Gravestone Project- First Attempt

I dragged my poor husband out to Sharp Cemetery after work on Wednesday to attempt my first set of data for The Gravestone Project.

I chose that location over Killeen City Cemetery because Sharp Cemetery is smaller and more remote, which means there were likely to be fewer people to be offended by and/or ask awkward questions about what those two crazy people were doing to the gravestones with all those weird instruments.

The "new" GPS (actually a fifteen-year-old Magellan GPS 2000 in suprisingly good condition, which is very basic but does what I need it to do) works pretty well if you give it a minute or to to pick up enough satellites. I knew this already because I spent Wednesday morning at work playing with it, and I now have a partial GPS plot of the funeral home to show for it. Locations were easy enough as a result.

Determining the direction the gravestones were facing was also pleasantly simple despite the fact that I forgot to bring a compass (no excuse since I own three or four) thanks to the fact that Sharp Cemetery is coveniently laid out on pretty close to exact east-west lines (who needs a compass when you have a beautiful sunset because you put off the trip until too late in the day?) so all of the graves are facing either due east or due west, and it's not hard to tell those two apart, especially in the late evening.

Measurements were slightly more problematic. I had acquired a nice set of digital calipers on Amazon.com, and except for one afternoon of enthusiastic fiddling with them, I hadn't really spent as much time practicing measurements as I should have before actually going to the cemetery. I quickly discovered that the digital calipers were technically easier to read than the analog ones I had used back in grad school, but slightly trickier; I must have measured the same spot on one particular marker five or six times, because I kept getting different readings on my calipers.

Determining ground level- which is important in the placement of the measurements, and which also has to be recorded if you're measuring a gravestone on a pedestal, which most of the marble ones at Sharp Cemetery seem to be- was also a little tricky thanks to uneven ground and thick tufts of dried grass. I had forgotten something vital about field work of any sort, in any discipline- it's never as cut-and-dried or neat as the plan says it should be.

By the time we had to leave, after less than an hour of working time- we were late to our planned dinner anyway- we only had one set of measurements which I didn't quite trust, and I was grumpy, frustrated, and disappointed. My remarkably patient husband chalked it up to a learning experience and made a few helpful suggestions, mostly centered on practice, instruction-reading, and a few more items of equipment, like a small level.

With that in mind, I'm hoping to make another attempt this weekend, hopefully with better and more useful results.

Wednesday's Child: Ruby Lee Overton

Ruby Lee Overton (1910-1914) has a pretty marble gravestone beneath a tree in Sharp Cemetery, with a bench alongside it. It's a pleasant and peaceful spot.


Her stone is engraved with a dove carrying an olive branch, imagery reminiscent of the Noah's Ark story.


The allusion is particularly evocative combined with her epitaph, which reads, "Our darling one hath gone / before to greet us on the / blissful shore."


Reading that verse and looking at the image of the dove, I thought of the story of the dove being sent out from Ark to seek dry land- shore- and returning with an olive branch as proof of its presence; compare this to the idea of a little child going before her parents to a metaphysical "shore"; the image of the dove and its assurance that something was there waiting must have been spiritually comforting in that context.

RUBY LEE
Dau. of
J.A. & M.A.
OVERTON
BORN
OCT. 22, 1910
DIED
JULY 11, 1914
Our darling one hath gone
before to greet us on the
blissful shore.

The sources I have read on gravestone iconography describe the lamb as a symbol of innocence primarily used on children's gravestones, but in my wanderings through local cemeteries, I have so far noticed that doves seem to be as common a symbol on children's graves as lambs, though neither doves nor lambs seem to be exclusively children's symbols, as I have mentioned before.

I am in the process of collecting some data on this to try to determine whether a pattern of age or gender distribution in the use of either of these symbols actually exists, at least in my area.

Silent Sunday: We all must die and rest

Worldless Wednesday: Among strange friends

Tombstone Tuesday: Portraits set in stone

A few days ago I read an article about something called an "e-tomb," which appears to be a solar-powered electronic grave marker which stores the deceased's pictures, videos, blog posts, archives from social networking sites, etc. so that visitors to the grave can access it by plugging a bluetooth device into the grave marker itself. The article doesn't indicate exactly what stage of development this product is in, but I think it's sort of an interesting concept. The information about the dead inscribed on most gravestones is often beautifully presented and accompanied by some lovely artwork, but tends to be pretty bare in terms of actual data, never mind giving a real sense of personality or life.

Walking through our local city cemetery on Sunday morning, I was reminded that some gravestones already incorporate a very low-tech way to display a reminder of what the deceased was like in life- photographs.


These photos are customarily formal portraits, but sometimes even a formal posed portrait can reveal a real moment of life and humanity- discomfort and displeasure with uncomfortable dress clothes and stiff poses, for instance.


I had been under the impression that the inclusion of memorial photos as part of the grave marker itself was an older style, but I saw a personally surprising number of quite recent gravestones at this particular cemetery with photographs set into them, and a quick Google search demonstrates that at least a handful of marker companies do offer this service, in the form of ceramic plaques.

Older gravestones with photos held a photo behind a pane of glass; I remember once seeing a stone at an old, poorly-tended cemetery in the college town where I used to live, which had a shallow oval recess in the stone where the photograph would have rested. At the foot of the stone, hidden in the grass, I found some fragments of broken, dirty glass which fit into the edges of the stone "frame" perfectly.

I did not take many pictures of the more recent photographic gravestones (nor as many as I wanted of the older ones; even with an early start, triple-digit temperatures dictate short outings), but the shared headstone of the Castors was too sweet and moving to pass by.

Beneath the willow tree (a surprise)

Yesterday, while my husband was stuck on duty, I spent a very pleasant (if uncomfortably hot) Sunday morning walking through a corner of our local city cemetery.

I had come for two Find-A-Grave photo requests, John R. Smith (1837-1910) and C. H. Davis (1820-1874). I located John R. Smith after just a few minutes of walking, a towering gravestone now tilted slightly to one side, surrounded by his family in a plot full of other Smiths.

Along the way, and afterward as I walked through the rest of the section looking for C. H. Davis, I took the opportunity to admire and photograph other interesting gravestones. I was thrilled to stumble across one engraved with a willow tree, a rare choice of gravestone imagery here in central Texas where real willow trees are such a rarity.


The inscription on the stone was badly weathered and discolored here and there with stains and mold, so I could barely read it; rather than stand there in the heat, I decided to rely on my husband's fancy high-resolution camera to let me puzzle it out in air-conditioned comfort later.


Eventually, when I realized I was just wandering around in circles, I decided I would have to come back for C. H. Davis's photo request another day and get an earlier start; I was disappointed that I hadn't found his gravestone, but pleased with what I had found and the photos I had taken.

That evening, while I organized the photos from my morning expedition, I came across my willow tree. With the image on my computer screen, I noticed something I hadn't seen in the glare of the sun back in the cemetery- the name on the gravestone, faded and worn and discolored, looked a lot like "Davis", and the first letter was definitely "C". The dates were clearly legible, so I compared them with the dates for C. H. Davis on Find-A-Grave, and sure enough, I had found my second photo request without even realizing it.


Mr. Davis has a beautiful epitaph, evidently written by his wife.

"Amiable and loved husband, farewell. Thy years were few, but thy virtues many. They are recorded not on this perishing stone, but in the book of life and in the hearts of thy (word is unreadable) friends."

Silent Sunday: Seay's Stone (Killeen City Cemetery)

The Mourning Lamb

Gravestones become ubiquitous; I photograph them, transcribe them, look for connections between the names on them, and later I write about them and read about them; the image of the grave and the gravestone loses some of the stark emotional impact it has for others (this is doubly true for me since I work at a funeral home and spend large chunks of my off time with a volunteer canine team looking for the missing and most often dead).

I almost forget, sometimes, what it is I'm doing, and the reminders, when they come, are powerful.

For instance, I was flipping through some of my pictures from Sharp Cemetery just now, and came across this one, marking the grave of fourteen year old Ethan Jordan (d. 1889).


I'm struck by the lamb's pose and the emotion it conveys. Most of the lamb images I have seen on gravestones are soft and peaceful in their outlines but more formal in their poses; they are clearly resting lambs, but also clearly posed. Ethan's lamb, with its head hung low, appears to be mourning.


His epitaph also speaks of deeply felt grief.

Here lies the dearest bud
That e'er to man He giveth.
If thou wouldst know his
Present state,
Repent and seek the
Father in heaven.

(photography by dunerat)

The Gravestone Project

All that nonsense about not doing any more cemetery stuff until the weather gets cooler pretty much went out the window last week when I discovered The Gravestone Project, courtesy of EarthTrek (although I'd like to point out that I did admit that decisionw ould probably only last until I saw something irresistibly interesting).

For the record, I'm an enthusiastic, if recent, fan of "citizen science" programs in general, partly because they're a clever and cost-effective way for researchers to gather certain kinds of basic but important data, partly because they're a really great hands-on public relations and educational tool, and partly because they're a nice combination of fun, worthwhile, and interesting (I'm working on a whole other blog post about the social and cultural implications of programs like EarthTrek, sites like Find-A-Grave, and other sites and programs that link online presence with offline task completion).

The Gravestone Project aims to plot global patterns in the severity of "acid rain" based on erosion of marble, which is particularly susceptible to its effects. This is accomplished by measuring marble gravestones and comparing their thickness at the base (which is less exposed to rain), the sides about midway up (which are slightly more exposed to rain) and the top (which is the most exposed), and comparing the difference in thickness (the amount of erosion, in other words). That difference, based on the age of the gravestone, lets the researchers calculate the extent of acid rain erosion during that time period in that location.

It seems like a worthwhile project, and I expect that seeking out marble gravestones and taking the measurements will give me something additional to do on cemetery outings, along with Find-A-Grave requests and my own iconography studies. If anyone is already involved in Find-A-Grave, this might be something worth considering.

I got a nice shiny set of digital calipers on Amazon (for about ten dollars including shipping); they just arrived in the mail today, so I'm all set to get started. I'm excited; I haven't measured things in the field since graduate school.

(cross-posted on my personal blog, One Day at a Time, and my pseudo-academic blog, Books, Bones, & Stones)

Wanderings in a virtual cemetery

I spent part of a lazy Sunday afternoon today at my kitchen table playing around on Find-A-Grave, lamenting the heat and the health issues presently keeping me indoors now that I've run out of old photos and new interments to contribute to the site.

Eventually my browsing turned into flipping through local cemetery listings to locate some of the people whose services I helped with as part of my job at the funeral home. The act was meaningful to me on several levels; the sense of recognition when I saw a familiar name on the list, like bumping into someone I knew in a crowded room; the ability to leave flowers on their memorials as one last gesture of service and respect; and the reminder, on a day when I needed a boost, that in the lives of these people's families I was able to make at least small difference at a moment when they needed it.

As I read through the list of names, looking for those I recognized, I noticed several family names that correspond with street names or park names in the area: Elms, Young, Conder, Swope, Rancier, and others. These brought a different, less personal sense of recognition, and a reminder of how much local history is contained in these older cemeteries. You could trace the whole history of the community from the names and dates on these burial lists, and the relationships pieced together between them.

(Cross-posted on my personal blog, One Day at a Time)