Every once in awhile I find something interesting going on in my hometown of Springfield, IL – whether it be a local event, local flavor or a local view. Each week I’ll bringing a piece of my life to the online world in a series called Let’s Get Local. I encourage anyone and everyone to join in and share a little bit of their own local flair to introduce us to people and places we may never visit.
My drive from Chatham, IL to Springfield, IL leaves me with 3 options: a back woods road, a highway and another highway. Often I choose the first highway because it’s the most direct route to my parents house and the west side shopping centers. As I travel down the small stretch of 8 miles or so on either side of the highway are two small cemeteries. If you weren’t paying attention you’d probably never notice them. Nestled in the adjacent woods, from the car you can see a weathered white fence with overgrown weeds creeping through the boards.
My husband calls me morbid, I call it curious. Who are these people? Why does no one care for their burial grounds? How long have they been there? What were their lives like? All questions that burn at my mind every time I pass by. I still have no answers but I did satisfy my curiosity by stopping at the cemetery this past week to investigate.
photos taken with Casio EX-S12SR
Many of the headstones are unreadable, engraving corroded away by time and weather. Of the few that were still standing upright I was able to find some names and dates of the deceased.
Among the graves there were no signs of any visitors…no fresh flowers, no silk flowers, nothing but overgrowth of nature taking back what once came from the earth. Along side each grave were little white daisies. It leaves me to wonder if anyone cared for these men and women but the earth itself, leaving little signs of love and peace with the tiniest of flowers.
I still don’t who these people were, how the lived or even if the cemetery was given a proper name, but I feel that some of my curiosity is satisfied and can look upon their eternal home with a smile now as I pass them each day, silently whispering a prayer for their peace and happiness.
your story touched me. maybe all of the relatives have also passed on? it was nice of you to visit and say a prayer for these forgotten people.
The term for people who read/enjoy tombstones is Taphodile. I am in love with the stories that these tell. People from hundreds of years ago or just last week. Each headstone tells a story. It amazes me that there are hundreds of cemetery’s that are in such bad disarray and it seems like no one cares..how sad…
Wow, I had no idea there was a name for it. Thank you.
I’ve always had a fascination with cemeteries, like you said, the story behind the people that once lived here. I spent quite a bit of time at a larger one when I was a child just reading the inscriptions.
Apparently Craig and i are both Taphodiles. Before he moved to Indiana, he flew here every weekend, and we would take drives to the country, and we would stop at cemeteries and read them, and put families together, and be touched and saddened by young deaths. the forgotten graves are so sad. Maybe next spring you can remember this one, and go sprinkle some wild flower seeds.
my dad just let me know that my great great grand father is buried by my rental, so I am going to go up there and check it out. the place is big but I have a feeling my gut will lead the way.
your friend and fellow taphodile
I actually did a years worth of volunteering at a historical graveyard in our town. We went stone by stone and wrote down everything on it, what repairs were needed, etc. It was very rewarding. At first I didnt want to stand on the graves but in order to read many of them you had to get on your hands and knees to do so. I never felt like we were disrespecting the dead. I felt like we were honoring them by taking the time to get things correct and overall a better place for their final resting spot.
I also find cemeteries interesting. I like to walk the quietness and read the names of all the people who reside there. It is a shame that no one can take the time to mow that cemetery. It makes me feel that those people are no longer loved when I see a cemetery all grown up like that.
When me & my mom went to New Orleans years ago, before kiddos, I was amazed at the above ground cemetaries…I begged to stop & check it out but she wouldn’t. I too read the stones & wonder who they were & what they did…..
Cool post!
Wow, that is amazing how old some of those headstones are. What a touching story. The forgotten… but not now thanks to you.
Not morbid! When I was in 4th grade our teacher took us to the cemetary and we did rubbings of the oldest tombstones we could find (Sacramento is the gold rush capitol, so nothing really pre-dated the 1850s).
After reading Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (which is an excellent fast read), I took the kids into a random cemetary a few weeks ago just to walk around. It is fascinating–the levels of care. The older areas have weeds, others, like the newer children’s area has presents and pinwheels (which of course, made me cry).
Seeing the older unkempt areas makes more sense as to why Britain (c. 1600s) had so many graves reused. This Donne poem illustrates:
“When my grave is broke up again
Some second guest to entertain,
—For graves have learn’d that woman-head,
To be to more than one a bed—”
Can you imagine the stories that cemetry could tell if it could talk, amazing!
Fun post/idea about finding things around your hometown to share with your readers
tenasocal@aol.com
Call me a Taphodile as well. I don’t think it’s morbid at all. I love to walk through old cemetaries and try to think of how life was “before”. One of my “dream destinations” is New Orleans so I can walk through their tombs.
Kas
Neat post, Cat! I am the same way with old cemeteries. My mom and I used to go through really old ones and look at them all and wonder what their lives were like. With my husband being Hispanic we celebrate Dia de Muertos each year (two days after Halloween) and one thing we always do is take flowers to our passed loved ones. We also take an extra flower so the kids can place a flower on a grave that has none or is very old. I think its great and teaches them respect of cemeteries and the ones before us that helped make our world what it is today.
You’re certainly not morbid whatsoever. Whenever we go to the cemetery, we drive through slowly to look at all the old gravestones. Lefty Grove (a famous baseball player) is buried in the same cemetery as my grandmother. There are some old stones that really make you wonder what the story is, as you said.
You might consider talking to a local newspaper about running a story on the little graveyard and listing the names of those interred there. They may be old graves with young/new relatives as yet unaware that they have family buried there. The article might also prompt a local church group to “adopt” the site to provide proper maintenance and help mother nature out. The flowers are beautiful, and with a bit of help the site could once again look well maintained. Now you’ve made me curious about some of the smaller sites I’ve seen in my area. It’s time for a field trip.
If your morbid, them I’m just plain creepy-I LOVE being in cemeteries. I love visiting people I don’t know and exploring different gravestones, making up stores on who these people could be, what they did, etc.
Some people think that cemeteries are creepy, but I find them full of life-Instead of walking into them and thinking, “I don’t know these people and none of them had an affect on my life,” I feel that I know everyone there like they were long lost friends-Who knows if they came into my life at all? Whether they did or didn’t, they affected me.