Respecting the dead
– New monument placed at McClellan Cemetery

Retired archeologist Jennings Bunn sitting with the newly donated monument from Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens in Lake City. - Photo: Submitted

By Tami Stevenson

Wellborn, Fla., – McClellan Cemetery, in Wellborn, has a new marker placed just outside of its boundary on a neighboring property. Although, from the photo, one can see a chain link fence behind the stone, the land marker for the neighboring property owner sits approximately six feet into the fence around the cemetery.

Jennings Bunn, a retired archeologist who moved to Suwannee County in 2009, has been working to dig up facts concerning the McClellan plantation slaves. The McClellan Cemetery has never been documented with the State of Florida, Bunn said, according to the director of the North Central and Northwest region of the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN) Barbara Clark.

Bunn said locating the graves would be difficult as many markers were probably wooden. After nearly 200 years, they would be mostly deteriorated. He spoke with a lifelong resident of Wellborn recently, that said they remembered many years ago, finding some of the old grave markers while walking through the woods there, but said they could not find it today. Some say it is located somewhere south-west of the main cemetery.

According to “A Brief History of Suwannee County” compiled by Eric Musgrove on suwcounty.org, George E. McClellan owned a large plantation near Wellborn. The article states that in 1838, a constitutional convention was called in the territory of Florida for the purpose of drawing up a constitution in preparation for Florida’s admission into the Union as a state. Among the fifty-six men that attended the convention in Port St. Joe was George E. McClellan, who delivered the keynote address to the Constitutional Convention. McClellan was an early settler who had a large plantation and home near what is now Wellborn. He also organized the first militia in the area to fight in the Seminole Indian Wars. Later, he was probate judge from 1841-1845 (while Suwannee County was a part of Columbia County) and afterwards served as representative in the Florida Legislature. In the Civil War, he was a captain in the Confederate Army.

The stone monument was donated by Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens in Lake City. It reads: In Memory of McClellan Plantation Slaves Buried Here 1825-1865.

Bunn added that many slave owners thought well of their people. “Everybody didn’t hate their black people that worked for them, they were like family to many.”

Bunn also has worked to maintain the neighboring Houston Cemetery for the last nine years. He said he does it of his own volition.

“I have no one buried there. For me, it is just showing respect.”

L-R: James Davis and Eddie Bradley insatlled the monument donated by Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens. Davis has worked for the company for more than 30 years. -Photo: Submitted