It became a city park in 1896,[2] 43 years after burials in the cemetery ceased,[3] and is open to visitors.

The cemetery was established in 1750, when Savannah was the capital of the British Province of Georgia, last of the Thirteen Colonies.

[4] The cemetery was closed to burials in 1853,[1] some eight years before the start of the American Civil War, so no Confederate soldiers are interred there.

The remains of major general Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) reposed in the cemetery's Graham vault between 1786 and 1901, at which point they were reinterred in Johnson Square, along with the remains of his eldest son, George.

His remains had shared the vault with those of John Maitland, his arch-rival in the Revolutionary War.