Last weekend, I paid a visit to the Ingraham Hill Cemetery, which is a couple of miles from my house. It was founded in October of 1862. The oldest headstone I could find was from February of 1863:
There were, of course, headstones from the Civil War, although most of them were pretty dilapidated:
Here's a closeup of that marker:
I did a little research on "GAR", and here's what I found:
"The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was a fraternal organization composed of veterans of the Union Army who had served in the American Civil War. The successor organization is the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW). Founded by Benjamin F. Stephenson on April 6, 1866 in Decatur, Illinois, the organization was based partly on the traditions of Freemasonry, and partly on military tradition, being divided into "Departments" at the state level and "Posts" at the community level; military-style uniforms were worn by its members. It reached its largest size in 1890, with 490,000 members. There were posts in every state in the U.S., and several posts overseas." - Courtesy of the Civil War Militaria For Sale website.
Here's another marker, for the I.O.O.F, or International Order of Odd Fellows. According to their web site, FLT stands for Friendship, Love, Truth. Awwww ... I need a hug.
The children's headstones are always heartbreaking:
He died in 1894, "Aged 4Ws 7Ds, Gone but not forgotten". Jeezus.
And then there are the forgotten headstones, the ones the woods have taken over:
I dunno. I kind of like the idea of a headstone out in the middle of the woods, surrounded by trees.
4 comments:
I'm trying to figure out "Aged 4Ws 7Ds". Isn't that 5ws?
I visited an old cemetery in Highland, NY. There were two very old headstones between which a tree had long ago been planted. The tree was huge, beautiful, so old and so big that it had grown into, was absorbing, the stones on either side.
One day I happened to be there when the old caretaker came by. He swore at the tree and said that as soon as they could scrape together the money, that old tree was going to be cut down and the stump removed. I asked why, and he said, "Look what it's doing to the stones! That's disgraceful!" I disagreed. Someday I'd like to go back and see if it's still there.
That is also the cemetery that had a huge chunk of translucent pink quartz as a marker on one old grave. The top was polished, and that's where the inscription was. The name and date seemed to float in a pink cloud. The next time I went, the quartz was gone. Someone had stolen it.
~~Silk, yeah, that math had me kind of baffled. It's like, what, were there EIGHT days a week back then? But then I felt bad for dissing an infant's tombstone.
And I will admit, some of those tipped-over headstones were ... well ... tempting. Or WOULD be, if I didn't know that karma would kill me dead. I wish there were tombstones that you could buy ... like, I don't know, ones that people ... weren't using anymore? Oh hell, that made no sense. There's something wrong with me, isn't there?
I think it's an M - so, 4 months and 7 days.
Kris
THAT makes sense.
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