To her friends and family, she is known as Charlotte Thomas Marshall – but to the Athens public, she is known simply as “The Cemetery Lady.”

Such a name may sound macabre to some, but to the elderly woman, life only makes sense in exploring the lives and deaths (as she calls them, “stories”) of other people.

No, she is not doing academic research or even profiting from her labor, but is rather furthering the preservation of Athens’ history by commemorating the lives of those now buried in the Oconee Hill Cemetery, located on East Campus Road across from Sanford Stadium.

For the larger portion of her life, Marshall’s days have consisted of scouring the archives of the University library, walking tirelessly from headstone to headstone in Oconee Hill Cemetery and then retreating to her house to piece together the gathered information.

In 1971, the first edition of Oconee Hill Cemetery’s earliest history was published, with Marshall cited as an attributing author, as a means to replace the cemetery’s records that were lost in a fire in 1896.

Now, almost 40 years after the release of the original work, she is anxiously awaiting the mid-November release of her annotated version of “Oconee Hill Cemetery of Athens, Georgia, Volume 1,” which profiles more than 3,900 people buried during the period of the cemetery’s 1856 opening and the 1896 fire.

In respect to her extensive research, it comes as no surprise that this first volume is 626 pages long.

Marshall said her obsession spawned from the interest of her husband’s family.

“I guess I married into the love of this cemetery,” she said. “My husband George’s parents and family were always interested [in] Oconee Hill, which led me to really become enamored with it.”

Ever since, she has spent her time journeying through 40 years worth of microfilm of Athens newspapers, using 19th century obituaries and articles as proxies for the burned records and now-deceased people that could have potentially shed light on the cemetery’s earliest and uninscribed graves.

But to Marshall, this challenge brings the satisfaction of accomplishing something worthwhile.

“My work is like putting together a puzzle, which is actually really rewarding when I finish piecing together sections of it,” she said.

So while most elderly people are piecing together 1,000-piece puzzles, Marshall’s puzzle contains 3,900 pieces. In assembling such a complex puzzle, she has become knowledgeable about various facets of life in the 19th century.

Just walking around the cemetery with her inevitably resulted in a history lesson. As she passed the grave of Dr. Edwin D. Newton, she said, “The first women’s garden club was founded by this doctor when he recognized that his women patients were lacking muscle tone because of … not exercising.”

She knows how to identify the oldest parts of the cemetery.

“Whenever you see periwinkle in the forest, you know an old family cemetery is near because it used to be planted to keep the weeds down.”

“Some of the oldest graves contain urns of bones rather than skeletons because graves were excavated to collect the bones after the period of bodily decay in order to make room for new burials, which attracted rats and resulted the Bubonic Plague.”

In addition to her wealth of knowledge on 19th century culture, Marshall has come to know, and even love, the once living that are now buried within Oconee Hill Cemetery. Specifically, she has grown fond of several grave sites and the stories of the people within them. One example is the grave of Alice Townsend Come and her two nameless babies.

“The story of these three is one of love despite their horrible deaths,” Marshall said.

Another gravesite that appeals to her is the one of Norma Marks Morris.

“The beauty and the mystique of her tombstone and story are awe-inspiring and interesting to research,” she said.

The records of those buried within Oconee Hill Cemetery that were once lost in the fire are now mostly restored thanks to Marshall. However, the still-unknown gravestones will likely remain so for what seems to be forever, as 40 years of extensive research has still not shed light on their identities.

For people interested in learning the history of this cemetery but who are not willing to sit down and read through all 626 pages, Marshall occasionally hosts cemetery walks, which offer an abbreviated and spoken version of her research.

In reading her book or in taking her tour, it is evident that the “stories” of the people within the Oconee Hill Cemetery surmount the beauty (or lack thereof) of their grave sites. To Marshall, this can only be so in a town such as Athens because of a certain majestic quality.

“Athens is different from any other town in Georgia in that it has a tolerance for people being different,” she said. “You can come to Athens and be whoever you want to be and people won’t mind – they might shake their heads, but they won’t mind.”

Even in death, the spirits of former generations of Athenians live on most evidently in street names such as Clayton or county names such as Clarke, but also vicariously through Athens’ current residents, as Marshall and I walk and talk on the same plot of land as our predecessors.

Linking Athens’ past to its present has kept Marshall busy for 40 years and will continue to do so for years to come, as she plans to release two more volumes of her book after researching the more modern parts of the cemetery.

While looking down upon the cemetery from a hill, she said, “People might think I’m odd, but isn’t it sad if once you end up in a place like this, you’ve only ever done what someone else wanted you to do and have never gone out of your way to make yourself happy by doing something for yourself?”