Another view from I-84

This second cemetery visible from I-84 is the Quinnipiac Cemetery in Southington Connecticut.  This is a very unusual cemetery in many ways, but it dates back to the 1770's.  It is not only very old, but laid out in a very strange way.  There are 5 access roads from the street and two of them are gated closed.  Movement inside the cemetery by car is quite difficult because there are almost no internal road turns.  Some of the monuments were quite interesting.

Though it is difficult you can just see the highway (I-84) to the right and in the background. Notice the name on the stone, Frisbie. Could this person be related to the toy manufactures (which is actually named after a New Haven pie maker, I think.)

 At about this point as I was walking through the cemetery taking pictures, I was attacked by swarms of biting insects!  I ran for the car and consequently all the following pictures were actually taken from the car window.  Surprisingly, I was able to leave the car window open without any problem.

These were two rather unique stones that caught my eye.

This lovely monument with a stone urn was very tall.  There was also a nice old tree next to it.

As usual in old cemeteries there were a number of Civil War Veterans, buried there.  This is quite normal, but I was in for a real surprise when I went to the very back of the cemetery.

There was a whole section of the cemetery devoted to War Veterans and there were a great many Civil War veterans memorialized there.  I say memorialized, because some of the stones marked veterans whose bodies were actually buried near the battle fields where they died. This soldier died at Chancellorsville.

The large stone commemorates the section of this cemetery to burial and memorializing the dead of our wars.

This stone caps it all off for me.  This William Kelley died at Cold Harbor.  After Grant took control over the Union Army he pressed the Confederate forces.  Grant pulled troops who had been protecting the Nations Capitol into the offensive battles.  The Connecticut heavy Artillery company had been one of those units which were pulled from Washington, D.C.  There were many many casualties from Connecticut at Cold Harbor.  General Grant later stated that he regretted his attack at Cold Harbor.  Regret or not Grant and his Army were able to wear down the Confederates to win the Civil War. This stone is a piece of history!

View from Interstate 84

I drive on Interstate 84 almost daily.  I drive by two cemeteries that are at least partially visible from this heavily trafficked highway.  I have long wanted to stop and take some photo in them.  I finally got a chance and was able to photograph both of them in the same day.  One of the Cemeteries is called the Quinnipiac Cemetery and is located in Southington, CT.  It dates from the 1770's and I will do a whole post on what I found there.

This is a small sample showing some of the obelisk stones and the older rather plane stones from the 1700's and 1800's. There will be more from this cemetery.  There is something special hidden back within this sacred place.

The second Cemetery is a roman Catholic cemetery just off I84 in Waterbury, CT, named St. Joseph's Cemetery. I see the above stone from the highway almost daily.  The rest of the pictures will be from St. Joseph's Cemetery which had some very attractive monuments.

The cemetery is on a hill and these monuments were very tall and on this rather steep hill.  Below is a closer look at two of these markers.

This very tall and narrow marker below is made of red granite and is very striking next to white stone next to it.

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This stone is more conventional in size and shape but is carved quite nicely.

Not only can this cemetery be seen from the highway, but you see the highway from within the cemetery.  Additionally, the cemetery overlooks a large shopping center.

Resting in peace I guess can be done even in the rush of our modern pace of living.

Monuments and Statues

To this point I have not done a lot with pictures of monuments and statues as grave markers.  In many cemeteries there are some rather special forms of grave marker carvings.  I passed by a cemetery recently that I had know of, but not visited recently. This was the first visit to take pictures.  It happens to be a roman Catholic Cemetery and many of the monuments are in a Roman Catholic religious theme.

 I thought that this monument was rather special.  A woman appears to be clinging to the cross, a supplicant?

I think that this is a typical Mary and child, Theotokos (Θεοτόκος). There are angels to the side with crossed hands and bent heads.

This is a lone bowing Angel.  This Angel has crossed hands once again.  there are only two Angels mentioned in the bible, St. Michael and St Gabriel.  Gabriel is said to have been the herald to the Virgin Mary in the Annunciation.

This, I am guessing, is either meant to be Jesus or possibly a Saint.  The cemetery is the Parish Cemetery for a church named St. Thomas.  Could this be St. Thomas? 

This is a fairly modern cemetery.  It is very well maintained and there were many people in the cemetery taking care of the grave sites of their loved ones.  I shot more pictures, but this will have to suffice for now.  I have a great backlog of pictures to post and little tome to do the posting.

Peace!

Damaged Grave Stones

It turns out that the topic of stone damage is really, really big!  I am guessing that I will be posting on the subject many times.  If you don't see what might be important to you please send me an email and I will try to get information and of course some original pictures.

I mentioned before that my Mothers monument suffered from some damage from Lichens.  Lichen is a kind of plant that grows on stone.  It make acids and attaches to stone and can eventually break the stone.  Lichen is one of those forces that we call erosion.  Stone is a resilient material, but it can be damaged and even destroyed.

This is part of the monument that is above my Mother's grave.  There is a base and this vase-like stone piece.  Flowers can be placed in the vase and I some time do that. This was taken during the very final stages of the Winter, so no flowers.  The monument server as a marker for My Mother, her Father and Mother.  Her Mother, my Grandmother died in the 1938 Hurricane along with a generation of mothers from Christ Church, Westerly, Rhode Island.  Notice the discolored rings at various spots on the vase.

This is a close-up of part of the base of the monument which shows the Lichen on the Granite stone.  I am still uncertain what might be done.  I don't want to damage the stone myself and make things worse.  I am researching the matter.

 This is a different stone with Lichen growing at a juncture between the top and bottom parts of the monument.

As common as Lichen on the stones are broken stones.  I do not know what caused these breaks, but some of these stones were broken and then later repaired.  This is an interesting stone as well as having been broken.

Both of these stones were broken at one time and then repaired.  There is no indication as to the cause of the break.  At various time I have read of vandalism in Cemeteries.  Often stones are broken or overturned in such episodes of vandalism. I am providing a link to an article on this kind of vandalism.  I do not know that any of the damaged stones were caused by vandalism!  I do not know what caused this damage at all.

This stone is so damaged that there is only a small piece of it still visible above the ground.

This stone has fallen from it's base and is lying on the ground.  The base is tilted here.  The monument is located at the edge of the cemetery and there is a sharp drop off.  Perhaps there was some erosion under the base stone and the whole thing tipped over.  This is also in the down town area of Meriden, CT so other things are possible.

This damage is quite different.  Large portions of the side of this stone have broken off.  I am guessing that this is from weathering.  Stone can fracture if water gets into small cracks and freezes.  The winters in New England are often hard  and this is a monument from the mid 19th Century.

I will from time to time revisit this topic with new pictures and possibly some new thoughts on damaged monuments.  Nature I am sure is the greatest cause of damage, but people have to be considered as causes also.  As for nature, all we can do is choose better materials and try to protect and maintain the stones.  The damage from people is truly sad and totally preventable.

Modern Monuments

Most of the stones and monuments I have featured to date have been older.  Many of them are from the 19th Century or before.  I have obviously taken far more photo shots than I am able to show here.  I have taken many shots of contemporary stones. Many of the more modern stones are what I would term conventional, but some are quite different.  Some of them are quite strikingly different.  One of the things I discovered in preparing the pictures for this site is that many of the stones have incomplete inscriptions.  This I believe is because one partner in a couple still survives, but their name was put on the stone when their loved one died.  I have attempted to scrub some of the identifying information from some of the pictures to be sensitive to the feelings of possible survivors.

This stone has a picture attached to the stone.  I am not sure of the process, but it is quite a good picture.  I  took this because of the picture on the stone and because of the extra items by the grave.  The picture is in color and is etched into the stone in some way. Extra items are quite common in more recent grave sites.  I believe that extra items were always present, but tended to deteriorate fairly soon.

The images on this stone appear to be etched there rather than carved.  I am not sure of the process, but I plan to visit a stone carver some time soon to find out more.  Once again there are extra items, including photoelectric lights.

Once again, I believe that this may be some sort of etching process.  I love lighthouses, though and this is quite striking.

This is a religious motif which I believe is carved.  The polished red granite is quite beautiful.

These are both quite distinctive and I believe reflect the interests of the people when they were alive.  Many of the modern stones do seem to reflect the persons active life or love.

I managed to capture parts of three different stones in this picture.  I see the double or single heart frequently.  Polished granite is quite popular and durable and the red or black granite make a variation from the gray.   Very large stones and obelisks are not as popular in modern monuments.  This could be a matter of cost, but may be just a factor of fashion.

I am working on a post on damaged stones and monuments.  I have done a little research since I noticed that my mother's stone has some lichen growing on it.  Lichen I know can do long-term damage so I have been looking at possible remedies.  In the process I have noticed other kinds of damage to other stones wherever I go.  Look for that post soon.

Obelisks as Monuments

For a while I have been wanting to post on the use of Obelisks as markers in cemeteries.  Obelisks I think originated with the Egyptians a very long time ago.  If they were not the first, they were certainly the most spectacular to use these elegant stone monuments.  Unfortunately, I have never had the opportunity to travel to Egypt and therefore have no pictures of the actual Egyptian Obelisks.  I do have a link here to the Wikipedia article on them. The word obelisk isn't Egyptian, but Greek from the word ὀβελίσκος (obeliskos), meaning something like pointed pillar.

  Fortunately, there are samples of American Obelisks in most cemeteries that  go back to the 19th Century or before.  I therefore have some American Obelisks to show you.

The above picture contains several obelisks of different sorts and heights.  This is not really the best photo, but it does illustrate some typical forms of American obelisks.

Though this picture is large, the monument is quite small.  It is an obelisk shape but it measures less than three feet in height.  Surprisingly there are many samples of this kind of monument throughout the cemeteries I have seen.

These are very large monuments measuring 10 feet or more in height.  The obelisk to the far right of the right-most photo is wide and about 4 feet tall.

This is a sample of a modified obelisk.  It has a bulging ornate top that replaces the pyramid at the top.  Surprisingly to me this is a very common variation.

I personally like the very clean lines of the basic and pure obelisk!

Next I will post some modern stones that I have photographed.  I have mostly concentrated on the older stones, but this generation has produced some striking monuments.

Church-Yard Cemeteries

There is a tradition that was carried here from Europe of using some of the most hallowed ground, Church Yards for burials.  In New England there are many very old churches and some of them have cemeteries on the church property.  There are many that own cemeteries but most of those are located away from the church proper.  What is pictured here is from Cheshire Connecticut.  In New England and Connecticut in particular the best candidates for churches with attached cemeteries are Congregational and Episcopal Churchs.  This is St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Cheshire Connecticut.  The Cemetery wasn't very visible from the front of the church so I am showing you this view.

There were many old and interesting stones in this Cemetery and some of them follow.

This stone is especially ornate and beautiful, unfortunately there was no way to photograph it without the cars.

I came upon a stone that was a first for me.  There was even a sign pointing to this stone because it is so special.  This stone marks the grave of a Civil War Veteran who survived the war and later became the Headmaster and Principle of Cheshire Academy, a private school in the community.  He was a recipient of the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Civil War. This is my first Medal of Honor marker.

Eri Davidson Woodbury and his wife and another relation are buried beneath this large stone. If you follow this link you will learn about this brave (at the time) young Sargent.  He was later promoted to Lieutenant and given a Brevet Commission of Captain.

Many of the cemeteries I have seen have little or no care.  Some get very basic care, mostly lawn mowing.  This church cemetery is very well kept as the picture below shows.

One of the previous markers, a large one, remembers another Civil War veteran.  this young man was not as fortunate as our Medal of Honor winner.  He died at the age of 17.  I am guessing that he died in the war, near the end.  There were many vicious Cavalry battles in the war and this young man was a Cavalry soldier.

This is Memorial day weekend.  It is a time to reflect on the sacrifices made by so many for the freedoms we enjoy today.  It is also a time to appreciate those freedoms and to encourage those around us, friends, family, neighbors and politicians to protect the hard won freedom we enjoy.  I don't want to go on a soap box here but seeing so many military graves recently makes me very aware that these men and women should not have died for no reason.  They believed they were protecting something very special and valuable.