In an article published in the Tri-County Advertiser on Oct. 27, 1927, Mrs. J.T. Pittard recorded her observations after a stroll through the Old Clarkesville Cemetery. We invite you to join us as we build on Mrs. Pittard’s details to expand what we know about “Who’s Who” in the Old Clarkesville Cemetery.
Special thanks to retired English professor, genealogist and writer David L. Greene of White County for his research in locating the article and the family connection that Mrs. J.T. Pittard has to one of the early Clarkesville families.
According to Greene, Mrs. J.T. Pittard was Georgia Erwin McMillan, born on Sept. 26, 1870 in Clarkesville, daughter of Garnett McMillan and his wife, Julia Wales Erwin.
Georgia McMillan married, as his second wife, John Thomas Pittard on Dec. 23, 1902, in Oglethorpe County, Georgia.
She died on June 13, 1936 in Winterville, Georgia and is buried in Winterville Cemetery. Her husband, John Thomas Pittard, Sr., died on May 19, 1935 and is buried in the same cemetery. She seems to have had only two children, John Thomas Pittard, Jr., born and died in 1899 and Lois Catherine Pittard, born in 1908.
“…There are many more, both white and colored. I have written entirely from memory of and it has been thirty-one years since I have made Clarkesville my home, so this record is incomplete, but if it helps preserve the memory of the earlier days of Clarkesville, and is in any way influential in emphasizing the sacredness of the little God’s acre where sleep our early citizens, it will have accomplished its purposes. Perhaps another hand will take up the pen where I have laid it down.” – Mrs. J.T. Pittard
Old Clarkesville Cemetery 