Ping.
Probably it's a middle age thing, but I've been getting into reading old tombstones to see what I can discern about the person's life from them.
Came across a poignant one in Boston from the 1700s -- a ship's captain had a stone made for his chinese bo'sun's mate.
As someone who has tramped through woods and fields looking for lost ancestors, I think this is cool.
Thumbs up for history and honoring America's military dead.
Speaking as someone who has done genealogy for many years, this is a wonderful find. I have spent many an hour tromping through over growth looking for old family graves.
later.....
No wonder Gore lost Tn! Should have found these voters.
I visited the old city cemetery in Lexington, KY a while back, mostly to see the beautiful landscape gardening. They had a brochure telling the story of its founding.
Apparently, there was smallpox epidemic that swept the settlement in the late 1700s. The townsfolk were overwhelmed with the large number of deaths, so they created a municipal cemetery to speedily inter the victims. An interesting vignette of the tragedy was that the local town drunk and ne'er-do-well, who had been shunned and ridiculed for years, was the only person willing to take the responsibility of personally burying all of the deceased. The townspeople were so grateful that he became a local hero, such that, after he died years later, they created a very pretty special plot and headstone in his honor.
The brochure also stated that municipal cemeteries became popular due to the fact that, as private land changed hands more often, the practice of having family cemeteries became impractical, what with the need for allocating land for this purpose and the need to attend to the graves regularly.
Its amazing what you learn on idle afternoons spent in visiting innocuous places during a vacation.