I’m going to ‘adopt’ an old cemetery.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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I’m going to ‘adopt’ an old cemetery in my neighborhood. My neighborhood is a brand new subdivision, which was started about a year or so ago. Hell, my house was finished about a month or two before I moved in.

Anyway, UPS left a box on my porch at the right house number, but the wrong street. Yesterday morning on the way to work, I dropped it off at the right place, and went down the road to circle around in a cul-de-sac. As I made my lefthand circle, my headlights flashed across some tree stumps, a crapload of leaves, a deadfall, and what appeared to be a fixed, nonmoving symmetrical shape. . .

. . .now anyone knows that nonmoving symmetrical shapes in nature are pretty rare, so it immediately raised my suspicions and I stopped my truck—sure enough, it was a headstone. And I looked a little wider: there were more headstones, and an apparent boundary footstone. I opened up my survey and there appeared to be old barbed wire fenceposts, but no more fence. :curious: :cool:

Immediately, this recent thread popped into mind. I checked it out on TopoZone, and sure enough it’s there on paper (just to the left of the centering cursor), from a map I can only assume to be at least ten years old. So, it’s been noted. . . somewhere.

I’ve always had a slight thing for old graveyards. I wander through them and wonder who some of these people were. What did they do? What did they look like? How did they spend their free time? All of these people are still here, and I have to wonder, just what were their lives like? Hell, I could only hope that 200 years after I’m dead and gone, someone starts wondering about me!

It’s a little sappy, but knowing this old decrepit (and obviously abandoned) cemetery has been relatively unmolested, I think I might just start looking into it—for the historical value. Who owned the land that I now have a part of? Was there a plantation? Is it a complete family? Man alive, I can’t even figure where this is going to take me . . . :cool:

So, pictures soon to follow. I think I’m going to hit the township up in the next few days for any records they may have on the place.

Tripler
Keeping some of the passed away, alive in memory.

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Hmmm. Cemetery. New housing development. Let us know when things start coming out of your TV set.

Seriously, Tripler, that’s a really cool thing to do. I feel the same way you do about walking through an old cemetery.

What era are the graves from?

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I’m going to post to keep up with the thread.
Good job, Tripler.

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Good for you! My mom has done that to a couple of old, small cemetarieas that house ancestors of ours. Good karma.

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When I discovered the colonial cemetery on my in-law’s farm in New Hampshire, I had the almost irresistible urge to dig up one of the graves (just one I promise). I didn’t do it although I did find my shovel going deeper and deeper when I worked on it once. Later I read that it is typical for even the bones to decay after that length of time and there would be no trace of an actual body. I would have felt like a big dork if I really dig dig one up and then drove myself crazy trying to find a piece of person. Keep that in mind when you start working on it. The draw can be strong at times and it is hard to explain to passersby.

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That’s weird, Dude.

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Sweet. Hey we should all get together and do something montage style and clean it up. I dont know about the others, but I’d definitely be up for it.

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It might be for some people. However, one of my favorite classes in college was called “Bones, Bodies, and Disease” and it was taught by a mummy expert (I still see him in magazines and on TV). The classroom was specially built for the class and it had shelves surrounding the room with skeletons and mummy parts. The tests consisted of identifying the characteristics and pathology of the skeletons.

Paris lesser known catacombs that aren’t a big tourist attraction. You just walk down into these miles of tunnels and you are surrounded by the skeletons of 6 million people and many of them are arranged into stacks 8 feet high or so. You can just be there by yourself with all of them but I didn’t think it was all that creepy.

After those two experiences (plus the neuroanatomy classes in grad school), I kind of like skeletons and brains and things. I realize it isn’t nice to dig bodies up from graveyards but the older ones do tend to get depersonalized over time once you hang around them. That is why I warned the OP. He will feel it in due time.

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I appreciate it, y’all (which, I can say now that I’m a landowning ‘Southerner’).

Bear, you give me cause to have a DopeFest at my place. I’ll keep you all posted.

However, first piece of this puzzle is what the town knows, who’s buried there, and how they’re connected to the town and area (if at all). A visit is in order. Pictures to follow. . .

Tripler
From my initial glances, ain’t nobody been there in 100 years.

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Woo hoo! I’ll bring the dowsing sticks and leave my grip on reality back in Columbus! We’ll have a blast.

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Can’t imagine too many things nicer that you could do for someone(s) than to perform some ritual suggesting their life had worth and they’re not forgotton. Heck, even if they’ll never know, someone living will notice and that’s bound to elicit some some really stellar feelings in them if no one else. Nuthin’ wrong with that either. Good move, Trip!

When I was a student geologist, our professor used to take us to bleedin’ old cemeteries so we could measure wear rates on limestone tombstones. We’re talkin’ pre-marble old. You’ve got the date it was first exposed to the elements, a measurable amount eroded by wind and rain. No reason why that can’t be loosely extrapolated to cliffs with roughly the same mineralogical constituents.

On another note… my folks have an 1851 southern plantation. Most shocking to me was how far the original family plot, about a dozen and a half graves, was (and still is) from the homestead. Every bit of a mile and a quarter, although their decendants still pay homage periodically during reunions and make sure the upkeep is of a respectable standard. Now, if they’d just quit coming to our house and asking for tours.

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Let me know when the cemetery-cleaning and Dopefest is going to happen!

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good on you, tripler. much karma headed your way, i suspect.

we’re so busy looking into the future, the past is getting left further and further behind.

so to speak.

in my area (indianapolis far north side) they think nothing of tossing cemeteries that have been in place for years elsewhere just so they can put up some more damn vinyl villages (the divemaster’s word for them. pretty apt, i think).

i like cemeteries too. in fact i live right across the street from a large one and go walking in there quite often. i used to live out east, where there’s more of a sense of history than i get here in the mid of west. it’s a shame.

i’ll be keeping an eye on this thread. :wink:

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Tripler, that is tres cool. There used to be a few graves in the woods behind my grandpa’s farm when I was a kid, but the town’s historical society up and moved them. Luckily, there have been no reports of bleeding walls or anything in the area since.

When you get pics, please don’t forget to post them–I’d love to see the place!

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UPDATE!

Thanks to Bear_Nenno for reminding me that I had pictures to upload.

I sent a letter to the county inquiring about the last known owners or caretakers to this little cemetery, but unfortunately, it went unanswered as of yet. Nawth Chucka and I went over there a couple of weekends ago (when I was studying for a final–I needed a break), and took a bunch of these pictures: here.

Now some of the graves look somewhat maintained. Which makes me wonder if this isn’t already maintained by one of the churches in the area. My next step after the Holiday break? Canvass the local churches to see if they have any connection. If anyone’s got a good idea on how to start this, I’m all ears.

An interesting note, we saw just a few specific family names: Akins, Aultman, Reddy (which, Nawth Chucka pointed out to me that if you look at the dates, it looks like ‘Daddy Reddy’ lost his wife, and then went and fathered more kids while the original Reddy-kin were still out there), Shelley, Corder, etc.

I saw one that looked particularly out of place. Knowing concrete fairly well, I saw T.J. Akins who apparently died and was buried in a damn hurry based off the condition of the concrete, the writing in the surface, and location away from the family. I think this was a hasty burial. . . maybe due to a contagion?

More to follow. I will start writing letters out to some fo the churches 'round here. Hey, who do I go to to find death records on “T.J.”? The county? The township?

Tripler
Poor guy. We can’t tell if he died in '41, '43, or '45.

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Could it be that T.J.'s original stone was destroyed by vandals? If he really was buried in haste and on the cheap, maybe his death was some sort of embarrassment (hanged, killed in a brawl, or died in the bed of a paramour.)

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My thought was that perhaps the Akins’ had moved from this area by the time TJ died. They came back w/ his body, stuck him in the ground might quick and headed back to their homes.

On a side note, it was so pretty there at the beginning of sunset; I love cemeteries, it’s walking through history.

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This of any use? I noticed some info on what seems to be a larger local cemetary with some of the same names.

http://gagen.i-found-it.net/hccemeteries.html

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I believe the your cemetary is the akin-garvin cemetary:

http://gagen.i-found-it.net/houstoncemeteryproject.html#AKI

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All my friends think I’m weird because I like old cemetaries. The one in Oklahoma where my grandparents are buried is an old one. The is one grave that has two people in it. They were gansters in the Thirties, and when the G-men shot them, they ended up in so many pieces, that they were buried together.

Another grave is very sad, because a family lost four children in one month from the 'flu epidemic before WWI.

Whenever I am there, I go pay my respects at both graves.