Dr. Hope Hull Tigner was born near Athens, Georgia on May 28, 1792, became a physician and state legislator, and later moved 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; though no longer standing, stage passengers called it "The White House" for many years. When Dr. Tigner died in 1837 at age 45, he became the first person buried on a knoll across from his home, a burial ground that later became the Union (Tigner-Ogletree) Cemetery. According to a story told afterward, before his death he asked his friend Rev. Philemon Ogletree, a Methodist minister, to look after his wife. Rev. Ogletree took that request seriously and, while walking the widow Tigner back to the house after the funeral, told her of the promise he had made; after an appropriate period of mourning, they married and had one child, James Fletcher. Eliza Tigner Ogletree died in 1857, Rev. Philemon Ogletree died in 1861, and both were buried in Union Cemetery. In 1896 James Fletcher Ogletree deeded the knoll of land where Dr. Tigner, Rev. Ogletree, and Eliza Tigner Ogletree were buried to the Union Cemetery Association. For many years the cemetery created by that deed was known as the Union-Ogletree-Tigner Cemetery, and over time many descendants of the Tigner and Ogletree families, along with members of other area families, were buried there. Union Cemetery is now administered by the Union Cemetery Foundation as a nonprofit organization.