BS: Visiting Cemeteries

Subject: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 01:24 PM

Thought I'd throw this out since Halloween is almost here...

I just realized that I have never visited a cemetery for any reason other than to attend a funeral. I've never visited a friend or relative's gravesite. I've never visited the gravesite of a famous person (though I was planning on visiting Jimi Hendrix' the one time I was in Seattle, but missed the exit and kept going). I've never walked through old cemeteries looking at old markers. And I never walked through a cemetery on Halloween night as a kid, though I grew up just down the road from a large one.

I'm not superstitious. I don't have anything against cemeteries. It just doesn't ever occur to me that visiting one is a normal way to spend a half-hour or so. Obviously, lots of people do visit them regularly 'cause those flowers don't just pop up out of nowhere.

Anybody else care to expound on their own ghoulish nature (or lack thereof)?

Bruce

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 01:41 PM

You're missing a lot. A lot of history, a lot of folk art.

Now, back in the days when I was makin' and settin' tombstones, I learnt tons about cemeteries. I even worked in a cemetery where I wasn't wanted -- you could feel the rejection. Most of them, though, are nice places to visit (naturally no one lives there, even though people are just dying to get in).

I've seen a monument (the term prefered to "tombstone") of a carved anvil with a broken hammer carved on it -- a blacksmith's grave. I can write (literally) pages on a particular stone. I can spot the difference between Barrie and Georgia grays, and know WHY mahogany and rainbow are lousy granites for 'stones. But it's the art that will blow you away, the old stuff I mean. (Laser-etched ain't art.) The old epitaths can be hilarious and revealing ("He has gone to live among the Blessed/To his wonderful home in the dirty West" was one I saw).

Now, right after he got back from 'Nam my brother dug graves. That is, he used a shovel, not that he was really into graves in a big way. No backhoe! A shovel and a pick, and the sides had to be straight up and down! He learned a lot (one thing he learned was that he didn't want to spend his life doing manual labor), including how to hitch up and drive horses (the sexton, our great-Uncle, HATED trucks). He shot a horse (not his idea, and don't ask). He helped in relocating graves. As soon as he could he got a job as a bartender.

A cemetery is a grave undertaking, but you can work your way down in the world as a gravedigger, or work for a monument company and be stoned. No matter, the service is always great, as the clients have never complained. You do have to be out in all weathers, so sometimes you're coughin', but I think I'll stop before someone feels that these puns are irreverent.

"How long must a man lie in the earth ere he rot?"

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 01:50 PM

I think that cemeteries take up way too much space, perpetuating medieval superstitious nonsense about dead bodies... They are a total waste of land... Every single one I see would make a much better park for children to play in, for lovers to hold hands in...

There's a mortuary in Sweden (I think it was...) who are well underway with a new technique for dealing with dead bodies... they first freeze dry the whole thing... then they toss it into a machine that shakes it pretty much to dust... they take that dust and put it in a biodegradable bag... They then bury that bad in a shallow hole and plant a tree over it...

and might I add, if you're medically capable and you do NOT donate any organs useful after your death, you are a rat bastard who's not worthy of the term human...

If we're gonna recycle, let's get serious about it!

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Les from Hull
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 01:56 PM

I quite like cemetaries, especially the old ones around village churches in England. You learn quite a bit about the past of the village.

Also in mainland Europe I've always taken a bit of time to visit war graves. Seeing in the cemetary near Arnhem a grave for a man who was at time the same age, rank and unit of my father broke me up a bit. But it's a useful reminder of the past.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: open mike
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 02:02 PM

i recently went to ta geneaology workshop
called "Going Out In Style" byt the author
of a book by the same name, who reserached
grave statuary, and memorials of all types.

One way to save designs from tomb stones
is by doing rubbings....this can capture the
engravings by putting a piece of paper over the
head stone and rubbing with pencil, charcoal or crayon
to "capture" the design.

I have visited and photographed graves of several of
my ancestors and also sent photographs to others' of
their ancestors' graves when requested to do so.

In the cemetary where my parents are, there is a plane
propellor commemorating a fellow who died in a plane
crash and there is also a copy of a letter the fellow
received from another famous flyer: Charles Lindburg

often a grave marker can tell a story or reveal historical
information. Some have pictures fo the deceased.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 02:05 PM

In Hong Kong the burial spaces are so limited that after a few years each grave is dug up, the bones collected and placed in a ceremonial container and the spot is used for the next deceased (might be family plots going this way).

The Choctaw had a different approach to this, until the christian world interceded. They used to build a platform near the deceased one's home and they were placed on it for a long time, and covered with bark or something else to keep the birds away. Once most of the flesh had deteriorated there were important members of the tribe called Bonepickers who climbed up on the platform, and with specially-grown very long fingernails would carefully ritually pick the rest of the flesh off, and set the bones in a ceremonial basket, which was in turn placed in a bone house. Once enough bones were collected, a new mound was begun and the bones were placed in it along with lots and lots of soil--and many of those mounds still exsist in the Lower Mississippi region. Faulkner used these mounds in some of his novels, if you want a popular reference.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 02:07 PM

Some friends of mine just got back from traveling in France. They said that in Paris there is a very old cemetery that is wonderfully interesting with its grave houses and tall monuments. Chopin, I believe, is buried there as are many other well known historical figures. Even a rock star whose name I can't dig up at the moment...

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 02:08 PM

Clinton, I agree with you, for contemporary times, though I sorrow at the lack of good reading and visual interest it will mean. BUT, the OLD graveyards are THE best place for walks, learning history, reading incredible stories of life, and having a respectful picnic, esp. as the oldest trees in town can usually be found in them. Old ones are some of the most fav. places for my kids and me to hang out! When I can find them, I'll put up a couple of my fav. pix from them.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 02:13 PM

"Even a rock star whose name I can't dig up at the moment..."

That would be Jim Morrison, perhaps? The "drunken baffoon pretending to be a rock-star"?

(Quote from Lester Banks)

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: jimmyt
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 02:14 PM

I always make a point of visiting cemetaries when I travel. My fovorite one is Greyfriers Kirkyard in Edinburgh. Every little parish church in England has fascinating history in its cemetary. Three weeks ago we had a couple hours to spare in Cambridge, England, and thoroughly enjoyed visiting a small church yard with many famous professors and scientists ,as well as a nobel prize winner buried there.

I think it is fascinating to see the microhistory of an area. Once in a little country church in Scotland, it was interesting to note that most oof the graves were from only a couple or few clan names, while a few miles away, none of the same clan names were buried in the next churchyard.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 02:21 PM

I prefer cremation, not because it's a foretaste of my afterlife (as Mark Twain wrote), but because it's clean and takes up little earth. Actually, I'd like to placed on top of all my possessions, my wife by my side, on a dragon ship, and send blazing out to sea. My wife objects to this for some reason I just can't fathom.

I believe that the Jaines put corpses on the tops of towers called "Towers of Silence" where the bodies are eaten by buzzards. Many American Indian nations besides the Choctaw put bodies in trees or on platforms. Others, such as the Navaho, would sneak the bodies out and place them in fissures or hidden places, doing their best so that the chindi, or ghost, wouldn't be able to find its way back.

The last is related to the custom in some European cultures of taking the corpse out through a window or through a door backwards.

Suttee was practiced in India (and rumor has it that it still is, sometimes).

Lots of death customs....

I've read that Jenghis Khan's tomb was hidden and that everyone that took the body there or knew where it was was killed. Supposedly, the epitath reads, "Many would be unhappy if I were still alive," but I wonder how they know?

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 02:28 PM

For what it's worth, reusing graves is not uncommon. That's what the gravedigger was working on when Hamlet talked to him -- putting Ophelia in a slightly used grave, and taking the last occupant out.

This was common in Europe for a long time -- the US had more land and so the idea of "perpetual care" came along.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: LilyFestre
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 02:40 PM

I grew up with a cemetary in my backyard...it's where I played as a child. The cemetary is no longer in my backyard, but I do visit there from time to time. Once in awhile, I take a blanket and some stitching. I plant myself under the maple tree near my father and grandmother and spend the time sewing or just sitting quietly. Sometimes I talk with them. Other times I go there when I just want to be away from this world......it's a peaceful place where I can just sit and cry if I want.

I especially like older cemetaries behind churches. I don't really know why, I just do. As a teen, I was fortunate to be an exchange student to Austria where my host family tended to the church cemetary. The cemetaries there are so different from what I have seen here in the states. They are REALLY old...but also very well tended to. Each plot was marked out with stones surrounding where the body was buried as well as a headstone, often a picture of the deceased and beautiful, beautiful flowers. I also like the old stones...lots of character there....which makes for some fantastic B&W photography!   :)

Michelle

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 02:44 PM

I disagree with Clinton. I find graveyards to be important links to the past and a place of reflection for the future.   I live near a cemetary that has been in use since before the Revolution. In fact, the land that I live on was part of a farm that was the scene of a murderous "redcoat" raid during the 1700's. Being able to visit that cemetary provides a tremendous connection to the past.   

It may sound morbid, but I find it fascinating to read the names and dates on these stones. I remember one teacher in a local school that started a project where students would research these names through local records and try to construct an image of what their lives were like.

Back in high school, my best friend worked as a gravedigger in a larger cemetary in a nearby town. His co-workers had spent decades in their jobs and I found their stories and lives fascinating. Working around death and mourning gave them a unique perspective and turned what sounds like a morbid atmosphere into something quite different.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 02:48 PM

"I disagree with Clinton"

That's fine RO... what a dull world it'd be if we all agreed all the time eh...

I can see your point, but to me, the graves themselves are NOT the past... I get more out of a history book (For example) than standing looking at head stones...

Can you see what I mean, when I say mostly all I see is a waste of space? (I'm not asking you to agree...)

:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 03:00 PM

In our little town we have an annual cemetery walk which is coming up next Sunday. A local historian leads anyone who wants to go on a tour through a portion of our local cemetery and regales us with stories about the occupants of the graves. It's lots of fun and we never thought of it as ghoulish.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 03:23 PM

There are many things that could be considered "waste of space" Clinton. We really don't need gardens, except for vegetables. We could do without museums, stadiums, movie theaters, churches, libraries, pubs etc. Of course, there are many people who enjoy and find comfort in these places.

History books give you facts and if the writer is good, you may get some feeling. Visiting the site where the event took place brings on another perspective, and visiting a gravesite can work in the same way.   The first time I went to Arlington and saw the graves of JFK and RFK gave me a feeling that is hard to describe. While I watched the events on television, seeing the gravesite made it seem "more real".   All my grandparents died before I was born, but I when I visited their graveyards I could feel a connection with their past and all the stories that I heard about them took on more meaning.

IF we did not have room for playgrounds or parks, I would see the point. However, there are a number of other spots that I find more "wasteful" than the room used for cemetaries.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: NicoleC
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 03:31 PM

I've never been very sentimental about graves and such. I hope they use up any pieces of me that are useful and use the rest for fertilizer or fish food.

But after having spent years researching genealogy in a particular area, I went to visit and take pictures of the tombstones for the dates and inscriptions on them. Many of these sites were behind someone's house, in the cow pasture, off in the woods with little collection tins for the guy that mows there, and so forth. As I saw all the families together and all the familiar names of my ancestor's neighbors, it felt like I was among old friends. Occasionally, I found myself introducing myself to one "person" or another. Very strange to me, but I can see how some people take comfort visiting the graves of their loved ones.

(Don't do rubbings on old stones, but the way, it can damage them. It's best to take a good photo. Spray the stone with a little water to improve the visibility of the inscription if you need to.)

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 03:37 PM

" IF we did not have room for playgrounds or parks"

Never enough (or rather never too much) room for 'em... and the 2 biggest culprits I see are cemeteries and golf courses...

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 03:45 PM

Yes, Clinton, that's the one. Not that I've ever heard Morrison sing, dead or alive.

To me, a cemetery symbolizes continuity; the wheel, kind of like a water wheel) turns and some people get off, some people get on. At the same time I'm not sure why a cemetery is so peaceful to the living (other than it's a quiet neighborhood!) because I don't see any reason to believe that their spirits hang around there.

I suppose a graveyard could be filled with monuments with merely names, dates and events... do you suppose it would have the same ambience? I've seen Revoluntary War battlefields marked with name inscribed posts - I was filled more with despair there than with peace.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 03:48 PM

There is a special rubbing paper available to monument shops that has its ink contained within it. All you have to do is put the paper to the stone and rub it with your hand and voila! You might find it a trifle on the expensive side for everyday use, though. It is better than rubbing the stone with a crayon or charcoal, if you can afford it.

Speaking of rubbings, I have a rubbing of Shakespeare's epitath, certified by the sexton and done in 1938. It appears to be black crayon on brown paper.

Oblique lighting can bring up letters nearly obliterated by time and weather. You have to work at getting the right angle, though. And then take a picture!

Don't use ANY liquid on a stone if the temperature is or will soon be below freezing! Water, etc. can freeze in letters and surface cracks and destroy the stone and/or its carvings! Don't do it! (Warm weather is different.) Repairs can be minor to costly to impossible.
Been there, seen too much such damage. Remember, it might be rock but it ain't indestructible.

Something to look for when you're looking a stones: a V shape with smooth sides will nearly always (on a granite stone) indicate that a chisel was used to make the carving. A V shape with bumpy sides and a small "bead" at the bottom (like a V with a little rounded thingy instead of a sharp point) indicates that it was sandblasted. Sandblasting, of course is far less expensive than carving and more recently used (around 1920 in most places). That's on granite, marble is a different matter.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: curmudgeon
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 04:04 PM

I'll only make a few comments here, as Linn is the real Thanatolithologist, and I a mere apprentice.

We always look for time to visit old cemetaries. Some 10 or so years past while wandering through the Sedgwick Pie section of the Stockbridge (MA) cemetary, we chanced on the grave of Francis James Child; in Maine we dscovered that of Robert P. Tristram Coffin; and we made a special trip to Wilbraham MA to visit the grave of Timothy Myrick who was bit by the rattler on Springfield Mountain.

Rubbings can be done safely; Linn will explain that when she has some time. Photographs can be very difficult, however.

And Clinton, your ideas were put to use in the 19th Century as part of the Urban Cemetary Movement which sought to design these places to also serve as parks, playgrounds and picnic areas -- Mount Auburn, Forest Lawn, et al.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 04:08 PM

Mister and I spend a lot of time in cemeteries volunteering for historical preservation things. One tour we do every year has an incredible turnout, so there are plenty of people out there who enjoy visiting cemeteries for the historical aspect.

One of my ancestors was a man named Jacob Van Meter, who was one of the founding fathers of Elizabethtown, Kentucky. He also helped to start the Severns Valley Baptist Church, which still meets, albeit in a different building. Anyhow, the DAR gave him a really nice monument in the City Cemetery there, and being able to visit it was very special. I don't really know how to explain it. Maybe it's something only history nuts will understand.

When I was in high school, I used to skip out on church and drive to Franklin, TN to the Confederate cemetery, and just sit there and be quiet. I think I got more out of that than listening to some windbag preacher speechify to a bunch of people who weren't paying attention anyway...

Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Ebbie. I visited there when I went to Paris, fifteen years ago. Somewhere there is a photograph of me standing next to Jim Morrison's grave.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: GUEST,Lyle
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 04:14 PM

One of the things I wish the American cemeteries would learn from the "older" countries (Norway is the one I'm familiar with) and that is even if we re-use graves there should be somewhere a complete record of who is buried there along with as much information as possible. That would include names of relatives, place of birth and death, occupation, marriages and dates, etc. How much simpler genealogy would be!!

Lyle

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 04:49 PM

I think that memorial plaques are better than cemetaries. You can out one almost anywhere, and it doesn't need eternal maintanence...and doesn't wash out in floods, and doesn't take good space. I would not go dig UP all the old, quaint ones...just stop digging new ones.

(New Orleans had very little places for burials, so you could rent a crypt for 'X' number of years...then a slab was pulled, and the bones dropped down to join others, and the space re-rented)

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 04:50 PM

Rapaire, the Shakespeare line is classic, but a lot of people don't understand that reference when it's used as a throwaway line--"Poor Yoric" was the latest inhabitant of the grave now dug for Ophelia (many die in that play, and it has been decades since I read it, but I think it's her grave being dug).

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Joybell
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 05:25 PM

I used to think about the waste of space although I have always loved visiting graveyards. Here in Australia, though, where in most of the settled areas the native vegetation has been replaced by introduced plants, the old country graveyards are tiny pockets of indigenous grassland and wildflowers, so that they are actually very valuable. Sadly as communities get interested in "cleaning up" these areas they tend to become lawn and roses. The world already has enough lawn and roses, while here in Victoria there is 0.05% left of the indigenous wildflower grassland.
We have a wonderful graveyard at a place called Whroo. It is hidden in a woodland and White-winged Choughs call from the trees. These birds have the saddest cries and they are big and black with red eyes. The marble stones are all askew or lying in the grass. It dates from the goldrush of 1852 when the settlement began as a tent city, went on to a tiny town and then became a ghost town. Nobody much visits it now which is great.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 05:54 PM

Tom meant "Rural Cemetery Movement" not Urban. My personal preference is to New England slate markers from around 1650 to about 1825 -- willows and urns make my eyes glaze over. (Well, not ALL of them, but the majority . . .)

But the rural cemetery movement is indicated by the change from gray slate markers to white marble ones, and landscaping to make the cemetery an inviting place to bring a picnic and the family and spend the day. We're talking 1840, here, by the way. And, despite my preference for small New England graveyards full of slate stones with soul effigies and rosettes, winged skulls and angels with trumpets, I also really enjoy cemeteries such as Mount Auburn in Boston, Forest Home in Milwaukee, and Mountain View in Oakland -- with wonderful mausoleums and sculpture.

I intend to be cremated, but I'd like to leave a slate marker somewhere, preferably one I've cut myself.

Let's face it, the major reason I'm as interested in gravestones as I am is my fascination with both letterforms (did you know John Baskerville, the printer and typefounder, carved slate gravestones?) and stone. Oh, and the history, don't forget the history. It's all wrapped together.

My first posts at Mudcat were on a thread about gravestone symbolism. I think I signed myself Linn the Thanatolithologist for the first coupla posts.

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Desdemona
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 06:00 PM

I adore cemeteries (although I prefer to call them "boneyards" as a general rule), and have since childhood. I especially enjoy the overgrown, benignly semi-neglected variety, often found in the English countryside. A fab graveyard is always high on my list of places to visit when travelling!

D.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: mack/misophist
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 06:48 PM

Trust me. If a cemetary gets in the way, it is moved. Much of San Francisco sits on old cemetary land. A lot of the Pacific breakwater is made of broken up tombstones.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 06:58 PM

Linn, come to Nelson sometime- we have a beautiful old cemetary dating back to the Revolution. Some of the gravestones are completely worn down.
My beloved's ashes are interred there and although I've never been a visitor of cemetaries, I am finding this spot to be the most peaceful place on earth these days.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 07:13 PM

I'll be there one of these days, Alison. And there's a graveyard in the heart of Chester, Vermont I need to get back into (with at least a camera instead of just a notepad).

Believe it or not, the most serene and contemplative graveyard I've ever been in doesn't have a single marker I'm interested in. (Well, maybe one for an author who is not dead yet.) It's a little Friends cemetery in North Berwick, Maine, right on the side of Rte. 4. There's an elegant little stile at the entrance in a very trim stone wall and one huge tree with a large bole on it. It's the most peaceful place I've ever been.

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 09:14 PM

I LIKE cemeteries...peace, reflection, a good meal.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Willie-O
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 09:29 PM

The part of the Ottawa Valley I live in was settled by Scots immigrants in the early 1800s. They put cemeteries in high sandy places that weren't promising fields, like the Highland Line cemetery a mile west of my house, or the Pine Grove Cemetery, with its view for miles in every direction. Either of these locations, if it wasn't a beautiful old cemetery with a searchable database (sorry) and in the case of the latter, a stand of big old white pines sheltering it, would now be the bottom of a gravel pit, like all the surrounding territory...

My dad had a little sister who died at age 3 of scarlet fever. I recently found out that my heartbroken grandfather, an artistic Scottish tradesman, made her tombstone himself, incorporating a teddy bear design into the stone...this was in 1924 in Winnipeg, and I guess it became quite a well-known landmark there. I'm going to look for it next time I get out west, I have the receipt for "perpetual care".

And if that don't soften yer hard flinty heart, Clinton... I'll make up something even sadder. (That one was true though.)

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 09:32 PM

Heart as flinty as always...

You'll find tales of death actually kinda bore me... cause ya know who dies?

Everybody dies...

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 09:35 PM

How do you know he was "heart-broken" and not just a stereo-typical "cheap Scotsman?"

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: LadyJean
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 11:32 PM

My cousin John has a cemetery in his front yard. He lives in a house, built in the 1830s. The family plot is in the front yard.
Last year, my sister and I took John up to the small town in Ohio, where our great grandfather was born. We headed off to the little Presbyterian Church our ancestor, Alexander Porter, founded, and went through the churchyard looking for family names. The Reverend Alexander Porter's tombstone had a short biography on one side, and a truly atrocious poem on the other. We had a very pleasant afternoon.
My parents are in Homewood Cemetery. I go out at Christmas to put a wreath in the family plot, and before Memorial day to put a flag on my father's grave. I head past the Brown family tomb, which is shaped like a pyramid, and the Stimmel mausoleum, which is done as an Egyptian temple, the sense of humor kicks in.   I will swing by the tiny Chinese section, and Henry Clay Frick's grave which is surrounded by a low, brass fence. I'm not sure whether it's there to keep us out, or that S.O.B. in.    I believe they give historic tours, while the weather's good, if you're ever in town.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 11:45 PM

There is a nice graveyard in Salladsburg, PA where my grandfather and grandmother are buried, and a few of my grandmother's sisters. There is a small little piece of native stone in one plot with the words Are Baby carved into it.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Cluin
Date: 28 Oct 03 - 12:33 AM

Cemeteries, like funerals and wakes, aren't for the dead anyway. They're for the living.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Linda Kelly
Date: 28 Oct 03 - 02:48 AM

If in London- go to Highgate, it's not a cemetery it is a work of art. and visit every cemetery in Paris-truly wonderful.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: mouldy
Date: 28 Oct 03 - 02:59 AM

As a churchwarden, I have quite a lot to do with our village churchyard. It only goes back to 1854, but even so, a lot of the graves are unmarked, this being an area of farmland, and therefore populated in the 19th century by many very poorly paid workers (and their employers!). It makes for great fun trying to locate graves for people! The burial register makes interesting reading, and we even have a number of drownings buried here. The village is not far from a river and a canal. One is a sad story, and dates from some time in the 1860s or 70s if I remember correctly - a little girl, aged 2-3 years was found washed up on the riverbank, and buried by coroner's order, ours being the closest church. She was identified a while later, and named, from her shoe, and had fallen in the river at Castleford, 12 or 13 miles away, poor mite. There are quite a few babies, some only living a matter of hours or days. Sometimes their mothers too. Also one or two railway workers killed, as there are two lines close to us.

We keep the cemetery mowed for easy access, but quite a few places allow the older parts to remain unmowed, thus creating a nature reserve. The big, now full, cemetery in York has been classified as such.

I agree that you can learn a lot from them. The style and quality of the memorials says a lot about the affluence and trades of an area. A concentration of burials during a short timespan and all in one area may indicate an epidemic.
I'm usually on my own around midnight on Christmas Eve, clearing up after the service, but I don't feel spooked. There are no burials in the church, and only a short path to the gate.

Every couple of years or so I take the Baptism, Marriage and Burial registers into the village school (next door to the church) when the children are doing a project on the Victorians, and groups of them trace a particular family, or do tally charts on the trades of people at a particular time, or look at how long people lived.

If you take children into a cemetery, just be aware that older memorials may have become unstable. Kids will be kids, and run around. A child was killed in Harrogate a couple of years ago by a stone falling on them. We do periodic checks, but in a large cemetery, it may be easy to miss one. Even so, they can be a lovely place to sit and commune with nature.

I like that Swedish idea of freeze drying. I was always concerned that cremation caused air pollution!

Andrea

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Oct 03 - 08:18 AM

In the old St. Boniface cemetery in Quincy, Illinois there's a "stump" stone with a straw boater hat, a baseball, and a broken baseball bat carved on it. The teenager buried there was killed by a bat flung during a baseball game.

Nearby there's a larger monument to a dozen children who burned when a school burned around 1890. It was during a Christmas play, the girls were wearing crepe-papger dresses, and someone's dress was ignited by the footlights. She panicked and ran around setting fire to others. A nun (Catholic school) tried to beat out the fire with her hands - she was saved but her hands were amputated and buried with the kids. Supposedly, a dozen white doves were seen flying away during the cemetery service. (This last from a note in my g-g-aunt Tillie's handwriting, who was at the cemetery.)

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Bobert
Date: 28 Oct 03 - 08:30 AM

I love old cemeteries...

When I was working as a social worker in Richmond, Va. I would spend most of my time in "the field" (meaning out visiting clients and agencies...) and I'd usually take my luch at Hollywood Cemetery, which overlooks the James River. There are 4 US presidents buried there plus Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. The cemetary is very hilly and filled with old trees so one gets a feeling of visiting a park.

My favorite spot is at Jefferson Davis's grace site. It is right on the southern edge of the cemetary and from there you can look down over the hill and see the rapids of the James, the ol' Albermarle Paper Co. just below and if you look down river, the remains of Treadagar Iron Works which produced the cannons for the Confederate army...

I get back to Richmond now and then and still make it one of my stops.

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Oct 03 - 08:37 AM

I Love cemetaries. Where I live, to adress clinton hammond,s concern, the city graveyards are pretty much like parks..people jog there, walk the dog, go for strolls, sit on the benches and have lunch. They are lovely old places with mature oaks and elms, lilacs, rhodos and so on..very much like parks and certainly they are quiet spots in another wise noisy city.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Wolfgang
Date: 28 Oct 03 - 12:20 PM

A song about taking a walk on a cemetery:

Ballade vom Hugenottenfriedhof

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Oct 03 - 01:12 PM

Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, VA is fascinating, and not just because of the Kennedys. Visit the tomb of the unknown soldiers on a misty, foggy day. Take a peak at the memorial to the USS Maine. Or visit the ampitheatre of the Civil War dead. (If you have a family member buried in Arlington, you can get a permanent pass that permits you to drive in the cemetery -- ANYWHERE in the place. My wife's great-uncle is buried there, so her family has one -- her father and mother will be buried there as well.)

The old burying grounds in St. Johns, NB where so many of the Tories who fled the US during Revolution are buried, is another fascinating place.

One of the spookiest places I've ever been to was the battlefield at Antietam (Sharpsburg). A foggy December day, no one around, and you could easily visualize the Sunken Road or the Bridge. Ditto for Shiloh (Pittsburg Landing) on a scorching, humid day and I swear I could see the bodies at Bloody Pond.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: GUEST,SRS
Date: 28 Oct 03 - 02:12 PM

Oops, in case anyone goes looking for the smallest incorporated burough in Pennsylvania, I misspelled it. It's Salladasburg.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Joybell
Date: 28 Oct 03 - 08:37 PM

We have a lovely old graveyard in Central Victoria (Aus.) with picnic tables in it and a little school next door. The living and the dead are part of the community. One of the teachers who is buried there taught children about the Australian wildflowers for over 50 years. Now she sleeps beside the playground in a grave covered with native flowers.
If you find yourself, anyone, in the South-east part of Australia I'd love for you to visit and see our graveyards. They aren't as old as yours, of course, but some are very special.

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: Neighmond
Date: 28 Oct 03 - 10:31 PM

The cemetery where my family is buried is near Pomeroy Iowa, and there is a big old lilac bush over my Grandfather's headstone. One of my cousins made the comment that if any of the folks appreciated his visiting the graves that he never heard about it, and that year the lilacs all came in red instead of lavender.

FWIW

Chaz

Subject: RE: BS: Visiting Cemeteries
From: LadyJean
Date: 28 Oct 03 - 11:29 PM

Dogs were banned from Homewood cemetery. I miss them!