Temple Cemetery was cold the first time I visited, but that’s always my favorite time to go to a a new cemetery, when the weather is chilly. It was clear that day and the sun was shining brightly so it was a good day to read tombstones. Temple is a Jewish Reform cemetery and it mingles with Old Jewish Center cemetery, which is a conservative cemetery. There is no line or obvious kind of separation, but the space is set apart from the rest of Evergreen and has it’s own gate.

Temple Cemetery attracted me because of the mausoleums, of which there are many varied types. It’s a small Jewish cemetery inside the massive Evergreen Cemetery complex, and it looks to be old and not visited very often. Both times that I went there there was no one else around. Despite this, it’s perfectly maintained except for some vandalism to one of the mausoleums. It will probably never be repaired since most of them are very old with the families probably long gone by now. This particular one has the glass window shot out with what looks like a BB gun, as some of the glass still has holes in it where it didn’t shatter all the way and fall out. Because of this, you can look right into this mausoleum and on that day when I did this I realized that it was freezing in there. My face felt like it touched ice the minute I stuck my head through the window to peek in. I felt sad about the window though, it was done in delicate shades of gold and green and were just panes of colored glass, not the usual ornate stained glass windows that I usually see in mausoleums.

My favorite one here is the Burkheim mausoleum because of it’s very solid and incredibly creepy looking ventilated iron door. Whether it was placed to keep things in or keep them out I can only imagine, but it must have been effective because nobody has messed with this structure at all. Jacob Burkheim has lived in 2 of the places I’ve lived in during my 43 years, including Tallahassee, where I grew up, and Jacksonville, where I was born and lived again briefly in my 20’s. He also lived in Savannah, which I love visiting. He worked as a merchant, a tailor, and he also fought in the Civil War (confederate). He had 7 children, but his name is the only one found outside of his mausoleum, so I wonder if the rest of his family is buried elsewhere. He was born in Germany in 1831, and he died in 1914.

If your back is to the gates and you look to the far left and start walking you will see a small headstone for Hazel, E. Waterman, who died in 1904 at a few months old. Her headstone is a type that I had heard about but had never actually seen in all of my cemetery visits. Usually a child’s stone will feature a lamb or sometimes a small bird. A few times I’ve seen deer. Hazel’s stone has two small baby shoes on the top and two small socks draped down the front of the stone. I was thrilled to see an example of something I’d only ever heard about. Hazel’s small gravestone did not have a record in Find A Grave which made me wonder more about her and her family. I couldn’t find anything on Ancestry, which happens a lot when you’re looking for a child. There is a child’s headstone in St. Augustine that has haunted me since I first saw it and I can’t find out anything about the child or the family, which has bothered me for 2 years. If you’re awesome with genealogy and like a challenge- send me a message.

Temple Cemetery is one of my favorite sites to date in Jacksonville. If you get over there please let me know what you thought! And bring snacks, you’ll need them if you go to Evergreen because you could spend the day in there and never see it all.