In
1820, James M. Crowley moved to what is now DeKalb County, Georgia. He
bought 500 acres of land before dying in 1828. His family buried him on a
hillside on his own property. His descendants would later join him in
what became the family cemetery.
The cemetery is still there at the insistence of the family, though it is now surrounded on all sides by a Walmart parking lot.
Atlas Obscura describes his unusual mausoleum:
As
time passed, the Crowley estate was slowly parceled off with the
remaining portion remaining in the possession of a family relation or
descendant of James Crowley. Finally in the 1960s a huge portion of the
land was sold to make way for the new Avondale Mall. The only problem
was that this included the hilltop family plot. However the builders
agreed to leave the graves untouched and the mall construction got
underway. As the ground was flattened to a straight grade to make room
for a parking lot, the construction ended up shaving down around 12 feet
of land, leaving the bodies at the top of the hill high and dry.
However, good as their word, the Crowley Mausoleum was constructed which
surrounded the burial site, essentially leaving the bodies interred on
the roof. The building holds 13 graves on its flagstone covered roof. 11
of them are buried in unmarked stone box graves and two of them have
headstones. From the ground, the mausoleum shows little indication of
its true nature.
You can see
more pictures of the graveyard at the International Black Sheep Society of Geneaologists.
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