Stories of Relocated Cemeteries in the State of Georgia

Georgia

In November of 1999, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on a small but historically significant burial ground in Cherokee County, Georgia. The cemetery of Hickory Log Missionary Baptist Church, established in the years following the Civil War, was identified as part of the planned development of Riverstone Plaza in Canton.

Burials at Hickory Log are believed to have begun around 1872, shortly after the church’s founding—just seven years after the end of the Civil War. The land, a two-acre parcel donated by Phillip Keith, became the final resting place for generations of formerly enslaved individuals and their descendants. While no formal burial records have been located, church members estimated that between 400 and 500 individuals may have been interred there over more than a century.

At the time of the report, developers indicated that the cemetery would be relocated to accommodate construction of the shopping center. However, no readily available follow-up documentation has been found to confirm when or where those burials were moved, or how the process was carried out.

A separate record notes that Reverend Robert Holmes, who served Hickory Log Missionary Baptist Church for more than 30 years, is buried at Cherokee Memorial Park. While this establishes a later connection between the church and that cemetery, it does not confirm that individuals from the original Hickory Log burial ground were relocated there.

As with many historic cemeteries affected by development, the full details of what became of this burial ground remain incomplete. What is certain is that the site represented more than a century of community history—one that began in the earliest years of freedom and continued through generations whose stories are not fully captured in written record.

What became of the graves may be undocumented, but the community they represent endures in the record.

Hickory Log Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Saturday Nov 13, 1999 Atlanta Georgia.