{"nrhp_refnum":"06000285","name":"Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery","other_names":[],"category":"site","location":{"address":"530 Fourth St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Athens","county":"Clarke County","state":"GA","lat":33.968951599000064,"lon":-83.36117725144632,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"2006-04-19","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Historic - Non-Aboriginal","Art","Black","Landscape Architecture","Social History"],"significance_levels":["state"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery is a historic African-American cemetery on a ten-acre site east of downtown Athens, Clarke County, Georgia, established in 1882 by the Gospel Pilgrim Society, a burial insurance society.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the cemetery is the major privately owned African-American cemetery in Athens, planned and laid out by an insurance burial society, with a well-preserved original plan and funerary art marking graves of prominent and ordinary residents. It also qualifies for the information it has already yielded through archaeological investigation and could yield in future, given the near absence of maps, plats and burial records.","narrative":"Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery occupies about ten acres on a ridgetop east of downtown Athens, Georgia. The Gospel Pilgrim Society, a lodge-type burial insurance organization, bought the first 8.25 acres in 1882 and added three-quarters of an acre in 1902. Members paid ten cents a week in exchange for a funeral and burial. The cemetery was laid out with roads, nineteen sections and family plots, many outlined with stone, brick or concrete block copings. Surveys counted 2,192 graves and estimate about 3,000 in total, marked by granite stones, concrete tablets, funeral-home markers, fieldstones or only ground depressions. Though woods now cover much of the site, the road system and boundaries survive, and burials continue. The cemetery was listed because it is an unusually well-preserved example of a cemetery planned by an insurance burial society, because it holds the graves of prominent and ordinary African-American residents, and because archaeological work can still yield information unavailable elsewhere.","period_of_significance":"1882-1956","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":null,"criteria":["D"],"status_note":"Still used as a cemetery as of 2006; heavily wooded and overgrown but in generally good condition, with a gate at the Fourth Street entrance and a reclamation effort begun in 2002.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:55:43.584444-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_GA/06000285.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/06000285/d0809fdb43-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/06000285/d0809fdb43-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","author":"LadyofShalott","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Entrance_to_Gospel_Pilgrim_Cemetery.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">LadyofShalott</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Entrance_to_Gospel_Pilgrim_Cemetery.JPG"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/93207466","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_Pilgrim_Cemetery","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19866868"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/georgia/clarke-county/gospel-pilgrim-cemetery-06000285/"}