Is anyone else interested in old cemeteries?  They fascinate me.  I regard
a cemetery as a kind of open-air reference library for genealogists and
local historians.

Has anyone gone on the famed tour of the big Ann Arbor cemetery -- the one
on Observatory?  I found a poster advertising the tour last winter, and the
Ann Arbor Observer has run an article about it

Using USGS maps and other sources, I put together a list of every cemetery
in Ingham County.  For a local history project of mine (not related to the
cemeteries but in search of the birth and death years of political figures
buried there), I have been visiting each of them in turn.  I'm more than
half done now.  The variety in cemetery styles is amazing.

Has anyone visited the Old Granary Burying Ground or the other historic
cemeteries of Boston?

31 responses total.

Is the old Granary Cemetery the one downtown?  I've been to the one
downtown where Paul Revere and other Revolutionary War luminaries
are buried.

Massachusetts is kind of interesting in that there are small cemeteries
all over.  Some of these have some very old gravestones, and some,
like the one in downtown Boston and the one near Harvard Square are
on some prime real estate.

I found a couple very interesting cemetaries in Belleville, of all places.
I read some of the tombstones and found the ones on the Clark plot extremely
interesting. Out of the entire plot, only two people had normal lifespans.
Everyone else died before they were 22 or after they were 70! *Everyone*.
There were several children's graves that were so sad. One girl drowned in
the lake when she was only 7.

It was just so odd seeing that discrepency. If you made it to 23 in the Clark
family, you were golden!

My curiosity was so aroused that I spent several hours in the Belleville li-
brary researching them. The Clarks were very instrumental in Belleville and
it was utter fascinating to see old photographs of people whose graves I saw
up in the cemetary. Up until very recently, they owned the bank and a couple
other businesses in town. The family name has died out, but there are 
descendants still living in Belleville. I almost went and interviewed them
just to talk about their family, but I never got around to it.

I think it would make a fascinating murder novel. Why did all those Clarks
die so young or so old? Hmmmmmmm?

The only cemetary I am familiar with is the one associated with 
St. Lorenz in Frankenmuth.  My grandfather probably dug 90% of the 
graves there in the past 50 years.  Somewhere over 2,500.  It's 
unbelievable how much history of the town is known to my grandparents 
because of that.

   Glenda can attest to my odd screeching of brakes when finding an
interesting looking place.  I've not done any research on it, but they
do fastinate me.  Seeing the outline of someones life is a sobering
thing.  It gets me to thinking about all the things that we have, that
they never knew about.  Also the things they had, that we have lost.

In most of southern Michigan, you'll find cemeteries dating back 100 years
or more all over the place, probably one for every ten or 20 square miles.
Certainly the average is more than one per township.  Some of these fell
into disuse and have had no burials for the last several generations; others
have continued to have at least a few burials right up to the present.

For some reason, cemeteries seem to gravitate toward being owned and run by
township governments.  Many were originally started by church organizations
or cemetery associations, but the ones that still operate that way seem to
be the exception.  Villages and cities also operate a lot of cemeteries.
In general, villages, cities, and more urban townships do a better job of
maintaining their cemeteries than rural townships do.

If you want to find the oldest part of the cemetery, go for the highest
ground.  This rule of thumb seems to apply even where the high ground is
away from the road, off to the side, whatever.  Of course, Michigan was
considerably more swampy 150 years ago than it is today.

There is a definite phenomenon of larger towns in the late 19th century
creating a new and fancy cemetery -- perhaps designed by Frederick Law
Olmsted's firm or other big-name landscape architects -- exhuming all the
bodies in the existing cemeteries, and moving them to the new one.  Lansing
moved thousands to new graves in Mount Hope in the 1880's (the old cemetery
was where Oak Park is now).

Catholics and Jews seem to prefer having their own cemeteries.  Mount Hope
and Evergreen cemeteries in Lansing have Jewish sections (not to mention lots
of other interesting sections).  It is not uncommon to find the "regular"
cemetery with the Catholic or Jewish one next door or across the road.

Just a few observations ...

  You should see the cemetery my paternal grandparents are buried in 
in Chicago.  It's across Lake Shore Drive from Lake Michigan and is
a pretty old Catholic cemetery.  If you didn't know it was Catholic,
you'd be able to guess pretty easily.  Looking at the names as we went
through, there were dozens each of Irish and Polish names and more than
a few Italian names sprinkled through, but not a WASP name anywhere.
It was amazing.

Here's a thought: if we can get enough Grexers together, maybe we can do the
tour of the Ann Arbor cemetery for a group rate, i.e., less than the standard
six bucks a head.  Anyone interested?

   Yes, I would be.  Think I could drag Glenda along too.  How much is
the tour price normally?

  From his earlier response, it looks like it's $6/person..

He ain't *dragging* me anywhere.  I may, however, consent to accompanying
him.

That would be fun!

(I had a dream about cemeteries last night.  I was driving around looking
for a shortcut, drove through an auto dealership's parking log, and came
upon an old cemetery behind the dealership.) 

(Obviously, the cemetery is for those poor unfortunates who didn't
recover from sticker shock.)

So we have me, steve, glenda, brandon, who else?

Do they charge for small fry.  If STeve and I both go, the kids go.

Re 15.  I don't know.  And it's not a "they", it's a "him."  What I'd like
to do is negotiate a package deal with him.  Presumably the kids would be
part of the deal, either explicitly free or just lumped in as part of the
"group of M-Net people" for some round number of dollars.

We're not M-Net people here, we're Grex people :->

   I think we're grexies, but I'm not sure.

   I think you should find out where the price breaks are; but at $6
each as the highest, I think that $5/head would make it reasonable.
Perhaps we should then pick a date 2 - 4 weeks in advance, and go
for that?

Oops ... <polygon blushes>

Some general thoughts on this topic - cemetaries are very distinct on air
photos
 - they usually have distinctive road/drive patterns and stand out like a sore
thumb (if they're big). The little ones (family plots, etc.) are generally 
harder to pick out BUT they do show up on topo maps. May cemetaries in the
southern part of michigan are on pleistocene beach ridges - higher ground, sand
(for easy digging) and reasonably good drainage (grandpa won't moulder away so
quickly). I'd be interested in the tour.

E-Mail me when a date is set (here and on M-Net). I sometimes forget to read
this conf.

   I have seen beautiful cemeteries. But it is a form of beauty I do
  not care for.

Did the cemetary tour ever take off?  Is it still in the planning stages?
(Well, you never can tell, the Procrastinators Club is as popular here as
anywhere...)

It hasn't happened yet.

Stevens has raised his basic fee per tourist from $6 to $8.

What does the tour consist of?

   A walking tour, listening to Wystan Stevens provide interesting and
sometimes bizarre peices of history.  I've not gone, but a couple of friends
did and they liked it a lot.

Think of all teh people who have died since this item was entered.
<orwell is going to get kicked out of this conference REAL SOON>

Cemetaries always provide an interesting glimpse backwards.  Went
touring in a cemetary north of my house (in Seattle) a while back.
(Of course, this conference also provides an interesting glimpse
backwards. :-)

One of the more intriguing things I saw was the large Eastern Orthodox
section of people with Russian names and often Russian lettering.
I knew there were strong connections between Seattle and Alaska, and
we figured in strongly with the purchase of that territory from Russia
(we have a Seward Park and never considered his move a folly here.)
I guess it never occurred to me that Russians ended up coming to Seattle
as a result and, in at least some cases, dying here.  There's not a
strong Russian presence prominently displayed in Seattle today the way
there is a Scandanavian presence, but clearly they were here.

Well... I woulda liked to go on the tour..but apperently it was 5 years ago.

Typically Wystan Stevens does the tour every year on and around Halloween.

I believe he also does that tour on a request basis if
you can get a decent size group together.  This might
be a nice Grexpedition.  The fee was very reasonable
and well worth the couple of hours.

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