Along the Natchez Trace

This sad little family cemetery is located about 12 miles from Natchez along the Natchez Trace. Every marked grave inside the iron fence is for a child. Most are bed graves.

The dates span about a 20 year period just prior to the Civil War, all from the same family, the Brandons. In at least one case, two children died within a week of each other, suggesting they succumbed to an infectious disease such as a diptheria or measles (it was too early in the year for it to have been yellow fever).

The large table grave is for a son who made it to the age of 18.

The markers are in remarkably good shape in terms of weathering, but have experienced vandalism.

[The cemetery is not normally a pond -- I just happened to stop immediately after a really heavy rainfall.]

A grave house in Tennessee

When I first saw this structure from a distance, I thought it was the roof for a maintenance shed or pump house. The Pettit Cemetery is on a hillside, and from the road all that's visible is the roof. It wasn't until I walked into the cemetery that it became clear it was a grave house, and a fairly recent one. There appear to be two traditional in-ground graves in the house, complete with markers, but I didn't feel comfortable flopping on to the ground* to shoot a photo through the gap between the foundation and the roof. The cemetery itself, the Pettit Cemetery is located in the Land Between the Lakes in Tennessee with Dover, Tennessee, being the nearest town (perhaps 15 miles away) of any size. It is a fairly typical rural family cemetery, with the usual mix of commercial stones. I'm always intrigued by grave goods, and there were a few examples. It's becoming increasingly clear that the dead collect angels, as I see them in a lot of cemeteries. Lady Lenz (black headstone) is kind of an exception in having raccoons.
[ *An aversion to chiggers and woodticks stopped me from even dropping to my knees.]

Do it yourself funerals

Interesting article in the New York Times about the growing trend of families going back to burying their dead themselves. It includes a mention of a coffin-maker who builds lovely dual purpose wood furniture -- book shelves while you're alive; biodegadable box to plant you in once you're dead.

Fort Donelson National Cemetery, Dover, Tennessee

The superintendent's house at Fort Donelson National Cemetery. It now houses administrative offices. (Sorry about the shortened chimneys; I was using a new camera and am still figuring out just how to frame shots before hitting the shutter release.) Wayside giving an overview of the cemetery.

Fort Donelson is now an inactive cemetery, which means all the grave sites are either occupied or spoken for.

Another view of the superintendent's house. The markers in the foreground mark the graves of unknown soldiers and are laid out in a pattern that resembles a heart.

Photos were taken June 27, 2007.

Anniversary For A Neighbor

An evening stroll in the cemetery last week brought this timely acquaintance:

Robert L. MacDonald
Cpl. 502 Parachute Infantry
April 11, 1915
June 10, 1944

Twenty-four-hour access to hot and cold running information enabled me to find out what Cpl. MacDonald' s unit was doing on the day of his death.

Four days after D-Day, the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, a unit of the 101st Airborne Division, was ordered to capture the crossroads town of Carentan, essential to provide a link between the Omaha and Utah landing beaches.

The approach to Carentan traversed an exposed causeway, with marshes on either side. At the head of the causeway, German troops had entrenched themselves in a farmhouse. Snipers hid in the marshes and orchards flanking the approach, and at least one of the Wehrmacht's feared 88mm guns was poised to devastate the approaching Americans.

According to The 101st Airborne During WWII:

The 3d Battalion, 502d PIR, led the... drive along the causeway. Progress, however, was extremely slow. The men of the 502d advanced along the causeway with no cover, facing steady fire as they moved forward. The battalion inched along until it reached the bridge on the Madeleine River and ran into a strong enemy position concentrated in an old farmhouse and the adjoining hedgerows.

Lt. Col. Robert G. Cole, the battalion commander, called for artillery fire on the position, but it did no good. Pinned down, he ordered a charge with fixed bayonets. Colonel Cole leapt up to lead the charge, but not all his men had gotten the word. The executive officer prodded the men along, and Cole continued with the soldiers that had followed. The Germans withdrew from the farmhouse, and the charging soldiers cleared the hedgerow positions. Cole was awarded the Medal of Honor for his efforts that day. Unfortunately, he was killed in a later division operation before receiving his medal.

Further, from Wikipedia:

Nightfall ended the advance but not the casualties, when an attack at 23:30 by two low-flying German Ju 87 Stukas strafing the causeway knocked "Item" Company completely out of the battle.

The severe casualties suffered by the 3rd/502d PIR, estimated at 67% of the original force, resulted in the nickname "Purple Heart Lane" applied to that portion of the Carentan-Sainte-Mère-Église highway.

And somewhere in all this, 65 years ago today, a young man from Washburn, Wisconsin, gave his life.

Gone Home: a brief review

Gone Home: Southern Folk Gravestone Art is a good book, but a deceptively titled one. The word "southern" suggests it's going to provide examples from across the southern United States; in reality it focuses exclusively on cemeteries in the state of Alabama.

Similarly, the phrase "gravestone art" implies the authors are going to focus on the decorative elements of funerary art: statuary, carvings, headstone shapes and styles, and so on. Instead, the authors' passion lies in epitaphs. The authors do discuss carving, but the focus seems to be more on the development of the lettering used in epitaphs rather than on the decorative elements of a marker such as floral motifs and Christian symbolism. There is also an interesting discussion of folklore and memorialization, and the evolution of markers and inscriptions over time.

Nonetheless, while the book is a useful one for anyone interested in gravestones and the history of memorialization, a reader looking for a book that focuses on gravestone art overall rather than the content of the inscriptions would be doomed to disappointment. Similarly, anyone hoping for a book that provides a regional context should look elsewhere. This is a good book on a specific subject area, and as such as fairly limited in its content.

A Slight But Relevant Digression

An article in yesterday's New York Times provides one more illustration of a shift in American culture:

The Funeral: Your Last Chance to Be a Big Spender

Mr. Firnstein also says he is fielding more calls from families interested in natural burials. Adherents of the movement wrap bodies in simple shrouds or in biodegradable coffins and bury them in woodland cemeteries.

Such simple burials are traditional in many faiths, and were long the standard practice in the United States until the Civil War, when the development of modern embalming and the expansion of the train system altered the landscape of death and gave rise to the modern mortuary practice.

Read that last sentence again: "...the expansion of the train system altered the landscape..."

A generation ago, the reporter almost certainly would have written, "the expansion of the railroad network."

This is not a matter of enthusiast nit-picking; rather I submit that it is further evidence of the retreat of the railroads from their once-central position in American life. People just don't think much about railroads anymore; consequently, standardized terms of discourse that were once familiar to all have been forgotten and reporters grab for new ones on the fly.

Back to topic: my head exploded when I read this part about the trend to simpler and cheaper funerals:

“Back in the day, families might spend $10,000, $12,000 on a solid African mahogany casket, have an all-out wake and such,” (funeral director Jerry Sullivan) says. “Those days are over.”

Today, many funeral directors offer hardwood or metal rental coffins for a short period before cremation, Mr. Sullivan says. He charges roughly $1,000 to rent a hardwood casket for a daylong viewing; a body is placed in a combustible container of cardboard or soft wood, and inserted into the rental coffin lined with fabric.

A thousand bucks to rent a wooden box for one day? You could rent a house for a month for less than that around here.