Early Flat Rock Historic Cemetery ArcGIS map produced by GSU around 2010
Flat Rock Historic Cemetery (last burials 1959)
Around 2008, Flat Rock Archive Board Inc. reached out to the Greater Atlanta Archaeological Society and Professor Jeffery Glover of Georgia State University's Anthropology Department to ask for help preserving the Flat Rock community and historic African-American cemetery.
Dr. Glover and his students have provided countless hours to the Flat Rock Archive through the development of the Flat Rock Cemetery Project. The initial goal of this project was to use community archaeology as a way for descendants, and the broader public, to engage in the community's past through an online interactive cemetery.
The GSU project team is entering the final stages of producing an interactive map that uses modern archaeological methods and geospatial technologies to link Flat Rock Archive's written and oral records to an interactive cemetery map to reach a wide audience through the internet.
The map was created using ArcGIS and will allow the public a bird's eye view of the outline and landscape of the cemetery. The user will be able to click on a grave outline and view the information, when possible, obtained on the individual buried in that location. This information will accompany any gravestone information, artifacts, and grave goods associated with each grave.
Several Burial Examples of Interred Individuals within the Historic Cemetery
Headstone Identification of Individual
Carline Wise born about 1855, died April 1, 1905
Identification of Unidentified Field Stone Grave Individual
It is possible to place Hill Lyons in the Flat Rock Historical Cemetery through the use of his Death Certificate, which lists his burial place at 'Flat Rock' on March, 26, 1939.
Identification of Individual through Newspaper Obituary
Through obituary searches in The Atlanta Constitution (1881-2001) database we can place Mary Hudson in the Flat Rock Historic Cemetery. The obituary ran in the newspaper on April 1, 1914.
