Bonaventure Don

Want to visit Daufuskie while you're in Savannah? Here's your chance! Good people, tell them Bon Don sent you.

FLASH SALE! THIS SATURDAY AUGUST 24TH ONLY!

You and up to 5 of your friends can spend a day on Daufuskie Island by boat for only $300. Golf cart special pricing on the island is in effect as well.

Boat fare round trip as low as $50 per person! Deparing Savannah Boathouse at 9am. Arriving Daufuskie Island Daufuskie Island, South Carolina County Dock at 9:30. Pickup for return at 4pm. Arriving Savannah Boathouse at 4:30 pm.
Don't let summer slip away without squeezing the last bit of fun out of it!

First call to 912 657-5222 gets this booking!

This is happening here, be aware of who you book your tours through.

I’m an hour late but happy Light House day! Here’s a shot of the Cockspur lighthouse I took a few years ago.

One of the last magnolia flowers of the year.

Busy day in the cemetery

Some sad news from Laurel Grove Cemetery South. A giant Live Oak fell and damaged several graves. It's hard to tell how many are broken, but there's a giant pile of limbs now where there should be monuments.

Laurel Grove South is the resting place of many of Savannah's early Black religious leaders and notable figures from the Civil Rights era, including Savannah's W.W. Law. I'll add a link to more info on Law in the first comment. To be clear, Law's monument was not damaged.

On most of my tours I tell people that during new Moons and full Moons, the tides can sometimes cover the marsh. This photo is from two days ago, when we had a new Moon.

That's Tybee, and you can see Fort Pulaski at the bottom left.

Our little slice of heaven....
(hightide)

📸 by Kiki Greenwood

Y’all smell this magnolia!

I didn’t get a chance to see this eclipse but here’s a throwback to 2017, when my son and I saw it from Lake Santee in South Carolina.

The Adler monument. Photo by my buddy, Bonnie

I live in a beautiful city!

Bonaventure, fact versus fiction.

Wymberly Jones DeRenne.

DeRenne was a descendant of Noble Jones, who arrived with Oglethorpe on the first ship from England.

When DeRenne died he had a huge library of books, largely on Georgia history, possibly as many as a hundred thousand volumes. In his will, he left them all to the University of Georgia and the Georgia Historical Society, where they can still be read today.

If you’ve taken a Bonaventure tour and your guide told you that DeRenne was buried with his library, then I suggest you take a different tour. It doesn’t have to be mine, most of the tours in Bonaventure are excellent. Unfortunately, some are largely fiction. There are books written about all of these people and there is no excuse to make things up.

The camellias are at their peak and the azaleas are just now starting. Spring has sprung in Bonaventure Cemetery!

If you've taken my tour, you know that, in my intro, I talk about how Bonaventure was a plantation, and it was owned by families named Mullryne and Tattnall. For the sake of time, I give the bare bones of their involvement, and kind of yada yada through the Tattnall's history.

Well, tomorrow I'll make up for that. I'm giving a talk on the family at two pm to anyone crazy enough to show up. We'll meet in the Jewish temple, located in the middle of the cemetery, and it's $10 for non-members. But, membership in the BHS is only $20, so you may as well join while you're there.

Bon Don and the BHS got some great press last week. I had no idea until a friend sent me a link. Y'all check it out.

Hometown Tourist: Hunt history, not ghosts, at Bonaventure Cemetery If you’re penny-pinching and looking for a low-cost, high-quality local experience, a history tour with the Bonaventure Historical Society might be exactly what your budget and brain need.

This popped up in today’s memories. Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta

My buddy Bonnie at Bonnie Blue Tours puts together a monthly event calendar that is worthy of your time. Y'all go check it out:

Festivals/Events — Daily & Private Walking Tours of Savannah I keep this calendar updated with news of local events such as plays, live music, film screenings, and annual festivals. Take a look at my Facebook as well for last-minute notices.

It’s been almost 30 years since Sylvia Shaw Judson’s bronze sculpture Bird Girl first appeared in Jack Leigh’s iconic cover photograph for John Berendt’s best-selling book 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.' When he took the image at Bonaventure Cemetery in 1993, even Leigh didn’t know the name of the artist of this work that would spawn a devotional following that is still going strong in 2023. ⁣
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Although Bird Girl will forever be associated with Bonaventure because of 'Midnight in the Garden of Evil,' it was not originally intended for a cemetery. The location wasn’t a complete stretch, however. Bonaventure was created as a garden cemetery, and Bird Girl was originally designed as a garden sculpture. In 1846, Peter Wiltberger purchased Bonaventure, which had been established as a plantation in the 1760s, to develop as a public cemetery when the rural or garden cemetery movement was emerging in the United States. With its beautiful setting overlooking the Wilmington River and avenues of live oaks, Bonaventure represented a new type of graveyard that also functioned as a public park. Following the Civil War, Savannahians increasingly bought lots at Bonaventure, adding funerary monuments by makers in Savannah, the northeast, and Italy. ⁣
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Visit the Bird Girl at the Telfair Academy in the exhibition, 'Before Midnight: Boneventure and the Bird Girl.'⁣
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https://www.telfair.org/exhibitions/before-midnight-bonaventure-and-the-bird-girl/⁣
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Rest in peace, Sonny Seiler. This town will miss you.

We have a bit of a mess in the cemetery this morning. Someone drove through the Bonaventure Cemetery sign, destroying it, then continued on through the Jewish gate, severely damaging it too. The driver then ran away. No news on any arrests yet. Photos kindly provided by Cheri Glowaki.