monuments – Catching Marbles

I’m not going to lie – life circumstances right now have sapped me of any mental energies I may be taking to pick locations as of late, so this duty has been left to my usual travel companion and this location turned out to be a real gem!

Right in the gate there was this super sad statue in front of a geese filled duck pond, er geese pond? A fountain and fall foliage brought the whole scene together like some sort of morbid post card from beyond. And this place was huge! We hadn’t gone to find anyone in specific but we did hear this was a garden cemetery with a lot of gorgeous monuments and it did not disappoint!

Near the beginning we immediately came across a bizarre stone reading, “The Man Fortune, died 1798, buried September 13, 2013. Child of God, free at last.” The grammar was particularly confusing. Was this the Man Fortune as in a fortune of the Man family or a man named Fortune?? And what was up with the dates?! It was clearly a new stone.

As it turns out Fortune was this man’s name. He was a slave, born in Africa, who served under a local doctor who decided to take advantage of his death by using his corpse as a cadaver to dissect and teach other medical students since cadavers at the time were very hard to come by, there’s only so many criminals one can hang on a given year. We can be assured this was not agreed upon by Fortune himself prior to his death and insult was added to injury as his cadaver was rendered into a skeleton that then taught anatomy students and then took up residence in a local museum until the 1940’s under the name Larry. Eventually the origins of “Larry” was discovered almost 200 years later and he was taken down from display. It wasn’t until 2013 however that someone decided to give him a proper burial in the churchyard he was baptized in a year before his death. It was apparently a big news story that got national attention although now I didn’t see a single penny on his grave.

Beyond this there were a bunch of statues of mourning women scattered throughout the cemetery, an elk on a hill overlooking everything, and a few unique monuments as well. As expected in a cemetery of this sort of wealth we also came across a number of stone masons. Everything was just electrified by the blushing trees in the background, one was so golden we took a ton of shots of it, none of which showed just how vibrant yellow it really was. We spent a few hours wandering this place. It’s hilly and with every hill there’s a new view, none of them disappointing! This place was perfect for the would-be photographer looking for an afternoon out.

Although it does not have terribly many famous names here it was still worth a good walk through and the two hours it took to get there. We had an awesome time and I would highly recommend this place!

*Credit given to my BFF for taking the cover photo. His photographic skills often surpass my own and DAMN was that a brilliant photo!

Swan Point Cemetery is a gorgeous 200 acre garden cemetery that I had been meaning to return to so I could take photos and blog it. My first visit was to find the grave of H P Lovecraft, which we did, but it was a very short visit as the cemetery was closing within the hour. This time we made sure to leave quite early so we could have the time to walk the entire grounds and I must say there was a lot to see!

I think I was struck with the diversity in this particular graveyard. There seemed to be a lot of different ethnicities calling this their last resting place. Some of the stones even had different languages on them and a lot had symbols and designs even I was at a loss to interpret – which is always great fun! And mixed among them there were mausoleums, pillars, crosses, angels of all sorts, bronze statues, and a great deal of truly creative stones. One was even in the form of a dollhouse with the front door reading, “welcome home.” In fact there was a lot of endearing messages on these stones that would melt anyone’s heart – words of affirmation and love – poems, epitaphs, and Bible verses.

I was also enamored with how many kinds of monuments there were here – everything from traditional slate stones, to simple marble, to ornately carved marble, to metal, to natural granite boulders which were probably already there, to metal and mausoleums. It gave this place great character!

And so did all the infant stones. There were a lot buried within family plots that had not only their own stones but names in recognition of their exceptionally brief existence. It was pretty clear a lot of these were likely stillbirths and it sort of hit a soft spot with me. Having toured a lot of the less wealthy cemeteries I know historically infants and toddlers frequently weren’t given stones and of the handful of infants I have found almost none of them had names – instead being listed as “baby.” Sometimes they’d be buried with their mother if she also died during the birth or shortly after. I don’t think it’s because the poor loved their children any less – I think this was more a question of who has the luxury to spend time mourning. Infant deaths have historically been very common and in those days women were usually encouraged to just move on without any real grieving period – just pretending it never happened. It was another sobering lesson on the realities of the economic classes.

Another one of these reminders came in the form of the servicemen I found – coming from each of the wars of the past century – their memorials often had whole passages written on them on how exactly they died – overseas, during battle, as a prisoner in foreign lands, or in the hospital after being injured in battle. I was not used to this. I was used to the only identification that a serviceman was buried being the flag planted aside the grave that is paid for by the state. It was a lot to take in.

Meanwhile we did manage to find the grave of H P Lovecraft. I like finding author graves… the tokens left on them are frequently interesting. Today someone had left a bottle of whisky, a woolen hat, and a series of rubber duckies. Why, I have no idea but it was fun to speculate!

All and all I had a great time and think this would be a wonderful place for a little stroll or even a picnic. It was mid October when I visited and freakishly warm at more than 70 degrees. The sun melted me into a puddle! But other than that it was very pleasant for both me and my travel companion.

Tag: monuments

Riverside Cemetery – Waterbury Connecticut

Swan Point Cemetery – Providence RI