Tag Archives: Tombstone

Old, Curious and Unusual Epitaphs

Some Selections From “Here Lies” A Book About Graveyard Epitaphs

This book from 1900 whose full title is: Here Lies: Being a Collection of Ancient & Modern, Humorous and Queer Inscriptions from Tombstones compiled and edited by W.H. Howe, published by The New Amsterdam Book Company contains 197 pages of fascinating epitaphs, mostly from Great Britain. It was originally published in England in 1891 as Everybody’s Book of Epitaphs.

It’s difficult to believe that hundreds of years ago people were this creative about their own demise. Probably in many cases it was the friends and relatives of the deceased who were responsible for these final words etched in stone. Do you know what you would want written as your epitaph?

Here are a few of the better ones from this out of print gem:

Stephen Remnant

Here’s a Remnant of life, and a Remnant of death,

Taken off both at once in a remnant of breath;

To mortality this gives a happy release,

For what was a Remnant proves now the Whole piece.

Mr. Edward Pardon (a bookseller)

Here lies poor Ned Pardon, from misery freed,

Who long was a booksellers hack;

He led such a damnable life in this world,

I don’t think he’ll ever come back.

Continue reading →

A Photographic Trip To Green-Wood Cemetery Part 3

4 Replies

Monuments And Odds & Ends

The focus for the final installment on Green-Wood Cemetery are monuments and some interesting things that I took note of.

Dogs

Dogs are not permitted to be buried in human cemeteries. Somehow though fourteen years after inventor Elias Howe’s death, a dog “Fannie,” was buried at the family plot in 1881. That is the exception.

For many people, their dogs were like members of the family. Continue reading →

A Photographic Trip To Green-Wood Cemetery Part 2

A Photographic Trip To Green-Wood Cemetery Part 1

4 Replies

A Different Way To Spend The Day In New York, Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery

When I’m asked by people visiting New York what are some of the things they should do while they are here, my answer usually results in incredulous looks. “Go see Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx or Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.”

Most people will never visit a cemetery unless their relatives are located there. Even then, most people dread going to a cemetery. This is a mistake from a cultural standpoint. Cemeteries, especially historic ones like Green-Wood, possess landscape and architectural treasures that you cannot see in any museum. They also contain a history told in granite, marble, bronze, slate and limestone through an array of monuments, mausoleums, crypts, sarcophagi and tombstones of the permanent residents of Brooklyn. As Green-Wood describes itself on its web site:

Green-Wood is 478 spectacular acres of hills, valleys, glacial ponds and paths, throughout which exists one of the largest outdoor collections of 19th- and 20th-century statuary and mausoleums. Four seasons of beauty from century-and-a-half-old trees offer a peaceful oasis to visitors, as well as its 560,000 permanent residents.

The rural cemetery movement began in 1831 with the opening of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts, Continue reading →

Tombstone Humor

2 Replies

Was She Really That Bad?

I can’t imagine why anyone would do this on purpose, but how could the Spanks family not realize the headstone would read for all eternity “Arthur Spanks His Wife Katherine?”

One of the Strangest Deaths in New York’s History

2 Replies

Girls Chase A Boy to Give Him Birthday Kisses… and He Dies

Woodlawn Cemetery Is The Final Resting Place of George Spencer Millet Who Had One Of The Strangest Deaths In New York’s History

There is a book called Woodlawn Remembers: Cemetery of American History by Edward F. Bergman (North County Books, 1988.) The book is mostly comprised of beautiful full page color and black & white photographs of monuments, tombstones and mausoleums with one page of text describing each person profiled. The cemetery is located in the northern part of the Bronx. Woodlawn is on my shortlist of recommendations of unusual places to go for New York visitors.

The book is fascinating to be sure. It covers many of the interesting and important historical figures at Woodlawn. But one story not mentioned, is the life and death of George Spencer Millet (misspelled as George Millitt by The New York Times in the story at the end of this article) who is interred at the cemetery.

Millet’s story is briefly recounted in Permanent New Yorkers A Biographical Guide To The Cemeteries of New York by Judi Culbertson and Tom Randall (Chelsea Green 1987.) This book contains photographs too, but has more detailed biographies than Woodlawn Remembers. Permanent New Yorkers also covers the entire New York area, not just focusing on the two most famous New York City cemeteries. Woodlawn and Greenwood. I highly recommend both of these out-of-print books.

It was February 15, 1909 and Millet was a good-looking boy. Because when the girls he worked with at The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company found out that it was his 15th birthday, they all insisted on giving him a kiss. Continue reading →

New York Jewish Cemetery Vandalized

Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn Had Over 200 Monuments Desecrated and Toppled in December 2010 – Crime Still Unsolved in April 2011

Somehow or other this story did not make much of an impact in the news when it occurred in December 2010. This was done by a group of vicious, uneducated creeps. The words I would like to use to describe the vermin who did this I will not publish here.

The damage probably amounts to hundred of thousands of dollars. It also looks like more than 200 graves were harmed from the video posted below. With all the evidence Continue reading →

Stuff Nobody Cares About

A not so random collection of observations about things you should care about