Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Part I: Gothics

Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia, is the first cemetery I've ever wandered into that was actually crawling with tourists. The ripple effect of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil apparently lingers on because there were a lot of people wandering around with cameras and guidebooks, all apparently focused on finding Johnny Mercer's grave while oblivious to the wonderful funerary art elsewhere in the cemetery.

I did not, however, go looking for anything mentioned in the book, and have no clue just where Mr. Mercer got planted. I just kind of wandered around, admiring the Gothic markers and other statuary. I'm not normally a big fan of Gothic, but Bonaventure has some truly nice pieces.

The bed grave above is unfortunately damaged. You can tell that at one time there was a piece of ornamentation inside the three-sided headstone, probably a cross, but it's gone now. There's also damage to the back of the marker.

The majority of the grave markers at Bonaventure, however, are in remarkably good condition. I was expecting to see a fair amount of sugaring, but maybe the wind isn't from the right direction for the acid rain from the pulp mills and other Savannah industries to hit the marble. The damage that was visible tended to be pieces broken off, e.g., angels' fingers, rather than weathering.

Bonaventure Cemetery was originally a private cemetery located on a plantation near Savannah operated under the name of Evergreen Cemetery. The City of Savannah purchased the cemetery in 1907, and changed the name to Bonaventure.

Photos were taken with a 35 mm camera on actual film.

Maple Hill Cemetery, Huntsville, Alabama

The Maple Hill Cemetery in Huntsville, Alabama, is the oldest cemetery in the city. Located on the edge of a historic district, the cemetery is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It includes a number of notable grave markers, including these three cast zinc headstones (front above, back below).
I looked for a company name, but could not find one. The one thing that stood out was they seemed to be cast from heavier gauge metal than most of the cast zinc (aka white bronze) markers I've seen elsewhere.

The cemetery also includes more angels in various poses than I'm used to seeing, ranging from the relatively small and cherubic, as shown below, to monumental in every sense of the word.

Adult varieties come kneeling or standing, looking humbly down

or beseechingly (expectantly?) up:

I've never really understood why the kneeling on only one knee.

Maple Hill does include some elements that definitely had me wondering what people were thinking. As we were driving through the cemetery we spotted this monument with the book on a stick (interpretive plaque) standing next to it.

Knowing that Maple Hill is a National Register property, and also knowing that various Alabama notables are interred in the cemetery, a visitor's natural reaction is, oh, good, they've put up a wayside that gives more information about either the cemetery or that particular monument. The visitor is doomed to disappointment.

The marker commemorates the 1807 establishment of the Huntsville meridian, "which is the reference point for all property surveyed in North Alabama." How the marker commemorating the meridian wound up sitting in the middle of the cemetery is a mystery -- a meridian is a line, so there's no logical reason why the marker has to be in what is without a doubt the one place in Huntsville where it is likely to be seen by the smallest number of potential viewers.

Something I'd never seen before

Over the past few years I've been noticing the tendency in cemeteries for grave sites to become much more personalized and rather pagan compared to what had been the American norm: a relatively simple grave marker and flowers, either real or plastic. Headstones are becoming more idiosyncratic, the portrait medallion and epitaphs have made a comeback, and carvings on the stones increasingly reflect the deceased's life rather than being abstract symbolism.

The various offerings and memorabilia being heaped on graves these days can be rather baffling. Some items left make perfect sense from a pagan perspective: stuffed toys for a dead child, for example, or the ubiquitous "guardian" angels in various types and sizes. This mailbox for sending notes to the deceased is, however, a first. What's a person supposed to write? "Hope it's not too hot where you are?"

It was also rather intriguing that this grave was the only one in the cemetery (Oak Grove in Nacogdoches, Texas) that had any visible grave goods at all. One or two had flowers, but nothing else. The cemetery is old, with interments dating back to the 1830s, so it is possible the reason for the lack of flowers and other embellishments in most of the cemetery is there are no other recent interments. The Clarks are one of the oldest families in Nacogdoches -- William S. Clark signed the Texas Declaration of Independence and settled in the Sabine River basin in 1829 -- and maybe it was just luck that there was space in the corner of the family plot for Leon and Edna.

This angel, incidentally, is the William S. Clark marker that stands in the center of the family plot.

The Saddest Place

Posted elsewhere previously, but reposted here on the ninetieth anniversary of the end of the Great War.


The battle of Verdun was among the most horrifying of all the many terrible battles of the First World War. This happened by design: the German commander, General Erich von Falkenhayn, had concluded that the only way to win the war was to "bleed France white." He had more soldaten than the French had poilus, so if the armies settled down to serious tit-for-tat killing, the last man standing would be wearing feldgrau.

Falkenhayn chose the stage for his devilish scheme well. The ancient city of Verdun held great importance to French national honor: a mere thirty miles from the German border, the site had been a citadel since Roman times. In 878, Charlemagne's sons met here to sign a treaty that would divide his empire into the lands that would eventually become France and Germany. To lose the historic city was unthinkable to the French, Falkenhayn knew; they would indeed defend Verdun to the last drop of their blood.

There is a cemetery at a place called Douaumont where a small fraction of the men killed in this battle are buried. Just a small fraction… maybe only a hundred thousand or so. It is a tremendously impressive place- row upon row upon row of crosses marking the graves of the victims.

The day I visited Douaumont was foggy, and the fog was so dense that one could not see to the far side of the cemetery. The result was that it seemed as if the rows of crosses continued into infinity. It was eerie.


As this bleak mood settled over me, I turned and noticed a large memorial at one corner of the cemetery. It was shaped in the form of Biblical tablets, and it was covered with Hebrew letters. I realized what it was- a memorial to the soldiers who could not be buried under crosses- a memorial to the Jewish soldiers who died for France.

And then I was overwhelmed with grief and came as close to tears as I did on that trip. I thought of those young men who fought and died, never knowing that in 30 years their widows and perhaps their children would be herded into boxcars and exterminated like vermin. The futility of the sacrifice of these Jewish soldiers was too much to contemplate. It made me clearly understand the greatest tragedy of World War One that after so many men had given their lives, it was not enough.

The politicians would let it all happen again, and the sons of these dead soldiers would be at war once more.

"Died For France: 1914-1918"

Grave goods and the holidays

I can understand grave goods when it's the angels and fake flowers, but a tchotke saying "wishing you peace and happiness this holiday season"? That's a little strange.

Silver Hill Cemetery, Arkansas

The Younger Daughter and I had a conversation earlier today about job opportunties at Buffalo National River. There's an opening at the park posted on USAJobs with the duty station described as "Silver Hill/St. Joe," so I gave her a real pep talk about applying for the job even though she's weak in one of the four KSAs listed. I've been to Silver Hill, and Buffalo is one of my favorite parks. . . so I told her to apply so I could live vicariously through her. And, to clinch the argument, I told her I'd put up photos from the Silver Hill Cemetery. The cemetery is located right outside the park off U.S. 65.

Silver Hill is a fairly typical rural Arkansas cemetery. It's been in use for over 100 years, has an interesting mix of vernacular and commercial grave markers, and is still an active cemetery. There are a few table graves, some cast concrete head and footstones, and, of course, a Woodsmen of the World or two.


The older part of the cemetery has quite a few graves marked with uninscribed fieldstones, another typical feature of southern graveyards, especially rural ones. The table graves are also uninscribed.

I am intrigued by the gate -- the ironwork supporting it is very nice, but there's no fence on either side of it.