So Loverly, Showing Gratitude

I had just left a newly discovered old cemetery I'd photographed for findagrave (I AM the tombstone chronicler after all!) when I stopped at a red light, looked to my left and saw this wonderful church that had American flags all over their grounds that, according to their sign, were honoring both those that have served and are serving our country. I find great tranquility in that.

~~~

xoabb

It's Veteran's Day. 
Kiss a Veteran!
Hey, Daddy, here's a kiss from afar!
xoxoxoxoxox

H is for....Headstone

I'm not called The Tombstone Chronicler for nuthin'...

Bird-poop stained but still readable. 

Now forever photo-documented even after 

the ravages of time finally destroy the words. 

A documentation of what can no longer be deciphered...

On the opposite side of the  above stone, 

and why that added plaque is so very important.

Another headstone 

Still in quite good condition.

How long will that last? 

~~~

xoabb

expect anything!

Do visit and contribute to findagrave.com.

It is our collective history and heritage 

that's waiting to be preserved...

One tombstone at a time.

ABC Wednesday

Do join us!

I'm Tombstone Annie....

Well....that's one of my nicknames....

Reverend Moses Mather's tombstone, 

one of the many tombstone's I've photographed and chronicled.

Reverend Mather was buried more than 200 years ago, in 1806. 

The elements haven't been kind to the engraving on his stone. 

Taken in the ~Old Five Mile Cemetery~, aka Brookside Cemetery

on Rowaton Ave. in Norwalk, CT.

(backside of the tombstone in the first photo)

 Norwalk has begun to restore the old graveyards of our city. 

Poor restoration habits had been employed for many past years, 

not for lack of caring, but from lack of knowledge. 

Thankfully, there are now folks well taught in the best preservation methods.  

~

Enough of you have asked me why my blog is named The Tombstone Chronicler that I feel the need to explain a bit. (And, no, I don't reside in Tombstone, Arizona!) I became interested in genealogy about 15 years ago - don't really know what was the first spark, but along the way, I began wanting to know how I got here as me. Who were these people that came before me that made me who I am? 

I know from friends and family that this (read "my") genealogy thing (read "obsession") is a very personal journey/interest. Either you care or you don't. I care. Most of my family doesn't. And that's OK. It's my obsession/love not theirs. And I do love finding out about my own family and helping others (who may not even be related to me) find out about theirs. 

Out of my love of genealogy I've discovered the wonderful website www.findagrave.com.Now I spend some of my weekends traipsing through the cemeteries around here taking photos and then adding and documenting them on findagrave.com (F-A-G for short - their abbreviation, not mine:-). I try to go to the older cemeteries as those tombstones are the ones most in peril of being destroyed, by time and the elements, as you can see from the photos above (by the way, Moses Mather isn't my ancestor, just one of the tombstones I've added). I've even been the first to document several of the old cemeteries in our area. It's a good feeling to know that in some small way they've been "preserved" for the future. I also find it so very peaceful and calming to walk through these areas that are filled with so many different stories and histories. Believe it or not, when I first discovered F-A-G, there was only around 8,000 grave sites chronicled. Now there are around 27,000,000 chronicled (and counting!) - I've added 1,109 memorials and 1,460 photos! Word of mouth truly works! Amazing isn't it? (Click on that last above link to see my F-A-G page if you're interested.)

I know this is a love of some of us and not everyone. So - I'll try to remember to fill you in on this mad persuit of mine from time to time.  Just skip those posts if this isn't your thrill.  I'll forgive you....well maybe...o come on, you love tombstones too...right??;-)

xoabb

expect anything!

Some Unexpected Tombstoning Surprises

I've been Tombstone Chronicling for several years now. During family genealogy research I came upon the FindAGrave (the site is also referred to as FAG - one of the only times that word is acceptable) website. Their goal is to chronicle with a picture (and any bio that can be added) each and every tombstone in America - actually they're going for chronicling the entire world.

Hmmm, I thought, we have graveyards around here that are older than dirt, some of them totally neglected, and with tombstones that are becoming unreadable because they're either disintegrating, sinking into the ground, being absorbed by a tree, or worst of all, vandalized, and most of them haven't been photographed. Considering I also love to walk outdoors, particularly in cemeteries (it might sound odd, but don't knock it till you try it - it's so very peaceful), I realized this would be a great new thing to get involved with. So I did, and still do.
I've been able to do photo requests for several people of their ancestors and have found numerous of my ancestors. It's neat to finally see the tombstone of a gggg grandparent buried in West Virginia when you live in CT and there's little chance you'll ever be in that gggg's cemetery!

Sometimes when you go tombstoning, the unexpected will happen. Just once, I made the mistake of not wearing long pants and socks. After getting over the worst case of poison ivy I've had in a long time, even if it's 100º outside, fully covered I always am! (Actually, I'm now a fair weather tombstone photographer - I'll never be out there in that kind of weather again.)

 And then there was the time when I stepped backward to get a better camera angle. My foot went right into a hole. A small and very deep hole. Imagination kicked in and I knew the dead were pulling me under. Never in history has a 50ish, not in shape and not at her ideal weight (don't ask) gotten out of a hole faster. You would have thought the leg not stuck in the hole up to it's knee was a giant spring. I must have leaped at least 5 feet straight up in the air! It took a good 10 minutes for my heart to return to normal.

Yesterday, among the tombstones, I met a bug:

To take a picture of the larger tombstone, I pulled the smaller one forward.

There was a small beetle where the protective shade of the smaller stone had been.

I just love my new macro camera (thanks mom!). A tiny (about 1/2" long) beetle can be photographed up close and personal so all the world can see just how beautiful he really is. And yes, I put the smaller stone back just as it was and left Sir Beetle to do whatever it is that beetles do. BTW, that's a false potato or horse nettle beetle.

~~~

xoabb

*Update from my gardening parents:
Those lovely flowers from yesterday's post are
~Scilla Siberica~ or ~Siberian Squill~

Miss LaLa & I Take a Field Trip

~peace to all who enter~

My dear friend Mental Pause Mama, aka Miss Lala, aka Lauren, aka a LOT of other noms de plume, called me this morning. She told me that there were amazing flowering things happening around the grounds of her church and after reading about my confederate violets, she really thought I needed to go see what was blooming and that she most definitely needed to go with me. Road trip!

St. Paul's on the Green is a lovely Episcopal church in Norwalk, CT. It isn't my church, (actually I don't have a specific church), but is one that welcomes all comers regardless of, well, anything and that I've loved attending. But I digress.








For the many (um, few?!?!) of you who have been following me since the inception of this little old blog thing, you know that two of my loves are flowers and tombstones/cemeteries. Love em, love em!







Miss Lala thought these were forget-me-nots. I don't know what they are, but they aren't f-m-n's! What are these lovely little blue beauties? Some kind of hyacinth? *see update at bottom!






And by the slope that goes down to the Post Road, that would normally be covered with the detritus of we humans (think trash and lots of it), it's a veritable sea of those blue beauties! What are these flowers??









Anywho - our field trip and the lovely spring weather has truly inspired me to go tombstoning....reporting of my tombstone adventure comes tomorrow....or the next day. Hey! I'm on spring break...naps...they rule!

~~~

xoabb

*Update from my gardening parents:
Those lovely flowers are
~Scilla Siberica~ or ~Siberian Squill~

An Uh-Oh Realized & Other Grave Issues

My pond, 7 a-m
Totally frozen over
The ducks, they are gone


My pond, 3 p-m
Totally frozen over
The ducks still are gone

~~~

I'm a Grave-Digger
OK, so I don't actually "dig" graves in graveyards,
BUT I really ~dig~ taking pictures of graves in graveyards!



If no one snaps the
Crumbling stones of the long-gone
Words soon are long-gone


Stones sink in the ground
Dates forever lost to view
Our loss, not the dead's



In Memory Of

Elizabeth Reed? That's an
Allman Brother's song!

~~~
(ok, so my haiku skills need some work)
~~~

I've been "digging" into the history of my family for quite a few years now. While googling one of my GGG grandparents names, I discovered Find A Grave's (FAG) website. That was the beginning of a minor obsession, tho there are those who would beg to differ and say it was a major and majorly weird obsession of mine. What person in their right mind would spend their time in graveyards photographing stones of dead people???? OK, I must admit it might sound rather strange, but I must tell you there's a true peaceful "thing" that happens to me when I'm alone doing this. I love it. Anywho, back to why I first started doing this. We have many graveyards in our area that are or, until recently, were photographically undocumented. As you can see by the above photos, this is not a good thing because stones have a finite life. It is FAG's (and all of we volunteer FAG photographers) goal to photo every gravestone possible before they disintegrate and are lost forever. I've really enjoyed my time "walking with the past", and because of the generosity of fellow FAG photographers, have "found" the stones of quite a few of my ancestors. Someday soon I'll tell you about the time I literally half-fell into a grave in the cemetery....it was quite memorable, to say the least!


Hmmmmm.....what will we explore tomorrow?? You'll just have to wait and see!

~~~

xoabb