Anyone here like old graveyards and reading old headstones?

[bleedingheart]

I especially like the way they are written..

"Here lies Eleanor, beloved consort of John..."

etc...

[Dangerously Amused]

1. I do.

But then I have a strange fascination with death in general.

[achtung_circus]

2. Sigh, yeah.

It sometimes feel like I grew up in graveyards, cheese factories and a canoe. My father was, well, unique in his interests.

[MissHoneychurch]

9. Now that sounds like an interesting story

mind to share?

[achtung_circus]

38. So long ago that it wasn't even remotely trendy

my father was intensely interested in history. Not so much the written in the books kind of history, but the human side of it.

For example: Bridget Tierney went from Ireland to Chicago in 1827 to serve as a maid. She hated it. Somehow she managed to get back to Ireland, married and had babies. Along came the Potato Famine and she and her family sailed to the New World, she for the second time. The journey took 6 weeks from Dublin to Quebec City and the baby died on the trip.

That's one ancestor, story collected by my father.

The family originated in Palatine Germany and arrived in Philadelphia in 1733. Fought in the American Revolution in the King's Royal Regiment of New York and moved to eastern Ontario in 1784. Each Loyalist family was supposed to get a starter kit of farming tools. Somewhere, a government owes us a shovel.

Well eastern Ontario is rocky and best suited for pasturing livestock. The geomorphology is unimportant, but involves something called the Frontenac Axis. Prior to refrigeration the only was to handle milk was to turn it into butter or cheese.

Every, and I mean every small town had a cheese factory. The are mostly gone know, but as a kid I am sure I was dragged through every one, being force fed cheddar of various descriptions and my opinion solicited. Between cheese factories we meandered graveyards, tracing genealogies, saying HI to ancestors and communing with nature.

The canoe I still have. It's a 17' cedar strip Peterborough "Trapper" model, a testament to my father's desire to follow fur trade routes the hard way. She's called Esprit du Nod and I refinished her completely this summer. There are a couple of deep dings from encounters from rocks while running rapids, but otherwise still in great shape.

[tigereye]

49. your dad sounds cool, achtung

a bit of Paddle to the Sea in there. :)

[achtung_circus]

51. I loved that book!!! nt

[tigereye]

52. it was lovely to read that old chestnut to my kid

[fudge stripe cookays]

3. Of course! I'm a genealogist!

Writing a book on my family.

One of the first places I go in a new city is the cemetery where all the family folks are buried. And I get excited to get obituaries and death certificates in the mail.

I know....call me weird. Everyone does. :cry:

[Dem2theMax]

55. OK. You're weird!

May I join you? ;)

My first hit! I'm pretty darned sure this is the family mystery man on my Mom's side of the family.
Found it on a PA cemetery site. I didn't even have to buy a plane ticket. LOL.

He would be my GG Grandfather. I can hardly wait to get proof positive. :)

[johnnie]

4. Yes

Not as much these days. But I will still go out and look when I might be in the area. I'm sort of like Dangerously Amused I guess.

[Dangerously Amused]

32. Welcome, fellow ghoul.

I've never had a ghoulfriend before!



:bounce:

[datasuspect]

5. Royal Tenenbaum's epitaph

Royal O'Reilly Tenenbaum (1932-2001) Died Tragically Rescuing His Family From The Remains Of A Destroyed Sinking Battleship in the Caspian Sea

[DrDan]

6. absolutely!!! - and the older the better . . . .

[Lady Freedom]

7. I have to do it for school.

I take Sociology of Death and Dying

[meegbear]

8. I love 'em ...

I want a headstone like this when I go ...

[johnnie]

13. I like when they use "aged"

It makes the dead sound like cheese.

[laheina]

10. I find them fascinating. nt

[cwydro]

11. In Key West

we have the famous one "I Told You I was Sick".

It's one of the best old graveyards to wander around in...most graves above ground.

[Robb]

12. I remember a graveyard in WA state

...on San Juan Island, the site of the "Pig War" between the U.S. and Britain. No combat casualties, but one headstone struck me.

"Here lies so-and-so, who was accidentally shot by his brother."

Whoopsie. Great story, I'm sure.

[mainegreen]

14. An old friend of mine and I used to hunt out old abandoned cemetaries in Maine

and then find the most interesting and usually oldest stone and then bring home a rubbing of it.

Plus we liked to do it at night. Its creepier and actually when you use the flashlight at an angle on the headstones makes the carvings, usually worn very flat, easier to see than during daylight.

[Crazy Dave]

15. I found an old private family cemetery while surveying one time

It had relatives names from the 1800's and most of the older stones you could tell were hand chiseled and there were a couple that had very bad writing and letters written backwards.

[Patiod]

50. Found one outside Philadelphia with Jewish graves

a large proportion of which were dated from the fall of 1918 -- flu victims, almost certainly.

We realized it was Yom Kippur, and had a little moment of silence for that family

[Deep13]

16. Sure. I have a lot of cemetery photos.

[bleedingheart]

40. I have loads of cemetary photos...of strangers and family too..

[BarenakedLady]

17. I know what mine is going to say

"Thanks That Was Fun.
Don't forget, no regrets"

[av8rdave]

18. Oh Yeah!

England is great for that (all of Europe, actually). The dates go back so far.

Also, Key West has a fascinating old cemetary.

[cwydro]

20. yeah, my favorite in Key West

is the grave elevated on four stilts because the resident was afraid of drowning...(very close to sea level here). There's another that says "I'm just resting my eyelids", which is located on TOP of the one I posted about upthread...

[av8rdave]

22. I believe I also saw a

"I told you I was sick" on an epitaph there. It's been used a lot, but I still think it's funny.

[cwydro]

33. yeah

I posted that upthread a bit. Supposedly there is a grave that says, "At least now I know where he sleeps at night"....which is hilarious, but I walk through that cemetery pretty often and have never found it.

[DeposeTheBoyKing]

19. Yes, I love them!

I thought I was the only one. They remind me of the continuity of the human race. Have you ever been to Boston? I love looking at the headstones of the Founding Fathers.

[bleedingheart]

48. that would be cool..

I just found a cemetary along the Yough river here in PA...along a bike trail. Some of those headstones dated to the early 1800's and I suspect others were older but the dates had worn off.

[bertha katzenengel]

21. Yes. AAMOF so did Grandma. We found a bunch of pictures in her

things of headstones.

Grandma also took photographs of dead people in their coffins. :scared:

[Zomby Woof]

23. Yes

On a recent vacation in North Carolina, we all visited an old cemetery, complete with Spanish moss hanging from the trees. It had the perfest Southern Gothic atmosphere.

Nothing like contemplating tombstones to get a sense of perspective on our lives and what's important.

[reyd reid reed]

24. I love 'em...

so much character and...odd as it seems...life in them.

[bleedingheart]

42. not odd at all...there is life in them.

[chaska]

25. I got a great story....

(Readers Digest version)

Back in the mid 80s, I was hiking on the Appalchian Trail in Maine doing a two month hike. I came into the town of Monson and passing an ice cream stand I stopped for some rum raisin. While there I started talking with this scruffy old man who drove up in a delapidated Renault Le Car. He invited me to camp on his property. I accepted. This man was the town's gravedigger and dump tender. He built his own house with stuff he'd collected from the dump. What a crazy quilt kind of thing it was too. Had carpet on the roof to keep the rain noise down, dirt floor, an irremovable pickup truck camper inside of it, one whole wall of mismatched windows, propane lighting, no running water or electricity, weird place. It's still there (as of 3-4 years ago when I visitied again), but he's moved away or died.

Anyway, the next morning he came over to where I was camped and asked if I wanted to go for breakfast at a local joint. I accepted. After breakfast he said that he needed to go by the graveyard to check on a grave he had just dug. It had rained and he wanted to make sure it hadn't caved in. He dug these graves by hand with pick and shovel for $200 each. That's a LOT of work. The grave was fine, so over the next hour or two he took me around to many graves, showing me the more remarkable ones. He had a story for many of them. There was one in fact that was for an Indian woman who had died "in the Christian faith" and was the last of her tribe. It was a fascinating visit. I love graveyards.

Edit: not Monson, it was Andover, I think.

[cwydro]

36. That IS a great story. n/t

[kwassa]

26. Too many young women dying in childbirth, and young children's deaths

makes me grateful for modern medicine.

on the other hand, I like reading some of the old names no longer in common use, like Polycarpe.

[cobalt1999]

29. Exactly.

One we always wander through is in Apalachicola, FL. In one family plot besides the father and mother are children aged 6months, 2 years, 6 years, and 11 years. That's sad, but there are family plots like that all over the place. I think about how devastated I would be if something happened to my kids, and it is inconceivable what the parents must have gone through.

[photogirl12]

27. Of course I do!!!

I am a genealogy buff!!

[Lowell]

28. We have a family cemetery in Ohio

A number of the headstones date back before statehood (1803). My grandmother used to take us through there when I was young and she told me the stories of each person resting under the stone still standing. It one area a whole family is buried together, victims of a house fire. Now I go there whenever I'm in Ohio and say hello to all those old familiar names. Grandma is there too, resting with all those who's memory she kept alive.

[Left Is Write]

30. Yes.

[JitterbugPerfume]

31. yes!

Two yr ago on my vacation my sister and I went to cemetaries in Pulaski Co Ky looking for ancestors

Found a few too!

Next time < North Carolina!

[bleedingheart]

39. In Beaufort North Carolina...(near Moorehead City)

there is a really cool cemetary.

I went on a big family vacation with my family. My husband and I took our toddler to Beaufort by ourselves...while wandering around the cemetary...we ran into my brother and my husband said..."it figures that your family would gravitate towards a cemetary..."

it was really quite funny to have that happen..

The cemetary itself is really interesting and has a pamphlet that you can read...it tells of shipwrecks..star crossed lovers..etc

the saddest was about a young girl who went to England with her father. Her mother didn't want her to go...and begged the father to make sure to bring her back....The girl survived the trip to England but died on the ship on the way home. Rather than let her be buried at sea the father bought a barrel of whiskey and had his daughters body put into it (to preserve her)...so that he could take her home to her mother for burial....it made me cry.

[Shell Beau]

34. Yes! On my lunch break the other day, my co-worker

and I went to a confederate cemetary which was actually not a total confederate cemetary. We were riding around and saw it and thought it would be neat to check it out. Very fascinating.

[bluedigger]

35. I used to like 'em...

Then I dug a few up (Legally, people, I'm an archaeologist) and am now a firm convert to cremation. I guess that's more of a burial practices choice, though. There was a family plot in the woods across the street from where I grew up that has a headstone with nothing on it...except my initials, first, middle, and last. No dates. Yikes!

[u4ic]

37. Yes

I love walking through cemeteries. Far from being spooky, I find them calming, and a testament to love. They really are for the living, rather than the dead...

I often imagine what someone's life was like because of their name, what was written on their tombstone, who was buried around them, etc. Some of the tombstones are quite beautiful.

I recall in one cemetery, a family losing 5 kids in the space of 7-8 years (early part of the 20th century, starting around the time of the Spanish flu). Tragic - I can't even begin to imagine the sorrow in that family...

[bleedingheart]

41. old cemetaries are an advertisement for vaccinations

if a child lived to see the age of at least 8...there was a chance of living to adulthood.

But there were a great number who died between birth and around that age....and then when you add in the women who died in childbirth, it is jaw dropping...

[u4ic]

53. Some statistics

(Late Victorian England, as I recall...esp those in poverty) had a 55% mortality rate for children.

The number of women who died in childbirth was very high, yes, and also too the number of working class men, from accidents or workplace hazards. All round, life was tough for those on the lower rung...:(

[CBHagman]

45. I remember something like that in South Carolina.

I believe it was in the churchyard at Trinity Cathedral in Columbia, SC, that I saw a group of headstones for perhaps five children from the same family. All of them had died within a period of a few years, and I think all of them were under 10 years old. What unbearable heartbreak.

In travel, I usually make a beeline to churches anyway, just to enjoy the history, the art, the architecture, and that usually means crypts, tombs, graveyards as well. It didn't hurt that for some years I lived within walking distance of a cemetery that dated back to colonial times. It was right in the middle of a residential neighborhood in New Jersey! We kids spent a lot of time soaking up the atmosphere in that place and reading the headstones ("Here lyes...").

Naturally, when I visited Boston, I had to make sure I got to the old cemeteries there and in Salem. And while volunteering in a swing state in 2004, I made sure to visit a couple of our family plots in a local cemetery, though some of our graves are unmarked and most headstones provide no details.

[MsKandice01]

43. I went to a cemetery in Hampton, VA one time...

Many of the tombstones were from the 1700s. It was really interesting to see.

[bikebloke]

44. In Calcutta

I wandered into an old church. They had the arrival dates in India as well as birth and death dates. Some of those people lasted only a matter of days or weeks before succumbing to disease.

[bleedingheart]

47. it really gives you the chills when you realize how death was

just so common...

People died from things like ear aches and toothaches that today would be just a minor inconvenience.

If you think about the pilgrim colony...most of them didn't last the first winter.

[Dukkha]

46. Here's a few I took in Clevelandd

John D Rockefeller


James A Garfield


Eliot Ness


Creepy


Creepy again


This is a Columbus Confederate soldier prison cemetery. Many people claimed to have seen a ghost of a widow visiting one soldiers grave

[NanceGreggs]

54. I just saved a copy of "Creepy" ...

... which I am TOTALLY in love with!

Can you tell me which cemetary this is located in? Was this a marker for a famous person?

It's an absolutely beautiful sculpture - and it's aging has only enhanced its beauty. He looks like a warrior after battle - scarred, but victorious!

Thanks so much for posting this ... it's also a great photograph!

[Dukkha]

57. it's in Lake View Cemetery

http://www.lakeviewcemetery.com

it's a really huge place and I have no idea where I saw it now. Here's another shot of it


I LOVE this cemetery! You could easily spend a whole day there looking at the massive tombs and mausoleums.
It's my favorite after St. Louis #1 & Lafayette in New Orleans.

[NanceGreggs]

60. WOW!!!

I can't thank you enough for posting this photo, and the earlier one of the same sculpture!

I have saved both photos to my computer, as I plan to have prints made for matting and framing, side by side. When I am ready to do so, I will PM you and, at your discretion of course, you can PM your real name to me so that I can have it printed on the mats.

Absolutely STUNNING photographs of a truly magnificent piece!

Thank you again!

[GoddessOfGuinness]

56. Eliot Ness' son only lived to age 30...

How sad. I wonder if his death contributed to her passing away only a year later...

Here's a pic of a famous statue in the cemetery where my dad is buried:

[Lyric]

58. Oh yes. I love wandering around graveyards.

When our son was 18 months old, we took him to Elmwood Cemetary in Charlotte, NC and let him run around and play. We took TONS of photographs of him posing next to carven angels, climbing on mausoleum steps, and playing in the fenced-off Confederate burial area. Someday when he's older, he'll look back at those photos and say...

..."Man, what was WRONG with you people?!" :rofl:

[Digit]

59. I used to go on dates to old graveyards

I love history...what can I say.