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What's New at Arcadia

Historic Burial Grounds of the New Hampshire Seacoast By Glenn A. Knoblock

Arcadia Publishing has releases a new title in the Images of America series, the historic account of the cemeteries along the New Hampshire Seacoast. This collection is a must for anyone interested in local history, genealogy, or colonial-era art. Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Historic Burial Grounds of the New Hampshire Seacoast and browse other cemetery books!

Green-Wood Cemetery By Alexandra Mosca

Arcadia Publishing announces the release of the historic account of one of New York's most famous cemeteries. Aracdia Publishing's Images of America series has an extensive catalog of many cemetery publications! Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Green-Wood Cemetery.

Announcements

Quoting Death in Early Modern England: The Poetics of Epitaphs Beyond the Tomb By Scott L. Newstok

An innovative study of the Renaissance practice of making epitaphic gestures within other English genres. A poetics of quotation uncovers the ways in which writers including Shakespeare, Marlowe, Holinshed, Sidney, Jonson, Donne, and Elizabeth I have recited these texts within new contexts. Visit Palgrave Macmillan and purchase your copy today!

Living by the Dead By Ellen Ashdown with illustrations by Mary Liz Moody.

A memoir about living beside a cemetery--and about the members of my family who came to rest at Roselawn Cemetery in Tallahassee, Florida. Please visit Kitsune Books for more information.

Graveyards of Chicago: The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries By Matt Hucke And Ursula Bielski.

Discover a Chicago That Exists Just Beneath the Surface - About Six Feet Under! Take a tour of Chicago's permanent residents! Please visit the Lake Claremont Press website to purchase your copy of Graveyards of Chicago today!

Epitaphs: The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers

For information regarding subscriptions, single issues, submission guidelines, deadlines, classifieds or advertising for future issues, please visit The Cemetery Club.

Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints with photography by John Bower and foreword by Claude Cookman

Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture is now available. Please visit Studio Indiana for more information.

West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark

Features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.

Syndicate

Cemeteries can help unearth family history PDF Print E-mail
Written by DeadGirl   
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
A stroll through a graveyard can reveal previously unknown information about ancestors
By Jeff Long
When the weather isn't too raw, genealogist Craig Pfannkuche often can be found exploring cemeteries, a preferred place for digging up arcane facts about the dead. Children who died, former wives not mentioned in family stories, dates and causes of death omitted from newspaper clippings—sometimes such key details are revealed during a stroll through a graveyard, he said. Retired after 25 years teaching history at Crystal Lake South High School, Pfannkuche of Wonder Lake is a past president of the Chicago Genealogical Society.

He shared some of his strategies during a presentation in the Mt. Prospect Public Library for those interested in researching their families. Several dozen people attended.

Pfannkuche, 66, admits that he would rather explore cemeteries than give lectures.

He feels nostalgic, he said, for the time when cemeteries were like parks, with people bringing a picnic lunch and having family get-togethers—even if some of the relatives were 6 feet under . Those days lasted from the late 1800s until about 1950, he said.

"Why plant somebody here and walk away and never come back?" he said. "The Victorians loved mourning. They thought it was wonderful. That changed by 1950. World War II did it. There was so much death."

Ridgefield Cemetery in McHenry County is one of his favorite cemeteries. Opened in 1836, it's the second oldest in the county, according to a guide published by the McHenry County Illinois Genealogical Society, where he is the corresponding secretary. He holds the same post now with the Chicago Genealogical Society.

"A student will sit in a classroom and say, 'Civil War, huh? Who cares?' " Pfannkuche said during a tour, indicating a worn sandstone-marker at the back of the cemetery. "But if you find out that your blood fought in the war, it's kind of a big deal. It comes alive."

Pfannkuche paused before a stone with a fading inscription that read: "David Hartman, Company B, 36th Regiment of Illinois Volunteers. Killed at Franklin, Tenn. Nov. 30, 1864. Aged 25 years."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-cemetery-research-10-dec10,0,5984707.story

"That was a big battle," he said softly.

It's likely, he said, Hartman's body never made it back to the family plot, where other relatives are buried.

"When you died in the Civil War, often you were torn to pieces," he said. "You were splattered. . . . But the family still wanted something to come to, so they put up a memorial stone."

For genealogical research, Pfannkuche said that things like old city directories or newspaper death notices don't always have the information you can find on a tombstone.

Sometimes they have dates of interment, and only checking the headstone will provide the date of death.

Some stones list children and other family members. He has seen a few that provided stunning details—like one in a Garden Prairie, Ill., cemetery that tells a tale of murder, and names the wife as being in on the plot.

"Killed by his wife and Dr. Cream," says the tombstone on Daniel Stott's grave in the tiny town between Marengo and Belvidere.

Some believe that Neil Cream—who was born in Glasgow in 1850 and lived for a time in Chicago—was Jack the Ripper.

Pfannkuche said it's a fun hobby.

"There's neat stories," he said. "There's exciting stuff. You can find out about how people lived. You can connect with history and your country in a real personal way."
 
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Taphophilia?

taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)

ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"

DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries

Taphophilia Facts

Washington, DC is home to three Presidential gravesites, John F. Kennedy, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson.
 

Taphophiles Speak

Final Destination After Cremation?
 
Roadside Memorials...
 
What is your favorite type of cemetery?
 
Will you be embalmed?
 
Are you considering a Green Burial?
 

Quote Repository

“The memory of most men is an abandoned cemetery where lie, unsung and unhonored, the dead whom they have ceased to cherish. Any lasting grief is reproof to their forgetfulness.”

#NAME?

Grave Epigrams

A wife, a Friend, a Mother Deir
with her deer Babe Lies buryed here
In bloom of Life and Useful days
The summons Came ye Soul Obeys.

Dedham, MA 1779

 

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