One of the things I enjoy most in doing genealogy is walking thru cemeteries. I like to read dates, names and the poems and quotations on all four sides of the old, old, tombstones.
Because of the cost of funerals, cremation is being used more and more. Someday cemeteries as we know them will be gone. One of my favorite tombstones is in a small cemetery not far from Lima, Ohio. It looks like a small log cabin. In a country cemetery in Newton Co. Ar. you find two stones that break your heart. One is for a little boy who lived to be three or four, next to it is a stone with his five brothers and sisters who died as little ones, all listed from the eldest to the youngest on the side of the stone. Knowing of the family we know the parents and two siblings later lived in Ok. where he became a successful businessman and was able to erect a stone but rocks still mark the graves. In Johnson Co. Ar. there is a large stone with a lady and her daughter's names on one side and her parents on the other. Way across the cemetery is the man's second wife all by herself. An Ok. cemetery has a gentlemen with a wife buried on each side of him. In Tenn. a huge walnut tree marks the site (no stones just flowers) of a man, his second wife and some of their children. It is a large cemetery with fence and all buried there are his decendents. Knowing about where the graves were they 'witched' to locate the grave sites.
Walking thru a cemetery your imagination can run away from you. Writers looking for ideas
need go no further than the nearest or perhaps the oldest cemeteryand start reading the tombstones. All sorts of plots for a best seller will come to them......... Let me know when your book is finished.
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