View Full Version : I enjoy visiting cemeteries
I have to admit this is a bit of an odd interest. I'm not goth or into anything dark or sinister. I simply find cemeteries to be peaceful and intriguing places. It just so happens that my birthday is All Saint's Day (which is the day after Halloween). My mom was actually trick or treating with my 2 year old sister when she went into labor. My sister was mad and I think she still holds a grudge, lol.
So anyway, All Saint's Day is a big deal in Louisiana. It's when we go to the cemeteries and clean the grave sites, pull weeds, put out fresh flowers etc. Many Louisiana cemeteries have vault that are above ground because we are below sea level. Coffins can pop up out of the ground during a flood, so many people are interred in small vaults or mausoleums above ground which is why our cemeteries are sometimes called cities of the dead. Our cemeteries are quite beautiful. The vaults look like little houses.
Since my birthday is All Saint's Day, I often spent my birthday in the cemetery as a child with my grandma, tending the graves of family. My maternal and paternal relatives are all buried in the same cemetery. I feel at home in that cemetery since all my relatives are there. I think cemeteries are beautiful peaceful places. If I have a bad day, I can go walk around a cemetery and feel better. Some tombstones are pretty, some are sad, there are even some tombstones that have a bit of humor to them.
Here is one of my favorites tombstones.
http://www.simplelivingforum.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=985&d=1349816446 (http://www.simplelivingforum.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=985&d=1349816446)
Seriously, the nephew who bought this tombstone for his aunt wrote more about HIMSELF on it than he did about her. How odd! I have never seen anything like it.
He actually inscribed it with " This monument and inscription sent as a loving tribute from her nephew, Henry Kirk White, Birmingham, Alabama, 1904
My sister's birthday is also on All Saint's Day.
I think visiting cemeteries is actually a pretty common pastime for a lot of people. Especially historical cemeteries.
My birthday is on All Saint's Day as well. My wife and I travel a bit and always find an interesting cemetery to visit, from old country churches in the south to the above ground vaults in Paris and the American cemetery on the Normandy coast. I don't find the interest to be at all odd.
You're like my MIL, then. She LOVED cemeteries. When we stayed in LA for a couple of months, our sight-seeing trips were places like Forest Lawn and Westwood and any other cemetery we learned about.
When MIL's husband died young, at 45, she bought a plot for four at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, NY. It's actually a really beautiful cemetery. She had picked a plot up on a hill because she said her husband always liked nice views. There are a lot of famous people buried there, too.
I think the old cemeteries are kind of fun to walk around, but I personally don't feel compelled to visit my own dead relatives there. My MIL has died and became the 4th person in the plot she bought in 1965, and DH goes there every chance he gets. I have never gone to any cemetery to see my father or grandparents or anyone else.
So, I sure don't think you're alone in your fascination with cemeteries. I agree that the inscriptions are the fun part, as well as just wondering what each person's life was like.
This is a pic of a tombstone that always fascinated me as a child. It reads:
Remember Sir, as you pass by,
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, So you will be.
Remember Death and Pray for me.
http://www.simplelivingforum.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=984&d=1349816413
Thanks for letting me know that others share my interest. It's history and genealogy and I feel connected to the past. The next three pics are actually a sad story. I went to our local very old cemetery and noticed 3 children's graves, all with the same last name and they all died in the same month of the same year. Two of the children died just one day apart and one child wasn't even 2 months old. Well I just felt so bad for the parents and wondered how they died so tragically and so close together. They were and 11 year old girl, a7 year old boy and a month old baby.
So I did some research and found out that a yellow fever epidemic broke out that year. I also discovered that their father was Dr. George Humphrey Tichenor, who was a Kentucky-born physician who introduced antiseptic surgery while in the service of the Confederate States of America. He invented Dr. Tichenor’s Antiseptic Mouthwash which is still sold and is popular in the south. How sad that he was a doctor and In 1863, he became an enrolling Confederate officer, and thereafter an assistant surgeon, during which time he is believed to have been the first in the Confederacy to have used antiseptic surgery. Tichenor experimented with the use of alcohol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol) as an antiseptic on wounds. He was badly wounded in the leg in 1863, and amputation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amputation) was recommended. He insisted on treating his wounds with an alcohol-based solution of his own devising. His wound healed, and he regained the use of his leg.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._Tichenor
could not even save his own children.http://www.simplelivingforum.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=988&d=1349818233http://www.simplelivingforum.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=987&d=1349818232http://www.simplelivingforum.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=986&d=1349818208
rosarugosa
10-9-12, 7:31pm
I enjoy old graveyards and I can't believe I've yet to visit Mt Auburn Cemetery, which is one of the finest around here, and is noteworthy as a public garden too.
Gravestone Artwear is a company in Maine that I like, and I've ordered a lot of shirts from them over the years. They have a shirt with the quote you like, BayouGirl. I'm always happy to support local artisans, and their stuff is pretty cool and relevant to the topic at hand, so I'm sharing a link. I have no interest in the company other than being a satisfied customer.
http://www.gravestoneartwear.com/
I enjoy old graveyards and I can't believe I've yet to visit Mt Auburn Cemetery, which is one of the finest around here, and is noteworthy as a public garden too.
Gravestone Artwear is a company in Maine that I like, and I've ordered a lot of shirts from them over the years. They have a shirt with the quote you like, BayouGirl. I'm always happy to support local artisans, and their stuff is pretty cool and relevant to the topic at hand, so I'm sharing a link. I have no interest in the company other than being a satisfied customer.
http://www.gravestoneartwear.com/
What a cool link. They aren't grave robbers, they are grave rubbers. I admit to using paper and chalk or pencil to to make a rubbing/etching of a tombstone that I find interesting.
Sad Eyed Lady
10-9-12, 8:02pm
Me too BayouGirl - love visiting cemeteries, especially old ones and seeing the stones and what is inscribed on them. I walk in our local cemetery here in my small town, and I do this for the fact that there are enough hills there to give a good workout, and mostly because of the peacefulness of the place. Thanks for posting!
Simplemind
10-9-12, 8:44pm
Love that website rosarugosa.
Oh honey, I'm a goth girl at heart. Many years ago I went to my city's famous old Victorian cemetery and took lots of blk & white photos of gravestones. Not unusual, but what was unusual for me was that I spent $$$ developing them in a large format. I didn't spend much money back then.
NOLA's old St. Louis cemetery makes me weak at the knees when I see photos of it. Someday I hope to visit there.
I had a rubbing of Jane Austen's gravestone, taken when I was 15 years old at Winchester Cathedral in England. While they didn't let anyone take rubbings, I didn't really know that, and took one anyway. Wish I still had that great thing, it would be framed and hanging in my home.
My "goth garden" has as it's theme: death. Along with with gothic architectural elements. I'll see if I can get some photos inserted here.
Wonderful pictures, BayouGirl! I enjoy cemetery walks, looking at all the beautiful stones and markers.
I love cememteries too. My Grandma used to take us visiting various cemeteries near where she grew up in Wisconsin and tell us stories about all the people she knew there, especially our deceased relatives. The stories were tragic and funny and warm and everything in between.
She told us about her grandfather, who had been killed in a logging explosion and burried late in the fall. He had not gotten his headstone the following spring when, by mistake, the church built a shed on top of his grave. They decided that he had been a fairly practical person and wouldn't have wanted them to go to the trouble of moving the shed, so they put a plaque on the shed in his memory.
The cemetery where my Grandfather was burried had lots of interesting headstones and stories. There was my mom's cousin who died in a cliff jumping accident and her friend from high school who died playing "chicken" in the road. Many of the headstones were old, but the strangest one was from the 1970s. It was acrylic, or some such thing, and made to look like an aquarium. It was in pretty bad shape by the mid to late 1980s when I was a kid and the last time I went there I couldn't find it. Maybe someone decided that it was a crackpot idea to begin with and replaced it with an actual stone. It did make me wonder an awful lot about the man who was buried there. Something tells me he was a character.
My favourite was a cemetery she took us to that she now doesn't seem to remember, but both my sister and I do. It was down several stretches of winding dirt roads, through farm fields and woods, back where no one would think to look. All of the stones there were older and a huge number of them were children, many of whom died the same year. My grandma told me the story of one little girl who my great-uncle Paul had saved from drowning, but she had died a year later of influenza. In amongst the weathered headstones was a small chapel. It was remarkably well preserved and tended for a cemetery that, otherwise, seemed long forgotten. There were even candles lit by the altar. Both my sister and I said that it seemed like a place taken straight from some Gothic novel, like the kind of place that can only be found if it wants to be. I wish I knew where it was.
Me too. There is a tiny one in the middle of our neighborhood where the original settler families of the area from the 1800s are buried. I can only imagine their lives as they battled weather, disease and Comanches. But still so oddly comforting to see it nestled between the houses that were built around it in the 1950s...a constant reminder of our history and impermanence.
BayouGirl
10-10-12, 2:55pm
I'm glad to see that there are so many others who see the peaceful beauty and the interesting things in cemeteries. There is a cemetery in our small town that I haven't gotten to yet. It is a small square of land surrounded by thousands of acres of sugarcane. You can only see it when they harvest the sugarcane and the land is bare so it stands out. I am so curious. I just have to go see it and take some pictures.
It's quite a ways off the road so it will be a bit of a hike but I am up for the task. If anyone happens to see me and asks BayouBoy what the heck I was doing, he will say " She's throwed off and she's been that way since I got her at the Bass Pro Shop" (where we had our first date). "Throwed off" is his way of saying that I'm strange.
I enjoy strolling old cemeteries too. Many of the older ones in Germany (and Ireland) are flowerbeds with edging and everything, so to stroll a graveyard there is like going to a park with all these tiny, 6X3 foot flowerbeds. In Japan they are extremely crowded, as is everywhere else, and the Japanese take very seriously the care of their ancestors graves/remains.
One of the most interesting ones i saw was in Kittery Maine where my mom and I had stopped to pick blackberries in an old graveyard. At the edge of the sea, part of the graveyard had crumbled into the ocean, and I could see a gravestone lying crooked on a little land shelf about 4 feet below the level of the yard. I climbed down to read it and it said, "Here lies the remains of an unknown woman, pulled from the sea by the Friends of Kittery, and buried here." and then the date. 18 something.
BayouGirl
10-10-12, 4:52pm
My niece told me I need to to go to the cemetery in the town next to us because there is a grave with a tombstone that has only one word on it. It simply says "DUDE". Ok, this I have to see (and take a pic of course).
One thing I particularly like about cemeteries, is the peace, calm, and quiet they exude. I am always able to forget about the real world for time while I'm in the company of the resting.
dado potato
10-20-12, 9:13pm
The midpoint of my usual walking route is our town cemetery. I often pause to admire the monuments that survivors have placed and continue to maintain.
A high proportion of the graves are decorated with statues of the Virgin Mary, some inside a small hut to keep the elements off, but most are in the open air. I've probably noticed and placed back upright 10-12 fallen virgins this past summer, due to winds knocking them over I suppose.
There are quite a few graves that are seemingly irreligious, and I quite like them. One headstone is a giant sneaker in granite.
A monument to a Volunteer Fireman has a can of Miller High Life beer sitting at its base. Couldn't get a can of "After-Life", so High Life had to do, I suppose.
The local nursing home has a large plot for residents who died, and no one was there to claim their remains. Every deceased has a uniform white marble stone flush with the grass, recording their dates of birth and death and their name. The nursing home erected a large marble slab, rising above all these, with the name "Park Manor" on it, and the inscription: "Love is Ageless".
I love them too. There is an old country church about 1 mile from my home farm. My brother and I were hired to mow it through our Jr high and Sr high years. I really enjoyed reading the really old ones that we're hand carved. And I'd talk to the people as I'd mow, "pardon me, excuse me for disturbing your rest, sorry, etc...."
There was a wagon trail thru part of the farm and dad and I were following the trail on horseback and several farms over found an old abandonded graveyard in a grove of woods. It was completely spiritual to know that no one else had been to that grounds in years.
Birchwood
10-24-12, 12:00pm
Cemeteries and photography does blends well.
I visited the New Orleans Cemetery years ago as well as the old Boston cemeteries and took a lot of memorable
pictures.
One of my best photo was a July 4rth celebration trip. I went to a local VET cemetery in Minneapolis and took a photo wide
angle shot of a grave with a floral arrangement which say: DAD!
JaneV2.0
10-24-12, 12:42pm
...
My favourite was a cemetery she took us to that she now doesn't seem to remember, but both my sister and I do. It was down several stretches of winding dirt roads, through farm fields and woods, back where no one would think to look. All of the stones there were older and a huge number of them were children, many of whom died the same year. My grandma told me the story of one little girl who my great-uncle Paul had saved from drowning, but she had died a year later of influenza. In amongst the weathered headstones was a small chapel. It was remarkably well preserved and tended for a cemetery that, otherwise, seemed long forgotten. There were even candles lit by the altar. Both my sister and I said that it seemed like a place taken straight from some Gothic novel, like the kind of place that can only be found if it wants to be. I wish I knew where it was.
Genealogists love old cemeteries. A little research will probably turn it up, along with pictures and a list of um, inhabitants.
JaneV2.0
10-24-12, 12:59pm
Could this be it, Stella? (from UnexplainedResearch.com)
"Church Road cemetery is the only thing that exists anymore along this narrow, dead end road. It sits atop a park-like setting in the middle of a wooded area — a place where the last burial looks to have been almost 70 years ago. Most of the gravestones date back to the 19th century.
The long walk up the hill to the St. Michael's Lutheran Cemetery only adds to the local lore that the place is haunted — a Halloween tale that Wisconsin authors and ghost hunters Chad Lewis and Terry Fisk researched and used in their book "The Wisconsin Road Guide to Haunted Locations."
Church Road is a settlement area in the town of Lewiston between Portage and Wisconsin Dells. Dean Walker, who is a member of the Lewiston Board, said he remembers a church near the cemetery in the 1940s, but it was in disrepair and no longer exists. He believes it was built around the mid-1800s."
I too love old cemeteries the older the nicer, I thought I was the only one. :|( I bike everywhere I can and am amazed at the random areas that a grave yard will be. I always pass through and read the old stones. I have a thought that no matter how big or small or fancy or plain the stone is, each person was loved by someone.
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