In his travels, Rick noticed a cemetery with some unusual monuments. It was still rather warm today, so we took a ride in the S to check it out. I brought the camera along. Not sure if any of you have interest in this sort of thing, but I thought I'd share the photos.

I'm not sure of the significance of some of these monuments/engravings, maybe someone can enlighten me?

What really stood out was the number of obelisks...we rarely see those at the cemeteries where our parents were buried




The one great advantage of obelisks, pilaster columns and pedestals is the available space for inscriptions. Where headstones and markers only have one inscription face, obelisks, columns and pedestals provide at least four inscription faces. These types of monuments are usually found on family burials or those of people of high social status

A few of the individual ones..







There were also individual family plots with their own fences. This one was weird


Many of the stones have a moss type growth on them, which obscures reading the information




Many people passed away young, we saw a few of the "lamb" monuments, it seemed they were at the gravesites of children.


A civil war casualty


more.....

 

We saw this and didn't know what it meant...



Google tells me this:
The Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF), also known as the Three Link Fraternity, is an altruistic and benevolent fraternal organization derived from the similar British Oddfellows service organizations which came into being during the 18th century, at a time when altruistic and charitable acts were far less common.[1] In the U.S., it is a Mutual Benefit Corporation

These stones also had links on them...maybe they were also members?


Not sure the significance of the broken column on this grave stone. Her spouse next to her had one. Google tells me: Broken Column: Usually in the classical Greek style or with a tapering shaft. Originated in England about 1815. Denotes the burial spot of a child or young person whose life was cut short.

Maybe they lost a child?


I've never seen anything like this before


Mausoleum overgrown with vines


The door looked as if someone threw paint at it, but it's just some kind of growth


Doris must have liked pink...never seen a stone like that before


He was obviously a car guy. Anyone know the significance of leaving pennies on a grave stone?


A different way to spend a day, that's for sure.

 

For a school project I had to bring the kids over to one of the older cemeteries.
One thing that stood out is they used to put the day of death on the marker.
I don't recall the year but somewhere in the mid 1700's, there was a family which over a period of around 10 days lost 7 members.
I don't know if any one else from the family survived.
such were the gold days before medicine got so complicated, eh?

 

That's a very interesting cemetery. We walk frequently around Arlington Cemetery, since it's right up the road.

 

I love to wander around cemeteries. They are interesting.

 

We saw one site with the graves of four children. It was so common back then. Can't imagine the some people endured.

 

Nice pics. They remind me of the cemetery behind my childhood home.

Those mossy things growing on the headstones are lichens - a mutualistic relationship between certain species of unicellular algae and fungi.

 

Thanks, and thanks for the info.

I also found a little info on leaving pennies on a grave. I'm sure there are other explanations, here's what I found:
* Some people hold to the tradition of leaving something of yourself when visiting a grave. If nothing else, a coin from your pocket serves as a marker of your passage and esteem for the departed. It also signifies to any that pass by that the grave was visited, and that the deceased is well loved and esteemed and has not been abandoned or forgotten. Coins are also an older form of leaving flowers, a practice prompted by the heavy Romanticism of the Victorian era.

* Some believe that to leave a coin on a grave brings good luck. Students in some areas are known to leave pennies on the graves of their school's founder in the hopes of good luck with exams.

* Some are, perhaps unwittingly, mimicking the ancient tradition where gold coins were buried with the corpse in order to pay the toll charged by Charon, the boatman of the Underworld, for passage to the other side of the river Styx. It was considered impious not to leave this toll with the dead as it would condemn them to forever wander the shores without cease.

 

So weird that you posted this today. This week marks the 5th anniv. of my dad's passing, and I went to his cemetary this afternoon. Boy it was a nice day for a top-down drive.

I left a couple of his cufflinks at the grave site today. I drove them into the grass just so the ends show. I don't know if it's a tradition, but I have seen people put personal objects by a marker. A (Jewish) tradition that I always remember is to place stones on the marker. I do that every time I visit.

 

Five years already?

I've seen stones on markers, but never knew of the tradition.