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It’s been a while since we visited a good cemetery and this was the perfect day for it. With the last blushes of Autumn foliage just glowing under the sunlight we had more than what we had asked for. My companion picked this cemetery, promising we’d see a little village – marble sculptures of people’s real homes. What we didn’t realize is this place was the size of a small city and had a lot to look at. We were there for a few hours and only saw half of it – sadly the half that did not contain said village, so I will have to come back for a part two for that one!
We were fortunate enough to realize they had maps and information at the visitor’s center (as they were fresh out at the usual welcoming board outside.) We chose the map that listed where all the interesting burials were with little blurbs about each. You never know what you are going to find when you show up to these cemeteries and this particular tour claimed to have the Catholic inventor of birth control (a man, if you’re wondering, by the name of John Rock) the “father of cheap postage,” (Lysander Spooner) as well as the inventor of the fountain pen (Varney Waterman,) the “father of the eight hour work day” (George McNeill,) “the father of the industrial revolution” (Francis Cabot Lowell,) and the inventor of some sort of button hole making machine (John Reece.) The latter had his device carved into his mausoleum and the pamphlet said he had created it despite having only a grade school education. I LOVE hearing stories like that having failed high school myself. (I did eventually get a GED but I still am pretty bitter about the whole ordeal.) In juxtaposition of that there were plenty of rich white dudes who owned numerous probably evil institutions. They always seem to make the most over the top grave monuments for themselves that feels just a tad desperate. DON’T FORGET ME!!!
Combating the bad mojo from the uber wealthy there was also a monument to fire fighters, another to civil war veterans, a plot dedicated to a home for orphans and “aged women,” and the first crematorium in the US that boasted Lucy Blackwell Stone as one of it’s first clients. There even a number of poets and writers including e e cummings. I’m guessing he died broke as his stone was merely a flat foot stone, properly capitalized, on a distant relative’s plot. I remember being forced to read his poetry in school but I can’t remember a damn one of them. I just looked him up and I guess he was a bit of a right wing twatwaffle. I didn’t even know that was possible for a poet. I stand corrected.
Scattered throughout was some of the most overly dramatic sculptures, statuary, and stained glass mausoleums we could have asked for. All given additional flare by the backdrop of some stunning Autumnal foliage. It made me think, “Someday I hope someone buries me or scatters my ashes under the shade of a gloriously orange tree.” Other stones, like the two life-size children (Grace Sherwood Allen and Louis Mieusset respectively), stood in plastic cages to preserve them but gave the eerie feeling they were being contained. For the love of God, no one make a life-size me to put under a cemetery aquarium. Just NO. However do feel free to do something so incredibly meta as to put up a monument dedicated to monument makers like seen in Death Strays the Hand of the Sculptor. (Also, since when are we naming the monuments??)
This was also the first cemetery I’ve been to that had hundred of Canadian geese just wandering around like they owned the place. And beyond them? A gaggle of wild turkeys! And above our heads? The screeching of a hawk. This was apparently bird heaven.
I took SO MANY photos. I have to cut them down so I don’t overburden you all but seriously this place was gorgeous. So gorgeous I looked past their weird no jogging rule (not that I was going to try jogging but still…) Well worth a visit for all my fellow taphophiles, art lovers, and amateur historians.
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