I have always been fasinated by cemetaries. Growing up in Delaware County PA, I had plenty of old cemetaries around me. I have never been afraid to ask a question when a headstone puzzled me, like why is there only 1 name on that stone (just a first name and no last name). I really got into old cemetaries when I mowed an old Quaker cemetary for a few seasons. Things I would find would add to my curiousity-like whole groups of children from a family that all died on the same day, or unique engravings like "drowned in Boston Harbor". I find it sad today that cemetaries are not used the way that most were intended-as memorial parks, where literally familys would go to have an outing and picnic after church and to spend time with ancestors who had departed this life. I now live in an area of the country that the living take a great deal of pride in their ancestry and where being buried on your own land is as much a part of life as anything else. Use to be in TN that if you bought a piece of land and there was an forgotten graveyard, that the state highway department would come out and put up a fence and put down a stone driveway leading to the cemetary so that any ancestor could come and visit freely, but sadly this is no longer the case. It is my hope that folks will slow down in this way to busy world to take the time to put a flower or two on an ancestors grave or at the very least remember them daily. For we pass but this way once.

I have always been fasinated by cemetaries. Growing up in Delaware County PA, I had plenty of old cemetaries around me. I have never been afraid to ask a question when a headstone puzzled me, like why is there only 1 name on that stone (just a first name and no last name). I really got into old cemetaries when I mowed an old Quaker cemetary for a few seasons. Things I would find would add to my curiousity-like whole groups of children from a family that all died on the same day, or unique engravings like "drowned in Boston Harbor". I find it sad today that cemetaries are not used the way that most were intended-as memorial parks, where literally familys would go to have an outing and picnic after church and to spend time with ancestors who had departed this life. I now live in an area of the country that the living take a great deal of pride in their ancestry and where being buried on your own land is as much a part of life as anything else. Use to be in TN that if you bought a piece of land and there was an forgotten graveyard, that the state highway department would come out and put up a fence and put down a stone driveway leading to the cemetary so that any ancestor could come and visit freely, but sadly this is no longer the case. It is my hope that folks will slow down in this way to busy world to take the time to put a flower or two on an ancestors grave or at the very least remember them daily. For we pass but this way once.