Recently, while searching for obituaries, I found a newspaper article telling us of the fate of this former city cemetery.  Many persons today are interested in excavating the site but after reading the following article, it would appear that there is nothing left to excavate.  It would be nice to know what happened to the tombstones from this cemetery and of course, who was interred here.

The Brunswick Times Advertiser; Wednesday 4 April 1894; pg. 1 col. 7

REOPENED GRAVES—The Sewerage Shovels Strike Against Human Bones—Ghastly Finds at the Egmon [sic] Street Excavations—The Spot an Ante-Bellum Cemetery, Antedating Oak Grove.

When the muscular negroes who take orders from Contractor Tate drove their spades deep into the soft earth on Egmon [sic] street, at the point where it borders Wright square this morning, they did not think they were digging into the secrets of a city of the dead, but that was nevertheless the case.

Consequently, when at a depth of about four feet, one of the men turned up several human bones, he did not sing carelessly like the grave-digger in “Hamlet,” but his expression was one of mingled fear and astonishment.

The excavations went on, however, not hindered at all by the gloomy evidences of man’s decay which were unearthed with almost every spade full of dirt, until a good-sized heap of bones were dug out.

Contractor Tate, not knowing the past history of that plot of ground, thought his sewerage work had been the means of discovering the remains of some aboriginal people, who had thronged this peninsular long before such things as mains, pumping wells and surface drainage were dreamed of.

The history of Wright square and the streets and lots surrounding it is however, an ample explanation of how those human bones got there, and why it was possible for a gang of workmen, in broad daylight, on a public thoroughfare, and in the midst of a populace such an eloquent reminder of that dead Past which lies always just under the surface of the sunny Present.

Wright square was a public burying ground before Oak Grove cemetery was laid out.  It was at the time when the suburbs were unsurveyed woods and when only that portion of town lying along the Bay was at all populated.  Some of the pioneers of Brunswick’s municipal history were buried there.  When Oak Grove cemetery was opened, a large number of remains were disinterred and removed to the new burying ground.

Finally, it was abandoned entirely, the mounds became level with the earth and for a long period, up to about ten years ago, only one solitary tombstone remained standing to mark the former uses of the ground.  This tombstone soon shared the fate of the others and was removed.

Then, the city chaingang, under command of Captain Lewis Harris, went to work to modernize the cemetery and convert it into a park.  The surface was graded to a depth of from one to two feet, leaving pedestal-like mounds about the roots of the oaks.  This grading of the graves of course brought the bones of the dead nearer to the surface—but, it also robbed the square of its horror to the superstitious and its gloomy suggestions to all who passed that way.

But, although the mounds and the tombstones were gone the evidences of man’s mortality remained, and the history of the spot will be brought back to the recollection of man by these discoveries unearthed by the sewerage shovels.