MANATEE BURYING GROUND – Wondering what to do with your family on Halloween that won’t require handling communal candy during a pandemic?
Take an interesting online historical Tombstone Tour of the 1850 Manatee Burying Ground at the Manatee Village Historical Park on YouTube.
The cemetery was established when the village of Manatee’s first settlers, Josiah and Mary Gates, donated the land. The couple arrived in 1842, the first settlers in Manatee. They also established the Gates hotel and donated land for first courthouse, built in 1860, which is in the Manatee Village Historical Park next to the cemetery.
You’ll see the grave of Ezekiel Glazier, the carpenter who built the 1860 courthouse for $500, and the first grave in the cemetery, that of Henry S. Clark, who died in 1850.
One woman buried in the cemetery had sons in both armies during the Civil War. Both Confederate and Union soldiers are buried there, including John Cooper Pelot, chairman of the 1861 secession convention during which it was decided that Florida would join the Confederacy.
Moss-draped oaks dot the cemetery and its marble and zinc headstones, some surrounded by iron fences to keep out free-range cattle, once allowed to wander freely in Manatee.
Click the tombstone below to visit the cemetery.
Happy Halloween!
