Most people wouldn’t think to head to the cemetery as part of their holiday festivities, but apparently a lot of people do. Everywhere I visited this month there were bright decorations everywhere, everything from trees to candy canes to a little snowman headstone topper. For my own family I’m choosing poinsettias, and will be taking them out to my grandparents on my Dad’s side on Christmas Day. They’ve been long neglected- I just found out where they were buried after quite a bit of searching over the last few months. I was really happy to see their names on the plaque and know that whenever I’m in town I can take them flowers.

I also decorated the graves of a family in this cemetery this year. After writing about them and researching them I felt like I wanted to do something, not really sure why. I just loved their story and thought that their history must have been very similar to so many others here in the Central Florida area, and every one of those families is important. They’re the foundation that this area was built on. So on a bright day Shawn and I went out and brought them each a small decoration and a light to place by each grave. I’ll leave the lights after the holidays.

I never really considered the act of decorating a grave for the holidays until this year, I guess for a lot of reasons. I think that I realized that losing someone doesn’t mean that you lose the habit of caring for them, even in the most basic of ways. Reaching for them in the middle of the night, buying something that catches your eye just because you know they’d like it, or leaving their number in your phone because you’re used to calling them. Habits die hard if they die at all, and they last long after the person is gone. So this year it seemed perfectly normal for me to go out to cemeteries and see entire Christmas trees, little stockings, Christmas cards, sparkly flowers, and velvet bows.

 

My favorite was the full sized tree that I saw on one grave, each little stocking hanging on the tree had a family member’s name on it, and it had been decorated with so much care. I stopped and took photos of it and read the names on each of the stockings, wondering what the family was like.

If you’re visiting loved ones in the cemetery this holiday season I hope they’re not sad visits, but visits filled with good memories and smiles. Happy holidays, everyone!

This cemetery is one of the prettiest ones in Orlando, and in a completely unexpected part of town. It lies along Old Winter Garden Road in Orlo Vista and is next to the Lake Hill Cemetery, which is my favorite little cemetery here. Lake hill has a lot of space between burials and is grassy and has only a few trees, so it’s s surprise to walk next door and see a verdant landscape of trees and shrubs and a crowded cemetery with a small mortuary chapel at the back. Congregation Ohev Shalom was founded in 1918, but the cemetery dates more from 1928. The cemetery regulations also suggest that the wife be buried on the left- something that I have never once paid attention to in any cemetery, to be completely honest. This cemetery serves at least 3 congregations, and while you must be Jewish to be laid to rest here, you do not have to be a member of  Congregation Ohev Shalom.

This cemetery is beautiful to walk through, but it also has something that makes it even more interesting to visit- tons of ceramic portraits on the gravestones. I just love these things!

Some of them are quite old and some are more modern and nicely done in brighter colors. I like both, but I especially love the old ones which tend to be more formal. This cemetery does not have a lot of historical information, but I still wanted to write about it and give a sort of tombstone tour of noticeable portraits. You will see that there are lots of small stones on top of the graves, and in the center of the cemetery there is a small box full of these stones for visitors to choose from. It is tradition to leave a stone on the grave with the left hand, not only to show that someone has visited, but also as a tribute to the deceased. There are other fascinating theories that can be read about here. I love the idea.  I will sometimes leave seashells on the grave in other cemeteries. I left an amethyst crystal on my dad’s grave when I went to see him once, it was the only thing I had in the car and for some reason it felt important that I do something, even though I sat on his grave and talked to him for awhile.

 

 

 

 

The last two were father and son- brilliant smiles on both of them!

In the back of the cemetery you will find a grave for Talia Joy Castellano- truly a bright light in this world. Her Youtube channel is still up- she was a young make-up artist and honorary Cover Girl. Her appearance on the Ellen show brought me to tears! Her grave is bright and pretty and seems to reflect her love of color and beauty and her talent for making others look their best. I have visited this cemetery many times and didn’t see her grave until I went on Thanksgiving and my fiancee’s daughter mentioned the colorful grave toward the back of the property. Please take a minute to look her up!

I’m off to Clay county this week for another CRPT cemetery training. There are a few graves here locally  that I’d like to work on restoring and I’m hoping to learn everything that I need to in order to make that happen in January. Details and pictures next week!

 

 

Hello all- I’ll be talking about The Grave Girl with Pat Greene and Matt Duke on Florida Overtures, Undertones, and Subplots on 10/24/16 from 4-5 P.M. If you’re local and able to tune in the station is WPRK 91.5.

For more information you can visit WPRK.org. Hope you’re able to listen in!

Support your local radio- and your local cemetery!

We survived Hurricane Matthew- it wobbled off to the side of us and we only got some wind and a lot of rain, and then a few days off from work. An hour after the curfew was lifted Shawn and I drove a couple of miles down the road to one of my favorite cemeteries to check on it. Lake Hill has an older section with some beautiful headstones and I was concerned about their proximity to the trees, one big tree in particular. When we got there a caretaker was already on the property in his golf cart, which was full of branches he’d been picking up. He was riding out another squall while parked beneath the very tree that I’d been concerned about. We pulled up and asked him how the cemetery fared, and he said that it hadn’t been too bad, and that they had pruned the tree before hurricane season started.

Next door to Lake Hill is the Jewish cemetery, Ohev Shalom, which is a nice size and has about 1200 interments. This cemetery is designed more like a park and is very beautiful, and has a small chapel on the property toward the back where outdoor (and indoor too, I think) services can be held. Lake Hill looked like it had survived a windy day, but Ohev Shalom looked like it had survived a hurricane. We walked through and pulled branches away from graves if we were able to do it without damage. The blooms in the trees had been blown around and part of the main drive looked like it had yellow carpeting. Overall it was very messy, but no trees were down and nothing was broken.

Restless after a couple of days at home we decided to drive toward the beach on Sunday- basically we forgot that the coast had taken the beating that was also meant for us in Orlando. We saw downed power lines, poles for the power lines literally snapped like a pencil, huge trees down, power company trucks everywhere. People were still doing cleanup at their homes; we live in a condo and didn’t have to do anything. I felt so bad for them. Some of the homes we saw had screened enclosures for their pools and patios and these had been ripped to shreds. Volusia county had sustained a lot of damage, and some of the roads were still covered with debris.

We went to the Ormond Tomb, which we had discovered on a blog somewhere and wanted to see. It’s the resting place of Scottsman and plantation owner James Ormond, who died in 1829. He’s in the middle of a park- with a charming view of the swing sets and slides. It looks like a place to have a nice picnic until you realize there’s a guy buried there.  The top of his tomb has a single inscription- “An Honest Man”. The stone slab is not original, the grave was vandalized and the stone was replaced with the one there now. The tomb itself looks like it was made of coquina, though one source says it’s concrete, but it’s so old it’s hard to say. To get to it, we had to climb over a huge pine tree that had fallen over, but we did this without a problem. There are no other known graves in the park and James is all by his lonesome there, and there is no information on how he actually died.

After that we went to find Groover Creek Cemetery (Ormond), which is in the back of a subdivision and lies on a small plot between two houses. I had already given up on finding it when Shawn pointed and said that he saw a fence. I was mad, and in a lot of pain that day from a back injury but not in the mood to sit in the house anymore, so I was saying that we should just get out of there when I looked over and shazam! There was the sign!

1894 is the earliest marked burial, but my favorite ones were handmade stones from 1901 that had script writing on them. Many of the headstones were broken, but had been propped right where they fell, which was a good thing. I hope they’re able to get them repaired at some point. It is mentioned that it was originally for Civil War soldiers, and that there should be around 30 burials there. There are not that many headstones though. This cemetery has been taken up by the Eagle Scouts and has been maintained and is nicely fenced off, however, there was a tree down and numerous large branches on the day that we visited. It did not appear that any of the stones were damaged in the hurricane though and I feel sure that this cemetery will be cleaned up soon. That neighborhood had a lot of wind damage and had signs up for a boil water alert.

Over the weekend we also did a drive through of Greenwood Cemetery in Orlando to see how they had fared. It’s one of my favorite local cemeteries and it had numerous huge trees down or broken. Hard to say how much damage was done, but I know that clean-up there will be a major- and probably very expensive effort.

For more information on hurricanes and how they affect cemeteries you can visit Chicora Foundation-and also see some pretty distressing pictures. They say one thing in their disaster plan for cemeteries that I absolutely love and that is work with a professional conservator. Basically, do not glue stuff back together yourself. For historic cemeteries, this can make all the difference in truly preserving the historical value of the place for future generations, genealogists… and people like me.

This weekend we’re off to Charleston to celebrate Shawn’s birthday, and while there we plan to tackle a list of 7 cemeteries. At least that’s the plan, and we’re very excited about it. I might even get to wear a sweater!

This cemetery is worth a visit when you’re done antiquing in Renninger’s and are ready to walk around outside. For one thing- it’s beautiful, even though I’m not a huge fan of pine trees in cemeteries. I usually prefer the sprawling oaks instead. But this place is peaceful and well designed, and it’s a good cemetery to walk in. (No burrs. No anthills the size of Cadillacs. No slithering wildlife.)

I visited about a year ago before I started the blog and noticed a stone on the right hand side that seemed to be turned in an odd direction. I walked over to take a look, and saw a headstone that really broke my heart. It seems like there are some where you can actually feel the horror of the event that took place, and this was one of them.

The young Warburton family was from England, and they were traveling by wagon when the horse went to the pond to drink. Some reports say that Fiddler’s Pond was actually a sinkhole- the pond is still in Mt. Dora though I’ve never seen it. The horse fell in and took the family with them, and all of them drowned.

This stone says everything.

This is a more modern cemetery, though there is an old section by the Warburton stone. However, my favorite cemetery in the area is the Mt. Carmel-Simpson Cemetery, not in Mt. Dora, but it’s on the way if you’re coming from the Zellwood area. This is one of the first African-American cemeteries I’d ever seen that was saved from abandonment, and it is really incredible to visit. For one thing, it’s in the parking lot of the St. Patrick Church off of highway 441. You pull into the parking lot, think you’re in the wrong place, and then you look out the car window and see the graves in the woods. About 60 of them.

This was a well organized clean-up back in 2010, where graves were mapped and numbered stones erected for the unmarked graves. There wasn’t much of a path, but most of the underbrush had been cleared so it was comfortable walking and you could see all of the stones easily. This was one of my first experiences seeing a vernacular headstone, there are several there that are beautifully handmade and I couldn’t get over it. They’re my favorite, they say so much more than the modern stones. The cemetery has a lot of fern and ivy and it is pleasantly sheltered by huge trees. You feel like you’re literally in the middle of the woods after just a few steps in.

That day also changed the way I plan for my weekend outings. I now keep a ‘cemetery bag’ in my car for any little thing that might be needed, because that day when I left I had 37 mosquito bites all over me (we counted). I spent the drive home scratching my legs into giant welts and feeling frantic, thinking about encephalitis and whether or not dengue fever had ever made it’s  way to Florida. My cemetery bag was handmade by my friend Vicki, and it contains deep-woods OFF, calamine lotion, antihistamine spray, band-aids, spray sunscreen, and a flashlight. I’ve needed all of those items during the last year during all of my cemetery visits.

I’m ready for anything except for a stone falling on top of me.

 

 

 

I usually write just about cemeteries, but this was too good to skip over. So today’s post is a little different, but still related to death and funeral memorabilia.

Last weekend we went to Mt. Dora to scout out some antiques and walk around. There was also a cemetery there that I wanted to visit a second time to get a photo of an unusual headstone that I had not photographed the first time I was there. I had regretted not taking pictures of it, and it had a story to be told that I wanted to research…and then tell.

We walked through aisles and aisles of antiques on that blazing hot day, sweating like crazy and pointing things out to each other. We shared a watermelon popsicle. We visited friends that own one of the booths there and talked to them for awhile, listening to their plans for expanding their shop. I mentioned that I was starting a collection of embalming bottles and asked them to call me if they ever saw anything interesting.

They both looked at each other for a beat before Denise said, “We had a coffin once”.

“Really? What kind? ” I asked.

She whipped out her phone and showed me a picture, it was a wicker one- old- and had a person laying in it with a beer can balanced on their chest. She mentioned that they’d been at an antiques festival and someone who’d been drinking had wanted to test it out.

“But you know,” she said, pausing and obviously thinking about something, “one of the dealers inside has one, and it’s for a child.” She told us where to go inside the main building and said, “Just keep looking up- you’ll see it on one of the shelves.”

We headed inside the main building and I had gone about halfway through the first aisle when I spied it. I handed Shawn the remains of the popsicle, wiped my hands on my dress, and approached. It was up high and I could have reached up and touched it, but instead I just stood there, licking watermelon flavor off of my lips and staring up at this coffin. I’m sure that I looked crazy.

A dealer materialized and stood next to me silently looking skyward.

“Do you know what it is?” he asked me.

I turned and looked at an older gentleman in a Hawaiian shirt; his eyes looked mischievous and I immediately liked him. He was smiling.

“Yes, it’s beautiful,” I said. And it was. The dark wicker was in great shape and didn’t seem to have a single flaw. Plus it was smaller than I had expected.

“You do?!” he asked. “Two girls came in here yesterday thinking it was a basket to hold flowers. They weren’t happy when I told them it was a coffin.”

I laughed. I told him that I loved funeral history and wrote about cemeteries, and he asked me if I ‘d like to see it, because it was leather lined on the inside. I knew I wouldn’t be buying it, but I accepted his offer to take a closer look. He was so excited to show it to me, and he mentioned that it had been used for viewing and transport, but not for burial. As my friend Keila had pointed out when I sent her a picture of it, “That  doesn’t look like it would hold up very well underground.”

When Shawn caught up with me I was bent over the coffin with this man, and we were both pointing out features of the pleated leather lining. The lid was propped up next to us, and we were both engrossed in the conversation. I love it when I find one of my own.

Sometimes I feel bad for Shawn. I know it gets weird for him sometimes. I think back to the ways I’ve tried his kindness- asking him if we could make an offer for a coffin in North Carolina, telling him I’d like to hang a cooling board from the 1860’s on the hallway wall, asking for an embalming bottle for my birthday, happily pointing out a case of glass eyeballs in an antique shop one time. The list goes on, and he’s been a good sport every time. Today however, when we closed the lid back on the small coffin and the dealer got on the ladder, Shawn offered to hand it up to him. I’d been there when he handed it down to me and there had been a moment where I’d felt a parent from over a hundred years ago carrying their child in this. Maybe I imagined it, but the notion of it’s true purpose wasn’t lost on me. So, I tried to get there first but Shawn was faster and he picked it up gingerly and lifted it up to the dealer, looking at me for a moment over the top of it’s domed lid. His face was totally blank, but his eyes met mine and I had the feeling he wasn’t happy.

We ended up buying a book from that dealer and talking for awhile longer. When we left I mentioned that I was hungry. Shawn said he’d like to wash his hands.

I recalled trips together where he had eaten with his hands in places I’d never dream of eating in without a good scrub or a bottle of hand sanitizer. Airports. Airplanes. Outdoor festivals. Malls. But this time he wanted to wash his hands. We took care of that and I didn’t judge.

I’m not gonna lie- I wanted that coffin- but I didn’t tell him that. The selling price was 275 dollars and it was in wonderful condition. I had no clue where I’d put it, but I do know that if I’d been single, I’d probably have gone home with it that day.

There is an odd aspect to collecting funeral antiques- you have to keep other people in mind. I always think- if someone came over and saw this, would we stay friends or would they haul ass? The truth is, I want people to be comfortable in my house. The embalming bottles are unusual, small, and will be an unobtrusive collection. A coffin is pretty confrontational. However, I do know that the best collections are held by people who follow their own desires and don’t consider what others will think. And that’s okay too, I really admire those people.

 

This cemetery is situated off of a busy road in Ormond Beach, and only has a small blue sign to even mark it’s presence. We could have easily passed it. Not only because there isn’t much in the way of signage, but the cemetery almost looks like a large green field with only the occasional small marker and a couple of beautiful old oak trees. Volunteers have transformed this cemetery from a forgotten burial ground into a setting that looks almost like a park. It’s a magical space, and is also known as Greenwood Cemetery. I prefer Gethsemane.

It’s a well spaced cemetery so be prepared to walk all over if you want to be sure not to miss any of the artistic markers.

Most of the markers here are handmade and truly glorious, some clearly done by the same hand, which always fascinates me. Maybe there was one person in the community that knew how to make them, or could read and write, or were they just good at it and so people called on them when they needed markers. These questions always surface for me when I go to places like this.

One of my favorite aspects of this cemetery is the small, five pointed star stamp used on many of the headstones, on both sides of the cemetery. I know it must have signified something, but I have been unable to find out what. According to graveaddiction.com it symbolizes the star of heaven, but I get the feeling that it’s something else for this place. The stars are simple and beautiful.

This cemetery was once a burying ground for African Americans, including slaves, and continued to be a primarily African American cemetery until it’s demise due to lack of funding and perpetual care (a repeating theme for this blog). In the Daytona beach Morning Journal from December 4, 1955 it has a funeral announcement for John Lee, who is buried in that cemetery, saying that the Herbert Thompson Funeral Home was performing the burial. They’ve been in business in Daytona Beach for quite awhile.

It was closed for burials in 1974. There is not a lot to say about this cemetery- as a place of historical value there doesn’t seem to be volumes and volumes of history on the place. However, it’s worth a visit to see what a group of individuals can do when they care about a cemetery.

Speaking of caring- next week I’ll be writing about Bay Ridge Cemetery near Apopka, which is completely overgrown and absolutely amazing! I care very much about what happens to that place.

A few of you know this is my main cemetery rant.

In the last 6 months I’ve been to 2 cemeteries with vandalized mausoleums, and it really disturbs me every time I see it. The first one was at Evergreen in Richmond, at the famous Braxton mausoleum which has been torn to shreds by vandals, mostly kids for school pranks. At a place like Evergreen you almost expect to see things like that, it’s an intensely private cemetery and completely overgrown. However, I was surprised recently when I went to Hillside Cemetery in Ormond Beach and found a mausoleum with the doors torn off.

It may not have been this crypt’s first time to see a crowbar. The door was made of wood, which I’ve never seen before. Usually the doors are metal and quite ornate and heavy, so my assumption (could always be incorrect) was that the original doors had been removed for some reason. I did see a photo from 2005 that shows the wooden door- so maybe it was original. Either way it was on the ground.

It was the middle of a beautiful Sunday morning, hot, humid, and with white sunshine beating down on us. The cemetery was mowed and in perfect condition. The irrigation was running and sulfurous water caused the air to smell metallic as we walked around. There was another visitor at the back of the property. It’s not like this place was unkempt and begging for trouble.

The mausoleum in question caught my eye because it was made of a unique stone and it was beautiful, until I saw the door on the ground and evidence of someone having been inside. There was only one burial  in the mausoleum and it was from 1984.

I think the way a lot of cemeteries and families solve these problems is to just stop replacing the doors and wall up the opening with brick. I hate seeing that, but I understand the need for it. Last Spring the Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia made the news when 2 doors were stolen from a mausoleum that were estimated to be worth 25,000 dollars. The doors had been there over 100 years. It seems like an impossible feat for any thief to carry doors like that out of a cemetery when they weighed 800 pounds each, but they did.

Many times when I see news stories about vandalism in cemeteries my first thought is grave robbing, which is still happening even though it seems like something lost to time- like body snatching for medical schools in the 19th century. Apparently, New Orleans still has issues with this, and recently I’ve read several news articles about Civil War graves being disturbed for uniforms, medals, and buttons. A Google search on either topic will produce dozens of articles. However, some people go to remove doors, not to get at the graves inside (like they did in the Braxton Mausoleum), but just to take the doors because of their own value, which would apparently rival anything found in the grave.

This article says something different though- that doors stolen from a mausoleum in 2012 were actually only worth 75 dollars as scrap metal.

Regardless of the reason for the theft, it’s something I hate seeing when I go to visit cemeteries. The doors usually make the mausoleum, and I love the idea of a family member being able to enter, leave flowers, sweep, or just provide maintenance. I went recently to Palm Cemetery in Winter Park and saw a beautiful mausoleum at the back of the property that had doors with a lot of glass. When I looked inside there was a small table and a chair, and on the table were dried flowers, cards, letters, and a candle. Someone had been visiting.

It was beautiful and poignant.