Central State Hospital Cemeteries

Three historic cemeteries on the grounds of Central State Hospital, southeast of Milledgeville, hold the graves of thousands of patients of Georgia's state mental hospital. The oldest, the Asylum Cemetery, dates from 1854 and occupies rolling, terraced land north of Camp Creek, with an allée of cedars and roughly 7,500 to 8,500 graves. South Camp Creek Cemetery holds trench graves dug about 1938-1939, where remains from the New Colored Cemetery were moved when a tuberculosis hospital was built. The New Colored Cemetery was laid out for African-American patients. Most graves carry only cast-metal markers showing a number, made at the hospital and keyed to ledger books now at the Georgia Archives. The cemeteries were closed to new burials in 1960. They are significant for what they show about institutional care of the dead, segregation in medicine and burial, and a planned landscape influenced by the rural cemetery movement.