Lonely graves

[furtech]

The state of Indiana has an interesting policy on graves: they are protected and, when possible, restored. The history of Indiana involved a lot of small family farms and homesteads. A churchyard burial was not always possible; some churches disappeared and their graveyards were lost in the underbrush. When a gravestone is discovered, the state (I'm sure there's some department for it) will investigate, then work to make sure the site is respected (a lot of them are in the middle of vast cornfields).



Jim knew I was interested in local history and one a trip home, stopped to let me look at this small graveyard. This one had been rediscovered and renovated, with new fencing. The graves vary in condition and detail. Many of them fell over the years and broke, while anything made of wood just disappeared.



You can tell a lot about the person interred by the marker: the wealthy had large stones with names and descriptions of their circumstance.



Some are touching in their brief description; I'm sure that the locals knew who they were, but now their identities are lost in time:



This one caught my eye because of its size -- maybe 5"X6" visible -- but also because of the near-anonymity of the very brief identification.



I find it sad that most of these people are forgotten. At least these graves are in a small cemetary (probably once a churchyard). The really lonely ones are those out in the middle of the tilled fields or buried in the brush of woods.

While these graves create a somewhat meloncholy tone, at the other end of the scale a pet cemetary: I have never felt so moved (or disturbed) at the inscriptions I found at the Pet Memorial Park in Los Angeles last March . These markers are heart-wrenching. And nothing beats this gravestone for "unresolved issues"....

Comments

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

There may be some geneological resources where these forgotten people are remembered... but still, it is probably a gargantuan task.

[furtech.livejournal.com]

I think if someone -really- wanted to discover their identities, they could. Lack of curiosity, I guess. There's the foundation of an old cabin on this property and my friends were able to find out who lived there by talking to neighbors who were still alive when the cabin stood.