By Grover Brinkman
Visitation to old cemeteries might be related to genealogy, growing in popularity. For here are found ancient markers, the patine of time often dulling the inscriptions, where “Aunt Hattie” or “Uncle Joe” were laid to rest long ago.
These older cemeteries really are the “quiet newspapers” that chronicle the past. Anyone who browses an old cemetery knows how true this is. Often the only record available to a genealogist or historian is the faded lettering on an old marble or granite slab.
Once in a while one finds poetic veres on a gravestone that transcends the ordinary, such as the eulogy on Ann Rutledge’s grave, Lincoln’s beloved:
Out of me unworthy and unknown
The vibrations of deathless music!
“With malice toward none, with charity for all,”
Out of me forgiveness of millions toward millions,
And the beneficent face of a nation
Shining with justice and truth.
I am Ann Rutledge who sleeps beneath these weeds
Beloved of Abraham Lincoln,
Wedded to him, not through union
But through separation.
Bloom forever, O Republic,
From the dust of my bosom!
The author of this verse is Edgar Lee Masters, well-recognized poet. He sleeps in the same cemetery at Petersburg, Illinois, but his grave has very little visitation.
An unusual cemetery, quite large, dominates the tiny community of St. Rose, Illinois. Upon sight, one realizes that here is something different. Then it comes into focus. All of the tombstones are identical in size and shape, an effort at equality, started years ago by a local priest, and still followed.
In the Presbyterian cemetery at the Ozarks town of Potosi, Missouri, one finds a plain box-like monument marking the grave of Moses Austin. But Austin is called the “Father of Texas.” He settled more than 300 Americans in the Lone Star State to give him that honor. The long ride back to Missouri for more immigrants destroyed his health, and he died in Potosi. Texans have since tried very hard to have his body removed to Texas, to be buried in the state cemetery at Austin, but so far Potosi has refused permission.
The late poet, Edgar Lee Masters, used an old cemetery at his home at Lewistown, Illinois, to pen his book of verse called Spoon River Anthology. It evoked some heated comment in its day. The book, now out of print, is a rare collectors’ item.
During the past century, objects depicting one’s profession often were found in cemetery sculpture. Colonel Sanders of fried chicken fame has his tombstone carved in the shape of a Kentucky mansion portico, with his bust in the center. At Franklin, Illinois, a headstone in the city cemetery has an etching of an old time steam threshing engine. The man who sleeps beneath the stone was a threshing rig owner who loved steam engines.
Upon a slab marking the grave of Samuel Hawken, early Missouri gunsmith, is carved the following: “Kit Carson and Buffalo Bill were among those who would use no other rifle if a Hawken was available.” An ancient cemetery in Illinois has a tombstone upon which a wicked-looking knife is engraved. Local statisticians say that the weapon caused the death of the man who sleeps here.
Near Vienna, Illinois, is a granite monument to a pig, King Neptune, perhaps one of the few tombstones to a porker in the world. But this pig was special. It was a mascot of the U.S. Navy, and during World War II spearheaded a bond campaign that sold $19 million in war issues “to save a free world.”
Travel to any state in the union and if one checks the cemeteries, the oddities are there. Not only in tombstones but in epitaphs. To remember a loved one with an appropriate verse on the tombstone goes back to Egyptian and Greek antiquity. Sometimes the verses are humorous. For instance, “I told you I was sick!” was found on a stateside tombstone. Or the verse on the tomb of a Pennsylvania spinster: “No hits, no runs, no heirs!” All over the west, especially in boothill cemeteries, one finds this simple epitaph for horse thieves, outlaws and owlhoots: “He died of lead poisoning.”
There is no more solemn a subject than death. Yet the subject is treated from many angles in our cemeteries. Sometimes the amazing, such as the one in Franklin County, Illinois: Lazarus and Nancy Webb, 15 children, 151 grandchildren, 816 great-grandchildren, 1192 great-great-grandchildren, 75 great-great-great-great-grandchildren. Below this record of a population explosion is a verse from Exodus 1:7: “Go ye forth and replenish the earth.”
In Missouri, one finds the grave of an auto executive who evidently loved his car, for on the headstone is an etching of a Cadillac.
There are large tombstones and small ones. At West Salem, Illinois, site of the only Moravian church in the state, the tombstone of a child, Emma Pfeil, is no larger than a building brick.
At Benville, Illinois, the direct opposite is true. The tomb of Robert Earl Hughes, the world’s heaviest man, weighing 1,041 pounds at his death, is triple the size of any other stone in this rural graveyard.
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