Dr. Hope Hull Tigner was born near Athens, Georgia on May 28, 1792, and became a physician and state legislator prior to moving his family to Meriwether County. In 1833 a frame house with green blinds was built across the road from the present Union Cemetery between Durand and Stovall. The house, which is no longer standing, was called "The White House" by stage passengers for many years. When Dr. Tigner died in 1837, at the age of 45, he was the first to be buried on a knoll across from his home which later became the Union (Tigner-Ogletree) Cemetery. The story has been told that before his death, Dr. Tigner requested his friend, Rev. Philemon Ogletree, a Methodist minister, to look after his wife. Rev. Ogletree took the request seriously, and while walking the widow Tigner back to the house after the funeral, told her of the promise he had made. Marrying her was the best way he knew how to take care of her so, after an appropriate time of mourning, the Rev. Ogletree and the widow Tigner were married. They had one child, James Fletcher. The Rev. Philemon Ogletree died in 1861, following his wife's death in 1857.
Both are buried in Union Cemetery . In 1896 James Fletcher Ogletree deeded the knoll of land, where Dr. Tigner, Rev. Ogletree, and Eliza Tigner Ogletree are buried, in the Union Cemetery Association. For many
years, the cemetery created by that deed was known as the Union-Ogletree-Tigner Cemetery. Over the years many descendents of the Tigner and Ogletree families, as well as members of other families living in the area were buried here. The Union Cemetery is currently administered by the Union Cemetery Foundation as a non-profit organization.
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