Baldwin County (Georgia) Cemeteries

Inscription and Notes:

Dr. Henrietta Floride Moore Gardner died on Wednesday, October 26, 2016 at Green Acres Rehabilitation home in Milledgeville. Her death ended a lifetime of dedication to education with experience ranging from teaching in small towns in Georgia to the academic halls of Columbia University in New York.

Dr. Gardner’s death came less than three weeks from her 100th birthday. She was predeceased by her husband, the late Paul E. Gardner, who died in 1992.

Floride Gardner was born in Milledgeville on November 12, 1916. Her parents were Charles Leighton Moore and May Temperance Allen Moore. She was descended from two prominent Milledgeville families. Her paternal grandfather, Jere N. Moore, was editor of the Milledgeville Union Recorder for several decades in the nineteenth century and her maternal grandfather, Dr. Henry Dawson Allen, was the founder of Allen’s Invalid Home.

Dr. Gardner received her primary and secondary education at Peabody School in Milledgeville when Peabody was a demonstration school for teacher education at Georgia State College for Women, now Georgia College and State University. She graduated from G.S.C.W. in 1936 with a double major in elementary education and home economics.

After college, Dr. Gardner taught in the Georgia public school system in Shady Dale, Cochran and Brunswick and then attended the University of Tennessee in Knoxville where she received a master’s degree in home economics and nutrition in 1944. She taught nutrition briefly at the University of Alabama before joining the faculty of the University of Georgia in Athens as a professor and department head in 1945. She remained in Athens until she joined the faculty of Teachers College at Columbia University in 1958. Dr. Gardner received a doctorate degree from New York University in 1952.

Dr. Gardner lived in New York until she returned to her hometown of Milledgeville in September of 1963 to marry Paul Gardner, who managed Atlanta Gas Light Company operations here. In Milledgeville, she continued her teaching career on the faculty of Georgia College and State University. In 1972, she was selected Georgia College Foundation Distinguished Professor of Education. She retired from the Georgia College faculty in 1976.

Dr. Gardner was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and a variety of education organizations. She has authored numerous articles on education and nutrition for such publications as the Georgia Education Journal and the Journal of Home Economics.

She was devoted to Milledgeville and to its historic preservation and was a tireless promoter of its interests. She was an organizer of Friends of Baldwin County Cemeteries and was a primary contributing editor to a book entitled, “Historic Memory Hill Cemetery, Milledgeville, Georgia 1804-1997.”

Dr. Gardner had a strong interest in her family. She was the matriarch of three families — the Moores, the Allens and the Gardners. Her 75th birthday celebration inspired the beginning of a series of Moore family reunions every other year for more than 20 years.

She also had a strong sense of adventure and traveled extensively throughout the world.