Do you enjoy spending time in graveyards and cemeteries? This particular interest is fairly common among genealogists. There are several blogs and news articles that are written about a person’s visit to an interesting graveyard, what the gravestones say, and the history of the people who are buried there. These are great resources for genealogists.
Genealogy is the study of family. Often, it is the study of family members that have been dead for several generations. One good way to find out information about people who died long before you were born is to read their gravestones.
You can do this by searching for a photo of their gravestone in some of the online archives that are specifically about gravestones. Or, you can take a trip to the cemetery where your ancestors are buried.
Genealogists tend to get excited about visiting a cemetery. They know that gravestones hold important information, such as: the full names of ancestors, the person’s birth date and death date, decorations that could give clues about the person’s life, and more. The grave could say “mother” or “father”, which indicates that a genealogist has at least one more ancestor to locate and research.
Other people, who have no interest in genealogy, are probably not going to want to spend time in a graveyard. Non-genealogists tend to find cemeteries to be “creepy”, or sad, or upsetting. They are not going to understand why genealogists find graveyards to be calming, informative, or peaceful.
If you cannot get anyone to go with you on a visit to a cemetery, and do not want to go alone, it may be time to go online instead. Read over some of the detailed and interesting blogs and news articles that are about gravestones, cemeteries, and the people who are interred there.
A Grave Interest is an excellent place to start. It is a blog written by Joy Neighbors, who loves cemeteries. She is someone who gives talks about graveyards and cemeteries to people who are interested.
Her blog has descriptions of the histories of older homes, descriptions of individual graveyards that she has visited, and tons of wonderful photos to go along with the stories.
The BBC has a nice, long, article about Montparnasse cemetery in Paris, France. The article is written by Hugh Schofield. He describes the the gravestones, the history of the cemetery itself, and a little about the lives of the people who are buried there.
Mental Floss has a quick description of ten of the most famous cemeteries in the world. This article was written by Stacy Conradt. She includes a short description of Arlington National Cemetery, Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Westminster Abbey cemetery, and even the Ben and Jerry’s Flavor Graveyard.
Image by Claire Schmitt on Flickr