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Local historian Chris Worick examines some mysterious stone letters found recently in Dahlonega’s Mount Hope Cemetery. -
Bostwick Hall once sat on the campus of North Georgia College.
When a heavy chunk of marble with the letters “WI” chiseled on it caught the eye of cemetery committee chairman Chris Worick several years ago, he thought it might be an old plot marker laid to distinguish the area of land of a particular family.
“I thought it might be a family beginning with the letter W,” said Worick. “Or maybe a capital ‘I’ if it was turned on its side.”
But after a little help from Appalachian Studies Center students at the University of North Georgia in the spring 2022 semester, it became clear that this rock was part of a bigger puzzle.
After more searching, Worick found additional letters.
“All the pieces were found in this one area near the road,” he said, pointing out the paved path at the entrance to Mount Hope.
The unusual color of some of the stones is due to the fact that the white marble was weathered more on the darker colored ones that sat upward facing over the decades.
The letters now appear to spell out part of a large sign that once stood on the college’s Bostwick Hall—named after a gold mine land investor from New York who donated land to the college, he said.
This building was one of the only structures, other than Price Memorial, on the campus around the turn of the century, other than living quarters. It was once built on the site where Young Hall is today.
This building allowed space for the college president’s office, the library, space for studying, and other rooms.
“In 1915 it was torn down after a few years of sitting unused after the 1912 fire that mostly destroyed it,” Worick said. “The fire was blamed on faulty wiring.”
Now the marble letters are scattered on the ground in the cemetery and Worick hopes the missing ones are still close by.
“We are missing the C, K, L and the space between words,” he said.
The question is, according to Worick, when did these letters come to the cemetery and why, and how?
Worick said he thinks the stone could have been used as grave markers.
“But also, the letters could have been moved there as a kind of ceremonial burial of Bostwick Hall,” he added.
NEXT MOVE
Worick said this fall he hopes to return to the site with more Appalachian Studies Center students to look for the remainder of the letters.
He said that with the 150th anniversary of the university coming up, there could be potential for the letters to be displayed.
In order to find the others, Worick believes they may be able to use long metal poles to search for the buried letters, especially after a good ground-softening rain.