By Bonaventure Historical Society
Learn about one of the most famous Victorian cemeteries in the world and its inhabitants. Each stop has photos and a narration by a local Savannah resident. Your fee goes directly to support the preservation efforts of this treasure by the Bonaventure Historical Society.
It’s a lot cheaper than a tour and had great information and fun facts that many of the other tours I’ve been on never mentioned. The person that mentioned it was narrow minded clearly didn’t go to the Jewish ones on the map because they were ones on there. “It’s rich white people” I don’t see how the tour guides could help that and the cemetery started from a group of rich white families in the 1800s, I’m not sure what diversity you expected to see. Anyways, I really enjoyed the different voices that told the stories as well. It’s not super accurate on the map locations but the voices tell you where to go next and with the names on all the plots it’s impossible not to find and gave us a game to find the next one so it wasn’t that difficult, people complaining are being a little ridiculous it’s not like it has to be there or it won’t play...
We came to the cemetery not knowing what we were looking for. This app navigated us through the cemetery and helped us stop at important places along the way! Loved the pictures and narrations, definitely worth the price!
Overall it’s an OK app, but at $5 it’s a bit overpriced for what it tells you. Also, why is the app solely focused on the rich white men from the civil war and earlier? There’s clearly a lot more in the cemetery, so it’s weird to focus so narrowly. For instance, what’s up with the Jewish cemetery? Could be interesting to talk about more. Finally, and I know that the south does tend to have a... different... interpretation of the civil war, but to tell the story of an enslaved man taking actions to fight agains “northern oppression” is honestly insane. Like, I know you don’t want to focus on the atrocities of slavery, but if you’re gonna talk about it, don’t gloss over it like it was no big deal. And, if you’re going to talk about slavery, definitely don’t pick a story of a man who helped his enslaver as though he was a hero fighting for liberty, when he had no liberty himself.
Although the app was a little clunky to use, it was informative and we found our way around to all the grave plots without too much difficulty. We found the maps helpful and accurate. The pictures of the grave plots were especially helpful to make sure we found our way around. Although we are southerners ourselves, we found the narrators to be entertaining, informative, and we really enjoyed the different southern drawls!
We did not have the same navigation issue as another reviewer stated they had. Once we enabled gps for this app it was very accurate as we drove and walked. Very enjoyable and worth the small cost!
The app provided a wonderful way to learn about the many people buried at Bonaventure and the history of the cemetery. The stories were interesting and a nice way to learn.
With robust technology available today the interactive map. Should have been so much more.. The map provided you with your location, but when you clicked on what you were near, nothing happened. If someone had taken the time to have your location overlaid it would have been great. With an overlaid map of the graveyard, things would have been much better, and easier to find.
If you’re ever able to navigate to a plot with a narrative, then the app is great. However, that proved practically impossible. The map is not accurate with road locations, or even road names. The plots are designated in alphabetical sections and then by number in the section, but there are no sections referenced on the map. The auto notification is only correct about half the time, I.e. sometimes it pops up when you’re close but not always. The map does not show your GPS location as you move, so you’re not able to use that to narrow down your location either.