Something I often do this time of year—and one of the few things we’re able to do this year with everything being locked down.
The dates on the tombstones fascinate me, particularly relating to which gun designs were common at the time.
Souls born on the cusp of when percussion revolvers first became popular, and maybe left this earth before the era of fixed ammunition.
Maybe one soul, an immigrant from Germany carried a Mauser pocket pistol with him aboard an immigrant ship bound for the new world in 1912.
Another soul who went to glory in the 1880s, with the last name of a pioneer ranching family likely carried a SAA and hunted the local mountains with a Winchester lever rifle.
Here’s the grave of a Spanish American War soldier who might have died clutching his Krag rifle.
No flowers, all those souls likely forgotten by family which is sad, but each tombstone speaks of History and times where arms were considered everyday tools.
I wonder if anyone here has had similar thoughts whilst traipsing about the graveyards?
There is a marker for Eliot Ness at Lakeside Cemetery in Cleveland, OH. However, his actual ashes were spread over Wade lake in the cemetery. My grandmother actually new Eliot when he was Safety Director in Cleveland, which is kind of ironic because she made bathtub hooch during prohibition.
In Virginia we have some OLD cemeteries often right in the middle of town. One such place was the Methodist church where my son’s Cub and Boy Scout meetings were held.Often times the trees where the grave stones were offered the only shade in the asphalt jungle and I looked often at the grave stones. There were Confederate war soldiers that died long after the war and both Union and Confederate soldiers that died during the war that remain unidentified. Years later I was struck with the similarity of the Punch Bowl Cemetery in Hawaii “USS Oklahoma, 17 Unknown” “USS Nevada, 8 Unknown” One can only wonder what they saw and did, who they were and what they believed. More to the point I wonder what they would think of us today.
