Upcoming Savannah Cemetery tour breathes life into notable residents

With Halloween quickly approaching a cemetery tour may seem scary, but there is nothing terrifying about the upcoming living history tours at Savannah Cemetery this month.
The popular event returned last year after a four-year hiatus and this year’s tour is shaping up to be even better thanks to a revised schedule and additional entertainment.
“This year,” explained cemetery tour committee member Lisa Thomas, “there will be seven tours and each tour will begin at the start of each hour, rather than in 30 minute increments like we did last year.
“Participants will also have the option to view a movie about the cemetery’s history and some of its better known residents prior to their scheduled tour time.”
This year’s event is on Saturday, Oct. 19. The first tour starts at 2 p.m.
“Tickets are on sale now and groups are limited to 30 people, so its best to buy them early to get your preferred time slot,” Thomas recommends.
Tickets can be purchased at Tennessee River Museum, 495 Main St., or online at hardin-county-convention-and-visitors-bureau.square.site.
Attendees should arrive at the Historic Savannah Theater, 75 Court St., 15 minutes before their tour time.
“Tour members will be transported from the theater to Savannah cemetery and back, but participants will want to wear their good walking shoes because the cemetery tour will be by foot. Attendees will walk through the cemetery, beginning in the southwest corner and ending on the opposite side of the burial grounds,” Thomas said.
Local actors will be portraying the following people buried at Savannah Cemetery:
•Perry Eugene Barker, who died aboard the USS Saratoga at Iwo Jima during World War II,
•Sarah Robinson Cherry, whose father David Robinson built Cherry Mansion and gave it to his daughter as a wedding present,
•Thomas Harden Paine, who served as the state’s Director of Instruction and Commissioner of Agriculture,
•Fannie Freeman Paulk, who was Hardin County’s first and only female sheriff,
•Don Price, a star high school athlete who drowned at Pickwick,
• Thomas and Virginia Maxwell, who were never in agreement with the world in general,
•Elizabeth Walker McKelvey, who died in childbirth, and
•Ella Parkhill Srygley, whose firstborn child’s death left her heartbroken.
For more information, or to contact a committee member, visit the tour’s Facebook page, “Savannah Cemetery Tour.”