Congressmen Buried in Evergreen

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Historical Marker #2311 in Southgate is dedicated to the notable political figures buried at Evergreen Cemetery. Prominent politicians interned at the cemetery include John Wooleston Tibbatts, Thomas Laurens Jones, Albert S. Berry, Brent Spence, and George Baird Hodge.

John Wooleston Tibbatts was born in Lexington on June 12, 1802, and graduated from Transylvania University with a law degree. He married Anne Taylor, the daughter of prominent northern Kentucky figure General James Taylor. He was the first Newport resident to sit as a U.S. Representative for Kentucky. During his term (1843-1847) he sponsored a bill to annex Texas and voted to declare war on Mexico. Tibbatts was directly involved in the war against Mexico and was promoted to colonel by President James K. Polk. His campaigns in Mexico permanently damaged his health and he passed away in 1852.

Thomas Laurens Jones was born in North Carolina in 1819. He attended law school at Harvard University and wed shortly after in 1848, marrying Mary Keturah Taylor. Jones was opposed to the secession of the South, but like many other Kentuckians, he was also against coercing the seceded states by the federal government. He was arrested in 1862 on the accusation that he was a southern sympathizer and served time at Camp Chase prison in Ohio as a political prisoner. After the war he served as a U.S. congressman in the 1870s.

Albert S. Berry was born May 13, 1836, in what is now Dayton, Kentucky. He graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1855, and received a law degree in 1858. He served as a state senator twice. He was loyal to the Confederate cause during the Civil War and became mayor of Newport in 1870. Berry served as a U.S. congressman in the 1890s.

Brent Spence was born in Newport in 1874. He received a law degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1894. Spence served as a state senator from 1904 to 1908, and went on to a long career in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1931 to 1963.

George Baird Hodge, born in 1823 in Fleming County, Kentucky, was educated at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He resigned from the navy in 1851, and was elected to the Kentucky state legislature eight years later. Hodge enlisted in the Confederate army during the Civil War and was later nominated to represent Kentucky in the Confederate Provisional Congress. Hodge, like a number of other ex-Confederates, was elected to the state legislature in the 1870s.