonaventure Cemetery, near Savannah, and closed up the vault. He afterwards told the Hon. William Harden, of the committee, pre- cisely what he had done, as herein narrated. That he was able to identify the remains of the several members of the Jones family was due to the fact that this vault is drier and sandier in its soil than the others which the committee examined. In the center of the vault the com- mittee found probably a cart load of broken brick, which

*In Colonial Park, at the time of this investigation, there were four brick vaults, standing in a row, at right angles to Oglethorpe Avenue, cach without marks of identification, and known as Colonial vaults. Dr. Gardi- ner, in a subsequent address, delivered before the Rhode Island Society of the Cincinnati in the Representative Chamber at Newport, on July 4, 1901, explained his mistake in assuming that the vault in which the discovery was made was the Jones vault, whereas it was the Graham vault. Says he: "As to the Colonial vaults, no one in recent years knew to whom three of the four belonged, nor which was the Graham-Mossman vault. As to the fourth, or Jones vault, it was supposed to be the second in the row from Oglethorpe Avenue. This supposition afterward proved to be incor- rec *

* * The first of these, nearest to the avenue, although like the rest without distinguishing mark, was found to be the family vault of Colonel Richard Wylly, Deputy Quartermaster General of the Continental Army in the Revolution, and member of the Georgia State Society of the Cincinnati. His remains and coffin-plate were there found.

"The next in line was supposed to be the Jones vault, and its examina- tion, as a matter of courtesy, was deferred by the committee until the last, in order to communicate first with Wymberley Jones DeRenne, Esq., the proper representative of the Jones family in Georgia.

"The third vault in line, upon being opened, was found to be empty, but the committee afterwards ascertained that this vault was really the Jones vault, from which all remains, properly identified, had been removed, as before stated, to Bonaventure Cemetery, by the late George Wymberley Jones DeRenne.

"The fourth vault in line was found to be that of an old Savannah family, the Thiot family, whose representatives still reside there.

"Mr. Robert Scott, whose body was discovered in the same vault which contained General Greene's, was a relative by marriage of Lieutenant Governor Graham. He married Miss Margaret Oliver, a niece of James Mossman, whose wife was a Graham. At the time of his death, in 1845, he was placed in what was then known as the Graham-Mossman vault,"

GEORGIA'S LANDMARKS, MEMORIALS AND LEGENDS

was first removed before further inquiry. An opening through the rear brick wall was also made, to permit admission of light and air. (However, it was afterwards discovered that what the committee took to be the Jones vault was in reality the Graham vault, and of this fact there is an abundance of proof.)

Upon examination, there was found on one side of the vault in a remarkable state of preservation a casket containing the remains of Mr. Robert Scott, who died on June 5, 1845, at the age of seventy years. The silver plate to his coffin was hardly discolored.

On the other side of the vault, nearest the wall, were noticed the rotting fragments of a coffin. When these were removed, there appeared a man's skeleton quite intact, except some of the smaller ribs, which clearly showed that the body had never been disturbed. Two experienced workmen were employed inside the vault. As the fragments of the coffin were removed from tlie re- mains, both workmen commented upon the remarkably prominent configuration of the skull. Mr. Kelly, who watched the proceeding through the opening, at once no- ticed the same fact and called the attention of several members of the committee present to this circumstance. The workmen then removed the remaining fragments of the coffin and looked for the plate, which was found, where it should be, among the bones of the breast.

As Mr. Gattman, one of the workmen, passed this plate up through the opening, he remarked that he no- ticed the date, "1786." He did not know that such was the exact date of General Greene's decease. The plate was silver gilt. Upon the face were not only the figures, "1786," but also, upon careful inspection, Messrs. Wal- ler and Kelly, members of the committee, discovered the final letters of the word "Greene," in proper position; and Judge Charlton was able, after some care, to discern the letters, just preceding these, namely, "ael," of the word "Nathanael." This plate, at the desire of the com- mittee, will be taken to General L. P. di Cesnola, Director

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of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the city of New York, to ascertain whether it can be restored by any systematic process.

Some of the bones crumbled on being handled, but the larger bones, including the skull and the jaw-bones, were all preserved. These were carefully placed in a box. Search was then made for metal buttons. Three were discovered, badly corroded, upon one of which how- ever, could be traced the form of an eagle, which was the distinguishing mark upon the buttons of a Major- General in the Continental army of the Revolution. In no other vault were there other than wooden buttons found, which had originally been covered with silk, cloth, or velvet. All the mould of General Greene's remains was carefully put into a box, which was then nailed up.

Another peculiarly significant fact, which cannot be overlooked, was the discovery of fragments of heavy white silk gloves, much discolored and containing bones of the fingers. These gloves were such as general offi- cers in the French army usually wore and were, doubtless, a present from the Marquis de LaFayette to Major-Gen- eral Greene in 1784. The Marquis was in the habit of making presents to his brother officers in the Revolu- tionary army, and each time he returned to the United States he brought a great many gifts of a military char- acter. Among other things, he gave General Greene a number of silver camp mugs or cups, such as were used by Marshals of France. These are preserved in the fam- ily of the late Prof. George Washington Greene, in Rhode Island.

His very deep attachment for General Greene is well authenticated. The Rhode Island Society of the Cincin- nati entertained him at Newport, in October, 1784, on his first arrival after the Revolution, and he saw General Greene while then in the United States. When he came again, in 1824, he gave to General Greene's second daugh-

GEORGIA'S LANDMARKS, MEMORIALS AND LEGENDS

ter, Mrs. Louisa Shaw, a steel-plate engraving of her father, with this inscription, in LaFayette's well-known hand-writing, viz. :

"To dear Mrs. Shaw, from her father's' most intimate friend and companion in arms- LA FAYETTE."

This is now in the possession of Mrs. Robert Tyler Waller, General Greene's great grand-daughter. The workmen reported another body alongside, with frag- ments of a coffin. On removing these fragments, Mr. Gattman, whose experience in such matters is somewhat unusual, remarked that they were the remains of a male person, probably eighteen or nineteen years of age. He did not know at this time that General Greene's son, George Washington Greene, had been drowned in the Sa- vannah River, off Mulberry Grove, on March 28, 1793, and his remains interred beside his father's.

Most of these bones crumbled upon being handled. They were, however, carefully collected with all the mould and put into another box, which was nailed up. The cof- fin-plate was too badly corroded for anything upon it to be deciphered. The boxes were removed to the police bar- racks near by and placed under the care of the Captain of Police over night, and the vault re-bricked and ce- mented. These proceedings were all witnessed by a large concourse of people.

On the following day, suitable boxes were procured, zinc-lined, and taken to the police barracks, where Mr. Keenan, one of the workmen who assisted in the vault, in the presence of several witnesses, carefully removed the remains of General Greene to the zinc-lined box pre- pared for the purpose. In doing so, Mr. Otis Ashmore, assisted by Mr. Edward J. Kelly, made measurements of the skull which corresponded to the details in Sully's original portrait of Major-General Greene, and to the statements made by the late Hon. Nathanael Greene and others.

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In the Life of Major-General Nathanael Greene, by his grandson, the late Prof. George Washington Greene, there will be found as a frontispiece to the first volume, a portrait of General Greene, the skull of which exactly corresponds to the one found. My lamented friend, the late Colonel John Screven, of Savannah, President of the Georgia Sons of the Revolution, once proposed to make this investigation and repeatedly declared that General Greene's remains would be recognized by his skull. It was of the same distinctive character as the skull of Napoleon Bonaparte, Humbolt, Cuvier, and Dan- iel Webster. The teeth, both upper and lower, were re- markably well preserved, in a jaw which showed great determination and firmness of character, and plainly indicated the age to be about forty-five years.

After the remains of Major-General Greene had all been deposited in the zinc-lined box, the zinc cover was placed upon the box and soldered in its place ; the wooden cover was then screwed down, handles put to the end of the box, and a coffin-plate affixed, bearing this inscrip- tion :

MAJOR-GENERAL NATHANAEL GREENE

Born, August 7, 1742. Died, June 10, 1786.

In like manner, the remains of George Washington Greene were transferred to the other zinc-lined box, which was closed in the same manner, the coffin-plate containing this inscription :

GEORGE W. GREENE Son of Major-General Nathanael Greene.

The remains were then taken by the undertaker, Mr. W. T. Dixon, accompanied by members of the committee

GEORGIA'S LANDMARKS, MEMORIALS AND LEGENDS

and representatives of the press, to the Southern Bank of the State of Georgia, which is a depository of the State in Savannah. IIere they were received by Horace A. Crane, Esq., Vice-President, and James Sullivan, Esq., Cashier, and taken in the presence of these gentlemen and deposited in the safe deposit vault of the bank, where they now remain, subject to the order of the undersigned, and Alfred Dearing Harden, Esq., of the committee, as trustees.

After the remains had been discovered in the manner indicated and placed for safe-keeping in the custody of the Southern Bank, on Monday, March 4, 1901, the com- mittee met in final session at the residence of Hon. George Anderson Mercer, and immediately thereafter, at a numerously attended meeting of the Historical So- ciety of Georgia, he, as President thereof, announced, on behalf of the committee, the discovery of the remains.

But one circumstance needs yet to be brought to your attention, namely, the authentic evidence on this subject which satisfied the committee from the outset that the proper place to inquire was the Jones vault. In 1821, William Johnson copyrighted his Life of Major-General Nathanael Greene, a work to which he had given special care and attention. In its preparation he had visited all the scenes of General Greene's military operations and interviewed many who had been participants with him in the War of the Revolution.

Johnson, in this work, says that the funeral ceremony of the Church of England was read over the corpse by the Hon. William Stephens, as there was not at the time a minister of the gospel in Savannah. He adds, in a foot-note,* that Judge Stephens, who read the funeral service, repeatedly told him that the body of General Greene lay in the Jones vault, a vault which had not been

*Vol. 2, p. 120, original edition.

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searched, according to the author, when this foot-note was penned.

Judge Stephens was then Judge of the Superior Court of Georgia, and was afterwards, until his decease, on August 6, 1819, United States District Judge for the State of Georgia. He had been the first Attorney-Gen- eral of the State, Colonel of the Chatham County Militia, and Grand Master of the Masons of the State, and had been a close friend of the illustrious soldier.

Had the Georgia Gazette, in 1786, mentioned the par- ticular vault, where General Greene's remains had been deposited, there would never have been any doubt upon the subject. When word was received in New York City of General Greene's untimely decease, the Revolu- tionary officers who composed the New York Society of the Cincinnati, assembled with members of the Con- tinental Congress and public officials and functionaries of the State of New York, in St. Paul's Chapel on Broad- way, to listen to a masterful oration by Alexander Ham- ilton, upon the career and character of Major-General Greene.

This oration was one of the greatest ever delivered in this country and can still be read and studied with profit by the military student. The Continental Con- gress, on August 8, 1786, decreed a monument to General Greene's memory. When my honored friend, the late senior Senator from Rhode Island, Hon. Henry B. An- thony, on behalf of the State, in an address to the United States Senate, presented on January 20, 1870, the life- sized statue of General Greene for the old hall of the House of Representatives, he remarked that Greene stood, in the judgment of his contemporaries and by the assent of history, second only to the man who towers without a peer in the annals of America.

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Georgia's landmarks, memorials and legends, Volume II, Part 7

Author: Knight, Lucian Lamar, 1868-1933 Publication date: 1913 Publisher: Atlanta, Ga. : Byrd Printing Co. Number of Pages: 1274

Author: Knight, Lucian Lamar, 1868-1933
Publication date: 1913
Publisher: Atlanta, Ga. : Byrd Printing Co.
Number of Pages: 1274