ypsi~dixit

This cemetery would be a useful adjunct to a class entitled "Grave Iconography, 1840-2005." We saw lots of new examples of grave iconography. Here, a celestial hand lifts what appears to be the deceased's soul into the heavens.

The hand's contemporary analog.

Another icon new to us was this scroll with an arrow.

On another grave appeared the arrow-scroll's modern equivalent, a computer.

In addition to the computer, many other graves also showed personal touches, like this grave highlighting a two-car garage...

..and this one with a horseshoe affixed to the headstone with an adhesive plastic towel hook. Dangling from the horseshoe is a yellow ribbon and a tiny wooden plaque reading, "You Put a Ringer Around My Heart!!"

This triple grave proved most mysterious. It is the tragic grave of three young children who all died within a week in late August-early September 1878. An inscription says all three are the children of one James Sherman and his wife Mary. However, other inscriptions say the children died aged 6 years old, 3 years 6 months old...and 3 years 3 months old, an impossibility.

Next to the triple Sherman children's grave is the triple Sherman wives' grave, inscribed with the names of all 3 of his wives.

We found one amazingly beautiful concrete grave made by the unknown onetime local molded concrete grave artist whose work may also be seen in the Stony Creek Baptist cemetery (the astounding sea captain's grave) and in Highland Cemetery (one example). This artist created tree trunk themed gravestones of uncanny beauty and versimilitude.

In another region of the cemetery is a sadder use of concrete. There are many paupers' graves in Union-Udell, more than in any other cemetery we've visited. They are marked not with stones but with 6-inch metal plates with the name of the deceased spelled out in inserted metal letters. Many are mangled from lawnmowers. With this one, someone tried to preserve the plate by pouring a pool of concrete in situ at the cemetery, placing the plate in it, and affixing it with two nails on either side. There's also a bent bolt visible at top, which at one time may have supported a cross.

Many other indications of poverty appear in the cemetery. Here, a beautiful grave shows that one date was chiseled in by an amateur. Y's companion observed that this date was during the Depression, and there probably wasn't money to have it done professionally.

A closeup of the date.

Another example of poverty appears in a stone hand-made from a paving block. This, however, is a happy grave. It had been piled with potting soil and turned into a pretty seven-by-three-foot garden. We saw several examples of this unusual practice, new to us, some even with garden edgers and such garden decorations as hummingbirds and butterflies on sticks added.

Some of the poor seemed forgotten.

and some remembered.