Cemeteries, Windows into our Past - Sometimes Beautiful, Sometimes Ugly, But Always Interesting

[Pool Boy]

History seemed to be the best sub-category for this. Moderators feel free to move it as you see fit.

Cemeteries are of interest to my wife and I. Full of history, art, landscaping, peace and solitude and more. We often visit cemeteries in our travels, to see what they look like, to see how the dead are honored, to find the oldest grave, looking for art, and getting away from where people are for some solitude and a connection to the space we are in - close to home or on our travels.

Some cemeteries are hallow, like all of the military cemeteries filled with the dead of war and struggle. They are uniform (and honestly boring, visually) and give you pause to absorb the magnitude of loss due to war. Some are beautiful, like many in Germany - gardened and impeccably maintained. Some are above ground, like in New Orleans. Some are decrepit, like New Orleans. Some have amazing natural landscapes, like those in Savannah, GA. Others have rolling hills or small ponds. I love them all.

We just got back from visiting Greenmount Cemetery and New Cathedral Cemetery in Baltimore, MD. Green mount seems older, and more hodgepodge, the way I like it. All of the tombstones are above ground (again my preference). Many of the graves date back to the early 1800s when it opened. It is almost full, too.  It is a rolling set of hills, and surrounded by a high wall, keeping the hum of the city at bay. John Wilkes Booth is buried there, as is Enoch Pratt, among many other notables (famous or infamous). We saw 3 raptors until the grounds as well as a fox checking us out from a distance. Lots of funeral art and sculpture too. Very well maintained and place of solitude and peace.  New Cathedral seems younger, at least where most are buried. And I think it is run by the arch diocese of Baltimore. The older areas are mostly near the top of the rolling hills. It is a bit of a tragedy that it is not better maintained. It is not poorly maintained, but there are headstones that need to be set more vertically and some leftover underbrush that needs dealing with. But there are SO MANY angels atop markers, some seem like copies from the statues of the bridges near the castle by the Vatican I swear.

Part of my interest in cemeteries is rooted in a desire to follow our genealogy - easier to do in the USA for my wife, as most of my ancestors are in Europe. So we've explored for graves of her ancestors in Pennsylvania. But we stumbled upon Find-A-Grave. It is a website, now with an app, that lets you make requests for graves to be found for you, and where you, as a graveyard nerd, help others out by trying to find graves for others. It's fascinating.

Anyone else a cemetery nerd?

[DonRocks]

History seemed to be the best sub-category for this. Moderators feel free to move it as you see fit.

[Events and Gatherings?]

[dcandohio]

History seemed to be the best sub-category for this. Moderators feel free to move it as you see fit.

Cemeteries are of interest to my wife and I. Full of history, art, landscaping, peace and solitude and more. We often visit cemeteries in our travels, to see what they look like, to see how the dead are honored, to find the oldest grave, looking for art, and getting away from where people are for some solitude and a connection to the space we are in - close to home or on our travels.

Some cemeteries are hallow, like all of the military cemeteries filled with the dead of war and struggle. They are uniform (and honestly boring, visually) and give you pause to absorb the magnitude of loss due to war. Some are beautiful, like many in Germany - gardened and impeccably maintained. Some are above ground, like in New Orleans. Some are decrepit, like New Orleans. Some have amazing natural landscapes, like those in Savannah, GA. Others have rolling hills or small ponds. I love them all.

We just got back from visiting Greenmount Cemetery and New Cathedral Cemetery in Baltimore, MD. Green mount seems older, and more hodgepodge, the way I like it. All of the tombstones are above ground (again my preference). Many of the graves date back to the early 1800s when it opened. It is almost full, too.  It is a rolling set of hills, and surrounded by a high wall, keeping the hum of the city at bay. John Wilkes Booth is buried there, as is Enoch Pratt, among many other notables (famous or infamous). We saw 3 raptors until the grounds as well as a fox checking us out from a distance. Lots of funeral art and sculpture too. Very well maintained and place of solitude and peace.  New Cathedral seems younger, at least where most are buried. And I think it is run by the arch diocese of Baltimore. The older areas are mostly near the top of the rolling hills. It is a bit of a tragedy that it is not better maintained. It is not poorly maintained, but there are headstones that need to be set more vertically and some leftover underbrush that needs dealing with. But there are SO MANY angels atop markers, some seem like copies from the statues of the bridges near the castle by the Vatican I swear.

Part of my interest in cemeteries is rooted in a desire to follow our genealogy - easier to do in the USA for my wife, as most of my ancestors are in Europe. So we've explored for graves of her ancestors in Pennsylvania. But we stumbled upon Find-A-Grave. It is a website, now with an app, that lets you make requests for graves to be found for you, and where you, as a graveyard nerd, help others out by trying to find graves for others. It's fascinating.

Anyone else a cemetery nerd?

I am fascinated by cemetaries, having grown up in New Orleans. Metairie Cemetery is truly splendid, and survived Katrina largely unscathed.

Boston, obviously, is a great cemetery city. I've walked around lots of small town cemeteries here in Ohio, and the older ones teach quite a bit of state history.

There's a Louisiana artist named Kathleen Lemoine who painted amazing large-scale New orleans cemetery scenes, with a kind of Georgia O'Keeffe starkness. I don't know if she still paints those scenes. I wish I had bought one before she got popular!

[Pool Boy]

Some funeral places have pictures of the loved ones since lost. Some are stark and bare. Some are religious - even extremely so (me being an atheist does not get in my way of appreciating those who walked before me, or walk with me now, people believe what they believe on the religion front and I am cool with whatever that might be, as long as it does not involve harming anything). Some involve death faces or masks or skulls. Some are bizarre. All are uniquely interesting.

One place that befuddles me is Arlington National Cemetery. It's exquisite in its uniformity, and it's rolling nature adds to its allure. I, personally, honor each and every person whose grave I view and enquire upon. However, I got yelled at when I walked in to the grassy areas where the funeral markers are -- why? Am I disgracing them? Am I not being respectful when clearly I am? This is really, really weird. How can you honor an individual soldier if you cannot know his name or some element of his life? As I said, a befuddlement.

There was one up on the coast north of SF on the coast of California that was such a beautiful setting. No marker was needed, but one was there and it was fine and simple. If only you could know that your loved ones that leave you could have such a view forever, But for me I know dead is dead and it is only a human desire to know your dead are honored and cherished.

These places that our dead lie are amazing beautiful places and we should embrace them.

[The Hersch]

I love burial grounds, but not all of them equally. I have mixed feelings about Arlington Cemetery. It's in an obviously very beautiful setting, along the Virginia bluff above the Potomac, and has some really poignant historical connections. The great Montgomery Meigs had the idea of turning Robert E. Lee's plantation into a burial ground for Union dead not only because it was a great setting for such a memorial plot, but to rub Lee's treason in his face. My father, who was a Navy bomber pilot in the Second World War, is buried there. I've remarked on occasion that if it weren't so much trouble I'd go dance on his grave. All of my father's children hated him, and the forty years that have passed since his death have only partially blunted those feelings. But then my dear mother, who was widely beloved, died last month. She, too, served in the U.S. Navy during the War, and her ashes will be buried with military honors in the same plot with my father's remains, according to her wish. I'm not sure why she wanted to be buried with the vicious old bastard, but we're honoring her wishes. Her funeral will be the first time I've been to my father's grave since he was buried in 1975. So as I say I have mixed feelings about Arlington.

The loveliest cemetery in these parts, I think, is Oak Hill in Georgetown. It's a nice place to spend an hour or two on a beautiful day.

[Pool Boy]

I really love the super overgrown cemeteries too. There's a great big HUGE cemetery near Vienna that takes a train ride to get to. The first part you walk in to before it gets maintained and groomed is the old jewish section. It is massively overgrown, but it is amazing in its own way.

As for the parts of people that are buried in cemeteries, I have my own position. Dead is dead and they are gone. Where their body becomes the earth once more is almost irrelevant. I hope i go in the sea or on the wind or become a tree.

[The Hersch]

I really love the super overgrown cemeteries too. There's a great big HUGE cemetery near Vienna that takes a train ride to get to.

I guess you don't mean Vienna Virginia?

Highgate Cemetery in north London is (or was 25 years ago when I was there) quite overgrown, except the area around Karl Marx's grave, which is neatly manicured. I gather that one is no longer able to enter the cemetery and wander around on one's own. That has become true of far too many places in our modern world, like the U.S. Capitol.

[Pool Boy]

Sorry, yes, Vienna (naturlich, Wien) Austria. They had an amazing section honoring Russian soldiers that died while taking back the city from the Germans.