This dataset and the visualizations below are limited and highly flawed. It is based only on the cemetery's marked graves. Approximately 3,500 men, women, and children were interred in Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery over the course of its one-hundred-year plus history, but this dataset only notes 457 marked graves (gravestones or legible metal funeral home markers). First, the dataset is small. Second, it is not representative. Many families did not have the means to erect a tombstone and many more metal funeral home markers were shattered or rendered illegible by the elements. Nonetheless, these data visualizations help tell the story of Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery.

Longevity

Life expectancy increased substantially over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the 1880s, 31 was the average age of death. One-hundred years later, in the 1980s, the average age of death had increased to 91 years of age -- on average individuals were living 60 years longer! Infant and child mortality rates decreased precipitously. Thanks to vaccines and preventive medicine, parents watched their sons and daughters grow up. In turn, Grandparents, in turn, lived longer and could witness the births of their grandsons and granddaughters.

Burials by Decade

Over the course of its one-hundred-and twenty-one-year history (1882-2000s), approximately 3,500 African Americans were buried in Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery (approximately twenty to twenty-five percent of those were formerly enslaved individuals). Most were interred during the cemetery’s heyday in the 1930s and 1940s and, in those decades, funerals were a common sight in the cemetery.

Gender & Status

Race and gender both influence longevity and health outcomes. Segregation, poverty, physically demanding jobs, limited access to health care, and systemic inequality can and did shorten the life expectancy of many individuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In Athens, Black women lived on average longer than Black men. Interestingly, this dataset also indicates a longer life expectancy for formerly enslaved men and women. This is a product of our flawed data. Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery opened in 1882 and, as a result, this dataset does not fully capture the brutality on slavery and its effects on the body.

Gospel Pilgrim Occupation

Our occupation does not directly predict our demise, but where we work and how we live can, in part, determine how we die. Take for example the southerner farmer: long hours spent out of doors, under the blistering sun, takes a toll on the body; heavy machinery and draft animals can easily maim a man; and chemicals designed to fertilize and enrich the soil poison the lungs and skin. To learn more about historic occupations, visit "Life and Labor." This data, too, is not without it's flaws; in some cases, only one person falls within a category. Laura T.L. Drake, for example, is the only "Cake Embosser" in the dataset; she died at 43 years old and, therefore, the average age of death in this category is also 43.