Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domain1820s Georgia Valley Cemetery with a Grieving Child's Grave
1795 Hwy 17, Sautee Nacoochee, GA 30571
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Public cemetery adjacent to active church; free to visit
Access
Limited Access
Uneven ground; older sections of cemetery have settled and irregular surfaces
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1822 · Early Georgia Mountain Settlement · Methodist Church History · Slave Cemetery and Memorial · Cherokee Territory
The Nacoochee Methodist Church occupies a site in the Sautee-Nacoochee Valley where a Methodist church has stood since the early 1820s, making it one of the earliest established religious communities in the Georgia mountains. The valley itself had been Cherokee territory before the Federal government's removal policies of the 1830s.
In 1836, Major Edward Williams deeded six acres to the Methodist Episcopal Church for use as the church site and burial ground, at the death of his wife — a formal land transfer that gives the cemetery a legal founding date even as the informal use of the site preceded it.
The cemetery has been maintained over nearly two centuries and now contains over 700 identified graves. The Nacoochee Remembrance Garden, opened in 2012, provides a designated space for the scattering of ashes in the oldest section. The cemetery's records reflect the full stratified social order of 19th-century North Georgia: the graves of early white settlers, their families, and the enslaved people who worked their land. The 1992 Onesimus Monument was installed near the slave graves as a joint project of the Bean Creek Baptist Church and the Nacoochee Methodist Church, honoring those buried in unknown or unmarked locations.
The historical marker on the property, maintained by the Georgia Historical Society, records the church's founding and its connection to the valley's earliest settlement.
Sources
The grave itself is the most tangible element of the legend: a small structure built over a child's burial — not a full-size monument, but something more domestic and more specific, built to keep the rain off. The father who built it had a practical motivation, or a grief that expressed itself practically, and the structure has remained as a permanent record of that act.
The legend adds two darker elements. The man who killed the girl was hanged on the church property, the accounts say — a proximity of execution and burial that would have been visible to anyone at the cemetery, the condemned man's end and the child's grave within sight of each other. Whether this reflects a historical reality or an elaboration of the account over time is not established in available sources.
Visitors who stand at the grave have reported hearing what they describe as the crying of a child. The sound is described as soft and recurring rather than startling — present, then absent, with the quality of something very far away.
The cemetery beside Nacoochee Methodist Church has been in continuous use since the 1820s and contains over 700 identified graves, including the oldest graves of the valley's white settlers and a slave cemetery with a 1992 memorial monument. The grave of a young girl, marked by a small dollhouse-like structure her father built to shelter it from the rain, is the focal point of the haunting legend.
Some links on this page may earn HauntBound a small commission when you book, at no extra cost to you. Our editorial picks are independent. Full disclosure
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Free Guide
11 verified stops, rated for families, mapped in order. Free.
One email to confirm, then the guide link. Unsubscribe anytime.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPBelvidere, IL
Bloods Point Cemetery was established in 1836 in Flora Township, Boone County, taking its name from Arthur Blood, an 1830s settler and the first European-American resident of the region. The cemetery serves as a burial ground for over two centuries of local residents.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPHemlock, MI
Richland Lutheran Cemetery is located in Richfield Township, Saginaw County, on Dice Road approximately a quarter mile east of Hemlock Road. The cemetery records 953 burials and dates to the 19th century. The broader Dice Road corridor gained regional notoriety in the 1970s through documented paranormal investigation of a nearby farmhouse.
Los Angeles, CA
Hollywood Forever Cemetery is a 62-acre cemetery at 6000 Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, California, founded in 1899 as Hollywood Cemetery on a 100-acre tract of former farmland. Paramount Pictures' studios occupy 40 acres of the original cemetery property. The cemetery was renamed Hollywood Memorial Park in 1939 and Hollywood Forever in 1998 after a 1990s bankruptcy and revival. The property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.