I was creeping about in an old cemetery yesterday, looking for dead people. I’m going to give my boyfriend a mystery to solve for Christmas, and I need a young lady dead sometime between 1891, when the local newspaper I can get on microfilm started, and 1900, when it isn’t any fun anymore. I also need a grave that looks cool and it would be really nice if it’s got a tree or some bushes or something so nobody notices me digging holes and burying clues, because that could be hard to explain. I also need to remember where it is, and I need a bunch because what I really need is an obituary to lead him to the grave, and obviously not everybody got an obituary in the local paper.
Anyway. I found one that was just PERFECT - big creepy angel, Masonic husband (also a theme in my mystery), dead infants… then I did the math and figured out she was a hundred and ten years old, which kind of quashes my illicit romance plot.
1790-1900. Jesus Christ, can you imagine? She may have died in a house with electric lights in it, and she was born when our constitution was a whole year old. I know it’s a young country, but wow - it’s a really young country. Makes you think, don’t it?
I didn’t think to take pictures - I was really regretting that when I was thinking about how damned hard it was going to be to find the “good” graves again. I made totally incomprehensible notes - “tree by road and six babies”?