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Taphophilia (dot) Com...
A repository of morbid curiosities:
Thanatology and Taphophile Issues, Cemetery,
Funeral Industry and Death Related News.
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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!
Green-Wood Cemetery Arcadia Publishing announces the release of Alexandra Mosca's 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 and to browse other available titles!
Men of Mortuaries Calendar
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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, Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture
with photography by John Bower and foreword by Claude Cookman is now
available. Please visit
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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.
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Cemetery walking tour raises mysteries |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Thursday, 20 October 2005 |
http://www.connpost.com/news/ci_3124208
Cemetery walking tour raises mysteries
RICHARD WEIZEL, Correspondent
Connecticut Post
MILFORD, CT - Daniel Herbst moved into his Cherry Street home across from the Milford Cemetery just a few weeks ago, and Sunday quipped it would be "as good a time as any to get to know some of my closest neighbors." So he
took a walking tour of the cemetery along with nearly a dozen people.
Led by City Historian Richard Platt, Herbst and others were chilled by some pretty bizarre and unsolved mysteries about those buried in the 330-year-old burying grounds.
The tour, sponsored by PED, an ad-hoc committee promoting biking and walking, was part of October being named Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Month
by Mayor James L. Richetelli Jr.
Adding to the spooky mood Sunday, a sudden blustery wind kicked up just about the time the afternoon tour started, knocking a large branch off a maple tree near one of the cemetery's most well-known gravesites.
For some, it conjured up images of Halloween two weeks early.
The fallen branch, just missing the group, fell right at the foot of a large monument erected in 1852 to honor 46 American soldiers who died of smallpox
trying to help 200 others. They were captured by the British and left to die on a boat in Milford Harbor during the Revolutionary War.
"It was a tragic outcome for those who perished, but it was heroic of those who tried to heal the sick," said Platt, a descendent of a city founder.
Moving on through the oldest part of the cemetery, Platt pointed out some of the slate gravestones with strange and even mysterious epitaphs.
The most famous one was for Mary "Molly" Fowler, who died in 1792 at the age of 23.
Her epitaph reads, "Molly though pleasant in her day was suddenly sized and sent away. How soon she's ripe, how soon she's rott'n. Sent to her grave and soon forgott'n." "Her relatives either had a wry sense of humor or a good grasp of the realities that faced them about death in those times," Platt
said. "Death was an everyday occurrence, even for children." But the ultimate mystery of all is the slate stone that reads "My Wife's Grave. Do
not Forget Me." "We have no idea who she was, who he was or when she died," Platt said. "All we know now, ironically, is they are both unknown and
forgotten." Other graves shown were of Connecticut's Colonial Gov. Robert Treat, Gov. Jonathan Law and the oldest gravestone in the cemetery, for a William Roberts who died in 1689.
Also, a gravestone for the first person buried there, a 1-year-old boy, buried June 18, 1644, the "son of William East," and the first adult buried in the cemetery, Sarah Camp, wife of Nicholas Camp, who died Sept. 6, 1645, lay side-by-side.
"I learned so much today, when people come visit me I feel I can give them my own tour now," Herbst said.
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