This topic could go most anywhere but still the tale begins with genealogy, I figure lets put it here. Names omitted to protect the guilty...hence I be sued for telling the truth.
A gentleman from Tennessee has come to town because his great grandparents are buried here. He locates the grave lot and contacts the local Historical Society and Cemetery committee for additional help.
After a fashion he offers $$$$$$$ and lots of it to repair the fence around the cemetery and to repair some broken stones. He offers to purchase a wrought iron gate like what was once there. The town officials are very please and offers to assist in anyway possible.
He notices that in his great grandparents lot there are two open plots. One is between the great grandparents and what appears to be the grave of a grandchild. The other is the seventh plot of eight. The eighth is the married daughter (great Aunt) who died in 1868. The stone denotes who her husband was but he is not buried there nor is he in the cemetery.
So the guy inquires if the great aunt could be moved next to the great grandparents so that he could have the last two plots for himself and his wife? After all they are putting a lot of $$$$$$$ into the cemetery. The sexton says they can not do it legally but if he were to purchase the lot they could. The man agrees to purchase the lot.
I have a HUGH issue with this! Am I going over board or is am I seeing small town corruption with people be bought?????
How can they sell him a lot that they(town officials) do not own? Does this mean that I can go up to Brunswick buy the Chamberlain lot and move the General elsewhere??????? Can somebody give me a reality check cause I feel like I'm turning over in my grave! Any one else have concerns or advice?
Will
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Strange tale
Wow, some people have too much money and too much time.
I see your point Will. But I fear this happens all the time. Perhaps not to this extent. It's no different then a wealthy tax-payer in town calling the Public Works director and complaining about some problem or another near the end of their driveway. As a result they end up with a new culvert and the pavement all of a sudden comes 36" inches down the driveway instead of just 10" or 12". Amd in the process some scraggly bushes and other growth along the road front is all cleaned up within 20' of the driveway.
I don't know who owns the plot exactly. But can you image someone buying the plot next to the fine General with plans of being buried next to him someday? That could easily happen without notice. Moving General Chamberlain might draw more attention and be more difficult. And in the case of your story, it would have been nothing at all if it had gone unnoticed.
Personally, I have never put much stock into where I end up or how I get there. But perhaps I am not old enough yet for those thoughts to weigh heavy on my mind. Frankly, if I was sewed in canvas with chains at my feet and the last stitch through the nose and dumped far out to sea I would be as happy as not. Or perhaps cremated and scattered in the high hills of my grandfathers farm. But I don't imagine I will ever need to diplace some other soul to find a comfortable spot for myself.
Are these any sort of relation to you Will? I'm not sure what recourse you have. Unless you can fight the right of the sale of the plot. Or argue who has the right to make such a decision. But I don't know anything about such laws I'm afraid.
Sad strange story though...
--
Michael Johnson
Sadder it gets
These are no relations to me but the issue put me in deep odds with the President of the History Society who happens to be my Aunt. After nearly 140 years the bones are all that are left in the soil and the soil itself contains the remains of the woman. I personally find the discretion sickening.
You are right, this goes on all the time. It poses interesting moral and legal questions. Too what extent will this nonsense end.
Will
Well after a point we have
Well after a point we have percolated into the soil and are meshed with the dust of Ceasar.. I do know gravediggers often find bones while digging graves in older cemetaries, the common practice is to dig a smaller hole in the grave and rebury the bones under the newly interred.. I think not so much of the town but the Vanity of the Man who wants this done.
seamus
"it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifing......nothing"
MacBeth
Death by
Mike,
I too have a thought about death
The Great Cosmic Tree
by Craig Young
We are living under the Great Cosmic Tree.
like acorns falling from its trigs,
Our spirits arrived upon the earth,
to become one with a body of clay.
Our spirits formed from the light,
as our bodies are formed from the clay,
and the Architect's breath formed our living souls.
Upon our death a transition of change to occur,
so that after three days the living souls arise from the body,
and after forty days the spirit is transfigured,
so as to travel from earth to the north star.
Here to join the glory of cosmic thought,
the Milky Way the crown of the Great Cosmic Tree.
In the house of spirits and their place of judgment,
Purified, resting in peace to await their renewl.
As the body of clay,
returns to the earth,
to await the Architect's gentile hands.
Our living souls,
return to their Architect,
to await his will and pleasure.
What was ... is,
and,
What will be ... has come,
Therefor,
The moment is our existence,
And,
Reason's flame is in our passion,
So,
Think, feel, and live ...
while time is still a gift.
Pvt/Lt Craig Young
3rd Maine, company A
"I ain't as good as I once was. But I'm as good once as I ever was. I used to be Hell on wheels Back when I was younger man. Now my body says 'You can't do this boy'
But my pride says 'Oh, yes you can."
Ahh the poet!
Well said Craig, but I wonder if your poem says more of life than of death?
--
Michael Johnson
The Low Road Home
The Low Road Home
by Craig Young
It is an auld Celtic belief
upon ones death ones soul
travels to the place of birth
along the fay's Low Road.
In the winter of my life,
I heard the cock crowing
just after midnight
and the banshee's wail
heralding death's approach
to my marked door.
On that first night,
the priest gave last rites.
I was washed by loving hands
and my favorite cloths I wore
with wife and children near.
Placed upon the kitchen table
candles and 'sin' cake about
the second sunset arrived
with relatives to take
my transgressions away.
The third evening a wake for me
friends and relative to sing and dance
to give a toast and share a story with me.
I was ready to travel upon the Low Road's way.
The grand morning came
as the sun rose bold and red
to the church a Christian belief
to the grave the six carried me
this form of clay soon to be dust.
But, I was on a journey
to the star whose guidance be always true
with those who have also passed this way
within the spiral of the Milky Way.
Until once more called to Earth
as a fireball from space
to unite with another form of clay
which is an auld Celtic belief.
Pvt/Lt Craig Young
3rd Maine, company A
"I ain't as good as I once was. But I'm as good once as I ever was. I used to be Hell on wheels Back when I was younger man. Now my body says 'You can't do this boy'
But my pride says 'Oh, yes you can."
Wow, your poetry is
Wow, your poetry is melancholic and beautiful, words held together by it's writer's honesty. The Poet Laureate of the 3rd! Thanks for sharing your gift with us. There is no more honest passion than poetry and not a more joyful line or sad phrase than that of a poem.
We're on a roll, Craig!
Dead Cowboy
-Zac
I am a dead cowboy.
Now all me is unmoving but for my spurs
chiming in circles against the side of a mustang wind.
My lips are hard and they become
as blue as a cowboy's story.
The trail's dust veils o're my last breath. T
his cowboy's song is sung.
A western breeze moves my sleeve.
It plucks the prairie grass like strings of a fiddle.
It rattles little flower bells and whimpering weeds alike.
The wind carols through the clouds and mountains.
'Tis the sound of a cowboy's last lullaby.
Unbending as the Wyoming line,
the song spirit follows a well
beaten trail, longer still, into a heart.
The heart of the West.
A bit off topic...
I read a book a few years back which spoke of a strong Folkloric background in New England on Vampires. It was called "Food for the Dead". It wasn't a shlocky Spook story, but one with well documented evidence of people protecting themselves from Vampires. While most of this stuff occured down in Rhode Island and Eastern Connectecut... the book showed an odd "Saco, Maine" refrence. This concerned the observations of a Doctor who witnessed the moving of a cemetary in town to a new location (hence the memory jog from Will's post). Well this doctor, who was compiling data to support his theory then that Consumption (TB) was caused by the proximity of low lying marshy areas, noticed that people in the poorer section of the Cemetary (ie: the wetter end) seemed to take extra care to examine the remains of their departed loved ones. These people were checking to make sure that their relatives were properly decaying and didn't show signs of Vampirism (Things like blood on the lips... lack of Decay...evidence of movement... etc)The idea was that if a family was cursed with consumption killing off their family.. it was assumed that one of the first killed was infact returning to feed on their living relatives. There was a well documented case in Connectecut, as late as the 1870s where they actually removed the heart of one young woman... burned it.. made a potion of the ashes and made her brother, who was himself dying of consumption, drink the brew as a cure... Guess what????
It didn't work.
This book ended up with me totally geeking out and pouring through town death records looking for a geographical connection for Consumption deaths between 1830 and 1855. Oddly enough they WERE clustered around wet areas... The wet areas next to the river where all the Factory boarding houses were. Another interesting note...
They always IDed Irish people seperately.
Like: May 15th, O'Toole, Paddy - consumption (Irish)
kind of interesting.
Major Eric R. Reeder
CSO, 1st Division ANV, Staff
Liberty Hill Signals
2nd Lt Eric R. Reeder United States Army Corps of Topographic Engineers "Hawks and Eagles fly like Doves"
Moving/Missing Graves
Will & all Y'all ~ wowzers this missing grave thing must happen a lot. Took me a couple years to track down the fact that three relatives lie in the same teeny tiny church cemetery in Wisconsin, but there are no markers nor records of the exact graves. And one of them died in 1943 ~ not ancient history for pity's sake!
Like your Tennesseean, I was also offered sale (by the sexton with understanding that the money would go to the church) of some other plot to put up a memorial for them. Now, I would've given ten times the price to know the right graves, but "some other plot" is not worth diddlysqat to me.
By logic and chronology of death, it seems ggGramma is right next to a boy who does have a marker and died just eight days before her. But I've had to learn to be happy with, and respectful of, details known only to dead kin, God, and me.
Tying this back in to Major J.E. Powell who left the The Forks and pregnant wife with toddler, taking his 5yo son off into Army life in 1855: he's always been considered buried "unknown" in Shiloh National Cemetery, but by logic of notes in the burial records and conversations held between dead kin and me, he's #3582 in the officers' circle.
DNA testing, or even some ground-penetrating device that could determine size of the body (Powell was just 5'4") could say for sure, but hubby and I have some delight and peace just knowing what we do.
Duty, Honor, Country,
JM