Tombstone Tuesday: Come Ye Blessed

M.P. Beck (1860-1920) is buried in Killeen City Cemetery alongside her husband, Samuel Vivian Beck (1859-1931). Her gravestone is a beautiful podium bearing a closed book, with an open gate motif on its front above the epitaph.

This open gate iconography was evidently a popular choice for Central Texas graveston
es of the early twentieth century. I have seen and documented several in cemeteries around Killeen. Once, I mistook the open space in the middle of a particularly weathered example for a willow tree (a much rarer image in this area). Most depict an open gate with a a star in the sky on the far side of the gate. The image symbolizes the gates of heaven, open for the faithful to enter (hence the caption above the gate, "COME ALL YE BLESSED.")

Atop the podium, the closed book is a slightly less common (though not unheard of, by any means) sight in Bell County, especially in combination with the gate. Open books are slightly more common than closed ones, but either usually represents the Bible.

I am still trying to identify the plant whose branch adorns the sides of the podium. Does anyone out there have any suggestions?

Samuel Vivian Beck died eleven years after his wife, and his gravestone sits alongside hers, smaller and much simpler in a more modern style (although plenty of gravestones from the 1930s still bear more of a resemblance to Mrs. Beck's than to Mr. Beck's; the 1930s seem to have been a period of transition in gravestone art, although my evidence for that is strictly anecdotal so far).

Mrs. Beck's epitaph is weathered with age, but it still says:

M.P. Beck

wife of

S.V. Beck

Feb. 10, 1856

June 16, 1920

Gone but not forgotten

Once More, with Portraits!

Last Words is finally back, after a slightly disruptive relocation to El Paso, Texas! This week, I'll be posting the last of my photos from Killeen. On that last visit to Killeen City Cemetery back in September, I found the shared gravestone of Clinton Lewis Shafer (1886-1954) and Sadie H. (Parmer) Shafer (1890-1970).

The Parmers are a fairly prominent family in Killeen's history, and they are still part of the community; I recall serving some of Mrs. Shafer's relatives when I worked at the funeral home.

The portraits were what caught my attention, though. Gravestones and epitaphs become very familiar once gravestone photography becomes a hobby and/or mortuary iconography becomes a serious research interest, but there is something immediate and personal about seeing a person's face there that often catches me by surprise.

Portraits on gravestones were fairly popular in the early twentieth century, and black-and-white photographs set in stone dot the older sections of most cemeteries. These photographs are printed on ceramic plaques which are then mounted into an indention in the gravestone, which you can see in this (otherwise sort of oddly angled) picture of Mr. Shafer's portrait.

When researching an earlier post about portraits a few months ago, I discovered that some contemporary marker companies still offer this service, though I haven't seen many gravestones from the last couple of decades that incorporate pictures.