We had five trees snap and come crashing down and a gazillion small limbs littering the entire cemetery but we were spared major damage to our infrastructure. Two gravestones were tipped over (but not broken) and one tree was uprooted which damaged a stone wall. There was some erosion to McWilliams Rd and Fiddlin' John Carson La but we came through it okay.

Here are some photos that I took before we started the cleanup on Sunday, March 16th.

March News
We have started some spring repairs to the roadway running westward from the Josephine Ave gate. Erosion from heavy rain over the last several years (excluding 2007, of course) has left this main roadway deeply rutted and made it almost impassible, at times. On Saturday, March 1st we had 2 cubic yards of Crush n' Run dumped on the west side of the hill near the Davis & Pittman plots to eliminate a large rut and sink hole in the roadway. And 2 cubic yards was also dumped and spread at the Josephine Ave gate to eliminate a large dip in the roadway. We are hoping to top the remainder of that roadway with a layer of stone later this spring as the budget allows.

February News

Winter is slowly giving way to spring at Sylvester Cemetery. We are trying to finish up our cold-weather projects and get ready for the Georgia growing season to begin. It was an odd winter because of the loss of bushes and trees to the drought. We usually spend our winters at Sylvester playing catch-up by cutting the remainder of the season’s growth of brush, pruning low-hanging branches from trees, removing dead trees from the cemetery property and working on paper work.

This winter Dennis has spent the entire three months cutting and removing dead trees and limbs from the cemetery. He estimates that we lost over fifty mature trees since summer and is still in the process of cutting them at this writing. We did very little pruning of the canopy this year. Trees either died and needed to be removed or they fell over in winter wind storms. There was very little privet, ivy and ilex growth this past year so we have not had to spend any time removing brush. We did have “crush ‘n run” dropped into the main driveway west of the Josephine Ave entrance to remedy the erosion problems of the last several years. We are completing that section of the roadway rebuild next weekend with more gravel fill being added. In January, we dug out about one hundred stumps in the meadow area along Braeburn Circle using a chain saw and stump grinder. We’re hoping to do more of that before we get into the 2008 mowing season.

As most everyone knows, my reseeding project on the plots near the lower Braeburn Gate was a total failure last year. The lack of rain in the spring killed most of the existing grass and the new seed failed to germinate. I have purchased more drought-resistant seed to have another go at it this spring. Most of the plots in that area of the cemetery have been raked and I am hoping to spread the grass seed by March 10th. Hopefully Mother Nature will cooperate and give us the rain that we need this spring to get the new grass to grow.

Over the last couple of weekends we have had several people in the cemetery raking up their adopted plots. The Carson, Long, Gill, Puckett, Webb, Stanley, Carroll/Sappington, Howell, McCarthy, Manders, Robison, Stanley-Clay, Wiley-Fortson, Moore and Rogers Family Plots have all been cleaned and look great. In addition, I have raked the entire section at the lower Braeburn Gate along Braeburn Circle and all of the plots adjoining the meadow at the upper Braeburn Gate. The berm along the curb has been cleaned from Braeburn & Clifton all the way up the hill to Nash Ave and down Nash to the Josephine Ave gate has been raked and the street has been swept. If you have adopted plots at Sylvester, please come in and clean them up now. The leaves are all off the oak trees and we are trying to get the entire cemetery cleaned up by the end of March. This weekend several of us will be working on the North side near Brown Place and in the center of the cemetery cleaning up plots including the McWilliams, Palmer, Clay, Baggett, Smith, Terry & Brown Plots.

We have lots of new maintenance projects planned for 2008 which I will expand on next month. I want to personally thank all of the neighbors and lot owners for their kind words of encouragement, their financial support and their help in getting Sylvester Cemetery cleaned up this spring. I hope to see lots of people in the cemetery helping us to finish up in the next few weeks.

Jerry Semprevio
February 22, 2008

Winter News

There are new projects underway at Sylvester Cemetery this month. The warm, spring-like weather has brought most of the leaves down and we are beginning the arduous task of raking and bagging up leaves from the plots. I have raked along Nash Ave. and started the Terry Plots bordering the meadow on Braeburn Circle. I think they are looking pretty good. I need family members and those neighbors who have adopted plots to set aside a couple of hours in the next few weeks to rake and bag the leaves off their plots. It took me about 90 minutes to rake two 20'x30' plots and bag the leaves. It is not that hard to do since almost all of the grave plots in the cemetery have been weed whacked and are ready for raking. Please use paper lawn & leaf recyclable bags available at Kroger, Home Depot, Lowe's, Ace Hardware, etc for the leaves. They need to be taken to the nearest curb for county pickup but, if you can't drag the leaf bags out, leave them next to your plot and we will remove them with the wheeled dolly.

On Saturday, December 8th we started Phase 2 of our stump removal project. We rented a Honda Stump Grinder from the Decatur Home Depot. Wow...what a great machine this is! Dennis has been cutting the trees and stumps in the walkways and driveways for the last couple of years with a chainsaw. Additionally, we have been digging out as many small stumps and roots as we can get out. The stump grinder is taking care of the rest of the stumps and works like a charm on mimosa (a.k.a. smoke tree) stumps, which are the worst to deal with. Mimosa is very hard wood and the roots run along under the surface of the ground and resprout into new trees. I spend 50% of my time using the brush hog and weed whackers to cut these sprouting trees, ilex, privet and other invasive species. Getting rid of the stumps and roots will reduce the amount of time I have to spend running the weed whackers which frees me up to work on other maintenance and restoration projects.

I have started grinding stumps in the "Upper Meadow" adjacent to the Rogers , Smith, DeLoach, Thurman, Terry, Carr, Akers and McKee plots. In four hours, I was able to grind over fifty stumps with diameters up to ten inches. That is phenomenal progress considering the time that it takes to manually dig the stumps out with a pick and shovel. In the spring we intend on spreading some new topsoil and reseeding this area with a drought tolerant rye-grass mixture.

With the Christmas Holiday coming up in less than two weeks, we encourage families to place wreaths, poinsettia plants, seasonal silk flower arrangements and Christmas bows on the gravestones. Some of you have already raked and placed flowers...thank you, they look great. It is important to keep the cemetery clean and tidy so that potential trash dumpers do not resume the old-time tradition of dumping at Sylvester Cemetery. And decorating graves shows these people and others in the neighborhood that we care about the appearance of the cemetery.

Along the same line, I have located a metal shop that is producing replicas of the "Southern Cross of Honor" medallions that were placed on the graves of Civil War Veterans after 1865. The cost is about $25 each and we are considering ordering some and staking them next to the headstones of our veterans. If your ancestor was a Civil War Veteran and you are interested in covering the cost of placing a medallion on his grave, please email me or give me a call and I will take care of ordering it.

We had another burial at Sylvester on December 3rd. Edna L. Brown Pittman Austin passed away on December 1, 2007 at the age of 99 years. Obituary -

Edna Brown Pittman Austin

Edna Brown Pittman Austin, age 99, of Decatur passed away on December 1, 2007. She was a native of Atlanta. Her first husband Bernaird Donzell Pittman died in 1957. Twenty years later she married the late Henry G. Austin. They were together until his death in July 2001. She retired from Firemans Fund Insurance Company in 1972. She was preceded in death by her daughter, Martha Pittman Eidson and son, Boyce Pittman both of Decatur. Surviving are her daughter, Lynda Twilley; grandchildren, Deborah Eidson and Grier Eidson of Decatur, Sharon Pittman Powell, and husband Steve of Nashville, TN, and Sonja Pittman Roberts and husband Ken; great-grandchildren, Leigh and Taylor Powell, Kinsey, Rebecca and Daniel Roberts; niece Carolyn (Mrs. Jack) Henderson and family of Carrollton, GA; and extended family Carolyn Kidd, Roni Hamilton, and David Austin. A member of Avondale Church of Christ in Decatur, she loved the Lord. Her family and friends take joy in knowing she has gone to be with Him in her heavenly home. Living a long life she was an inspiration to many. Funeral services will be held Monday, December 3rd at one o'clock with Minister Jimmy Miller officiating at A. S. Turner & Sons, 2773 North Decatur Road, Decatur, GA 404-292-1551. Interment will follow at Sylvester Cemetery, Clifton Rd., SE, Atlanta. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Sylvester Cemetery Foundation, P. O. Box 17555, Atlanta, GA 30316. The family would like to thank Briarcliff Haven Health and Rehab Center and Compassionate Care Hospice in Atlanta for the care they provided.

Mrs. Austin was the mother of Lynda Twilley, who was my predecessor as Recording Secretary on the Sylvester Cemetery Foundation board of directors. She has been a good friend and tireless supporter of our efforts to clean up and maintain Sylvester and we all offer our sincere condolences to Lynda and her family.

In a final note, the officers of the Sylvester Cemetery Foundation want to wish our neighbors, friends, family and volunteers a very Merry Christmas and Happy & Healthy New Year. And thanks to everyone that has made a tax-deductible donation to Sylvester Cemetery during 2007. Your financial support and the time that you spend at the weekend clean ups are vital to keep Sylvester maintained so that we can provide a safe and clean environment for families to visit in East Atlanta.

Jerry Semprevio
Recording Secretary
December 14, 2007

Autumn News

The hot dry summer has given way to the cool, sunny days of autumn at Sylvester Cemetery. The leaves are falling out of the trees and we are starting the arduous process of raking and bagging them for removal from the cemetery. We lost about forty trees to the drought (so far) and have cut and removed most of them from the property. When the drought finally breaks and the winter rains begin, we feel that the infrastructure of the cemetery will have come through 2007 in pretty good shape.

Dennis worked very hard this summer to remove stumps from the roadways and walkways throughout the cemetery. The larger stumps that could not be dug out will be removed using a stump-grinder over the next month or two. I would love to report that all of the stumps have been removed from Sylvester’s roadways but some remain because they are too large for us to address or are too close to walls or headstones to safely remove them. Stump removal will continue as an on-going project for another year, at least.

The cemetery board approved the expenditure for several tons of “drop & run” crushed stone in the driveway just inside the Nash Ave. gate and on the west side of the hill from the Smith to Lanier Plots. We have had a considerable amount of erosion in past years in those two locations of this main roadway. Hopefully, the new gravel will bond to the roadway surface and make driving a bit easier into the cemetery from the Nash Ave. entrance.

If you have plots at Sylvester Cemetery, please plan to rake and bag the leaves off them over the next month. I will send notices to the people in the Adopt-A-Plot program and remind them again before Christmas. Please remember that Sylvester is not a "Perpetual Care" cemetery and it is the responsibility of each family to clean and maintain their plots in good order. We keep the plots cleared of brush and vines but everyone needs to rake and bag leaves off the grave plots. If you need paper bags to accomodate your leaves, please call Dennis at 404-381-0243 or look for one of the board members at the cemetery in the afternoon any weekend.

As many of you know, the State of Georgia (in partnership with the Genealogical Society of Utah) just made death certificates available on-line for viewing and download for the period from 1919 till 1927. We have copied all death certificates for people buried at Sylvester Cemetery for our archives. If you do not have the death certificate for a family member who died during that time period, you may go on-line at http://content.sos.state.ga.us/cdm4/gadeaths.php and download a free copy of the original scanned document. If you do not have computer access or a printer available, you may contact us from the phone numbers on the Sylvester Cemetery website.

If final news, Dennis and Jerry recently attended a conference in Augusta, GA sponsored by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources - Historic Preservation Division to network with cemetery representatives, genealogy researchers and restoration & preservation experts from across the Southeast. Presentations were made highlighting the successes and mutual problems of Southern Cemeteries in our region. We also toured two historic cemeteries in Augusta (Magnolia Cemetery and Cedar Grove Cemetery) and visited the old burial grounds at St. Paul's Church in downtown Augusta near the original site of Fort Augusta. We brought back lots of ideas for future projects at Sylvester Cemetery and learned one thing from our fellow cemetery enthusiasts...it only takes money and determination to bring abandoned grave yards back to life as vital greenspace in our communities.

I hope to be able to talk with some of you over the holidays if you come to visit, clean up and decorate your family plots.

Jerry Semprevio
Recording Secretary

July – August – September News

I don’t have to tell anyone that lives in the Southeast that it has been an awfully hot, dry summer. We continued to mow, trim, cut and remove dead trees, dig out stumps, fill sink holes, rake and bag leaves and pick up litter along the public roadways surrounding Sylvester Cemetery. I think we must have consumed more bottled water, Gatorade, fruit and trail-mix bars during the last three months than over the last three years. Dehydration was the single biggest problem this summer for anyone that was working outside in Georgia. Of course, we had the usual running battle with ground bees, poison ivy & oak, fire ants and privet but, again, that is a part of trying to maintain property in this region of the U.S. I was hoping that I could say that the Drought of 2007 is over and all is well with the world. But again, anyone living in the Atlanta Metro Area knows that we are still in serious drought and dealing with an outdoor watering ban that has taken 20-30 trees, over a dozen azalea bushes, several rhododendrons, holly bushes and other specimen plants in the cemetery. The ground is dry as a bone and our newly planted grass at the Braeburn Ave gate has withered up and died. We try to keep up with selective watering using buckets but it seems to be a losing battle.

The summer drought has also caused the premature drop of leaves from most of the trees at Sylvester. It sometimes looks like mid-fall with all the dead leaves blowing around…and that was in July. But we try to keep our eyes to the horizon and be patient until the fall and winter rains come to Georgia. The toll in dollars and lost effort has been devastating but we’ll start again in the spring and hope we don’t have another summer like this year’s record heat and lack of rain.

In other news, we have received a lot of positive feedback about the new cemetery plat maps and the database. I am making revisions and additions to the database and will get them to Ron Rutledge in early October so if you see any errors or omissions in your family’s entries, please send me an email.

We want to extend our condolences to the family of Mary O’Dell Whitfield who passed away in early September and was buried in the family plot at Sylvester.

Finally, Dennis, Mary and I attended the 60th Anniversary Celebration for the Dekalb County (GA) History Center on September 18th which was held in the ballroom on the second floor of the Old County Courthouse on the square in Decatur. It was quite an elegant catered affair with several featured speakers. Dekalb County CEO Vernon Jones gave an eloquent speech stressing the importance of preserving the history of our area and used the volunteer effort to clean and maintain old cemeteries (like Sylvester) as an example of what is being done in Dekalb County. We can all be very proud of what we have accomplished in the last five years and be positive about the future of Sylvester Cemetery. Pray for rain and I'll see you in the cemetery.