Mobile's 1819 Burial Ground and the Boyington Oak
302 Government Street, Mobile, AL 36602
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public cemetery, open during posted hours.
Access
Limited Access
Walled cemetery with grass paths and uneven historic stones
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1819 · Antebellum Cemetery · Mobile History · Boyington Oak · National Register of Historic Places
Church Street Graveyard was established in 1819 by Mobile city ordinance to serve a growing population that had outstripped the small churchyard at the Catholic cathedral. By 1820 it had become the city's principal burial ground for both Catholics and Protestants. The four-acre site occupies a block on Government Street in the city's historic downtown. A brick wall built around 1830 still encloses the grounds.
The cemetery was divided into three sections by religious affiliation: the Northeast quadrant for Catholics, the Southeast quadrant for Protestants, and a third section designated for "Strangers" — those who fit neither category or whose origins were unknown. The graveyard remained in active use through the worst of Mobile's nineteenth-century yellow fever epidemics and closed to new burials in 1898 when the city's larger Magnolia Cemetery had absorbed most municipal interments.
The most-told story at Church Street Graveyard concerns Charles R.S. Boyington, a young printer who came to Mobile from Connecticut in 1833. On May 11, 1834, Boyington was seen entering the cemetery with his friend and roommate Nathaniel Frost. Frost was later found stabbed to death and robbed near the wall. Boyington was arrested, tried with limited evidence, and convicted on February 20, 1835. He maintained his innocence to the gallows, predicting that an oak tree would sprout from his grave as proof. Because his body was considered unfit for the consecrated cemetery, he was buried in the gravekeeper's plot at the very edge of the grounds.
An oak did grow from the unmarked grave. It still stands at the rear of the cemetery, approximately sixty feet tall with branches reaching well past one hundred feet. Two individuals later confessed to the Frost murder on their deathbeds, decades too late for Boyington. The William G. Pomeroy Foundation placed a historic marker at the tree in recent years. The Boyington Oak is now considered one of Mobile's defining historic landmarks.
Sources
Mobile's haunted-history tradition treats the Boyington Oak as the cemetery's central point of paranormal interest. The story holds that Charles Boyington's posthumous proof of innocence, manifested in the tree itself, remains an active presence: whispers reportedly emerge from the canopy above his grave, and visitors describe the impression of someone speaking just below audibility when the wind moves through the leaves. The sound of soft crying has been described by visitors and tour-goers alike, attributed in local tradition to Boyington's continuing protest of his hanging.
Elsewhere in the cemetery, regional ghost tradition references phantom footsteps along the gravel paths, occasional sightings of a figure in nineteenth-century mourning dress near the Protestant section, and a sense of dense atmosphere near the brick wall on hot summer evenings. Yellow fever epidemics in 1819, 1839, 1853, and other years left mass burials in the cemetery; local lore connects the heaviness reported in the eastern quadrant to those interments.
The cemetery is maintained by the City of Mobile. Local ghost-walk operators include it on evening tours; the city itself does not promote paranormal content.
Notable Entities
Walk the four-acre walled cemetery, divided historically into Catholic, Protestant, and "Strangers" sections. At the rear of the grounds stands the Boyington Oak, a tree that sprouted from the grave of Charles Boyington after his 1835 hanging for a murder he denied to the gallows.
Several Mobile tour operators include Church Street Graveyard and the Boyington Oak on evening walking tours that begin in the downtown historic district. Tour content covers the 1819 cemetery, the Boyington case, and Mobile's nineteenth-century yellow fever epidemics.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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