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CEMETERIES
- Where to find them and what to do there!
Where to
find them:
Cemeteries/Graveyards
can be found many places, here are a few:
On top of a hill or
any high ground. There are several reasons why they did this
back in the old days. Two of the most common are:
Drainage - most
coffins were just thin, pine boxes
People felt
that the deceased should be as close to heaven as
possible
If you are looking
for a graveyard and know that it is possibly in a field of
some sort - look for an area of trees. Most farmers choose
not to plow them under. **IMPORTANT** Ask the farmer if they
mind if you tramp around in his fields! Remember, most
graveyards were for the family, therefore, they are usually
quite small.
Churches often have
their own cemeteries. Don't pass up a church just because it
looks new, there is a good chance that it is new because the
old one burned down!
Many of the old
houses have cemeteries in the yards behind them. Ask the
family that lives there if they know who is buried there.
Another indicator
to look for, especially in Virginia and Kentucky, is a short
(in height) stone wall. The families usually put these around
the site.
Back
to the top
What to look for once
you get there.
You will be very
lucky to read a headstone if the date of death is much before
1800. Most headstones were made of sandstone and it does not
weather very well. A good way to tell what is written on it
is to do a rubbing by placing a piece of thin paper or wax
paper over the surface and rubbing with a crayon.
If you find the
headstone you are looking for but it is covered in that black
fungus that looks like it would never come off in a million
years!!?? Spray some tub & tile cleaner on it! Yep, that
very stuff you use in your shower! Let is set a while and use
a **soft** bristle brush to get it off.
Be cautious about
lifting up broken or fallen over headstones, it may be the
cozy home for a snake!
If you find the
graveyard but all you see are sunken depressions and no
headstones, it is anyone's guess as to who is buried there.
If you know for a fact that this is your families plot, one
suggestion would be to put one stone marker with just the
family name on it.
If you see that
your ancestor does not have a headstone persay, but they do
have a huge block of stone the same size that they would have
been placed on top of the grave. Don't fret, the headstone
did not fall over. These blocks of stone sometimes 8-10"
thick, 3' wide and 6' long were placed over the bodies for
two reasons depending on when they died:
If they died in
the time when Indians were around then the stone was
placed there to deter the Indians from digging and
claiming the scalp off the body. As horrible as that may
seem, it did happen.
Another reason,
and this one could be combined with the reason above
also, is that in a lot of areas in Virginia and Kentucky
the area is full of mountains and the ground is very very
rocky. It was impossible to bury someone very deep. The
graves were sometimes only 2' down. They placed these
large stone over the dead to prevent the animals from
digging and also the rain would wash the dirt away.
Well I hope you found
this interesting!
Home is where to start your
family research! Click on the house to go back to my home page!