Mrs. L and I find cemeteries intriguing and often visit them when traveling. Here are a few items that may be of interest.
The Freedman’s Cemetery, burial place of as many as 2,000 freed slaves and their descendants, has sat just off the North Central Expressway ever since the road was built over some of the graves 50 years ago.
New York City cemeteries have had to become as inventive as possible in creating additional interment space, narrowing pathways and creating a smaller family or joint plots. The Division of Cemeteries that govern cemeteries allows them to reclaim plots that have remained unused for 75 years if they have had no contact from the family who purchased the plot. Cemeteries can even buy back sold plots that families no longer want. Maybe not surprising then that the Division has been approached by families wanting to disinter their parents to sell the plots. When a plot at Woodlawn can be valued at anything between $6,995 and $1.6 million, this is becoming the lucrative real estate of the 21st century for many cash-poor New Yorkers.
The rarity of remaining plots has sent prices soaring. Between 2008 and last year, the cost of an in-perpetuity grave rose 40% from €11,086 to €15,528.
I’ve heard that the traditional Zoroastrian/Parsi funerary rite you mention is a lot less effective these days due to the carrion birds involved having their numbers reduced dramatically due to various ecological problems. Reportedly back in the past the birds would swarm the corpses and could have them picked down almost to the bones quite quickly, but now that is less common.
In Montreal, this street is being dug up for sewer pipe replacement. The neighboring green space was a cemetery until the 1850’s, when thousands of graves were moved to the “Protestant” Mount Royal cemetery not far away. (around the same time, other graves from other cemeteries were moved to an adjoining “Catholic” cemetery).
Bones and other artifacts have been found during the sewer construction. It’s now been about two years of specialists being on site and searching/digging for more relics.
Today, the two cemeteries occupy an area of over 400 acres (200 ha). Separated by a high fence, the only gap is where a (non-denominational) military cemetery overlaps the border. Religion is no longer a factor for burial, but the tradition seems to continue.
Every now and then, my Google-Fu is exceptionally strong, and I hit the right keywords.
This one is probably the strangest one I’ve seen; I saw it 30-something years ago when I was going to a track meet (the high school is visible to the left of the red 18-wheeler cab), and was pretty shocked back then- I remember driving by and thinking “Wait… were those gravestones?”
Both are essentially small 19th century family cemeteries that in the case of the Spring one, the highway department just built around, and in the case of the other, the descendants still own the land and maintain it.