At a gathering in Milford, N.H., Dave Palance explained that gravestones can reveal more than names and dates.
Early death’s heads were simple skull and cross bones, but later ones are made to look like the departed. Many have wings to show that the person went to heaven. At the graves of couple Samuel and Mary Leeman, buried in a Hollis cemetery, only the husband went to heaven.
“He earned his wings, she didn’t,” Palance said. [Link]
Vickie Wendel guides cemetery tours in Anoka County, Minnesota.
Interpreting the carvings is not a perfect science, she said. For instance, a Victorian-era gravestone featuring a rosebud or lamb might indicate a child's grave. However, Wendel saw a lamb on the gravestone of an 80-year-old woman. And she was told about a family in the 1890s that planned to bury the bird it kept for a pet. Uncertain how to carve a bird, the stonecutter made a lamb instead. [Link]
Here's a weird hobby. The proprietor of this website is collecting data on hands found on headstones.
Hands are nineteenth and early twentieth century icons. They particularly interest me because they allow an immediately date range for a headstone. If only because no one else has found them peculiar enough to study, I decided to do an anthropological analysis.
Art historian Regina Haggo of Ontario likes visiting cemeteries for the pictures—like those images of God's hand pointing down ominously . . . I mean, invitingly.
Like in Judaism and Islam, only God's hand was ever depicted, because it was considered offensive to attempt to show the complete image of a being superior to humans, Haggo said. God, however, wasn't always above wearing cuffs and shirt sleeves fashionable in the 19th century, she added.But sometimes, she can't help noticing the words.
One gravemarker that she found was commissioned by a wife for her deceased husband. It read: "Rest in peace." And directly beneath that, "Until we meet again." [Link]
