Cleanup after vandals destroy plots at historic cemetery

PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. - Someone vandalized an historic cemetery in Peachtree City this week and police want to find out who did it. The vandal desecrated plots as old as a Revolutionary War soldier.

Police said they found tombstones toppled, some centuries old, cracked into big granite shards at the Brown Family Cemetery off Dividend Drive. Some of the memorials stood broken in half.

Since the 1700s, the Brown family buried its dead in what one epitaph from the 1800s described as "sweet rest."

"There was an elderly family leaving the cemetery that had family buried here and they were just devastated," said resident Kevin Snyder

Snyder, a local attorney and Scout Master with troop 175, said this is one of several old cemeteries his guys look after as part of a service project, but the graveyard now crime scene.

So great is the community outrage that many will be joining the scouts this weekend to begin not just a massive cleanup, but a restoration as well.

"You are heartbroken that this could happen in your community but the response has been overwhelming," Snyder said.

Dozens of the markers were either pushed over or smashed in what appears to be a premeditated attack.

Peachtree City police are asking for the public's help in identifying the grave wreckers.

The cleanup with the Boy Scouts begins at 9 a.m. on Saturday.