| Friendship Cemetery is one of the oldest perpetually maintained cemeteries in Mississippi. Established May 30, 1849, on a five-acre parcel of land owned and operated by Union Lodge No. 35 of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the cemetery has its first recorded burial in July 1949. Soon after opening, however, Friendship was the recipient of several graves moved from other cemeteries, which accounts for the 1823 date found on its oldest tombstones (James W. Parker, Friendship Cemetery Tombstone Inscriptions and Burial Records [Columbus, Miss.: Lowndes County Department of Archives and History], pp. iii-iv). It was listed on the National Register on 23 July 1980 and was designated a Mississippi Landmark on 14 December 1989. It is included in "Old Homes of Mississippi, Volume II: Columbus and the North" (1977) (p. 20) |