I stopped by Ray Chapman’s grave last weekend to see what the latest offerings were. The Cleveland Indians’ Chappie has been gone for 93 years, and yet, still the pilgrims come to see his grave and pay their respects.
Archive for the ‘Morbid Musings’ Category
The latest offerings
Posted in Morbid Musings, tagged baseball, cause of death, cleveland, cleveland indians, lake view cemetery, occupation, ohio, ray chapman, tombstone tales on January 29, 2013 | 2 Comments »
Names
Posted in Morbid Musings, tagged big spring presbyterian cemetery, names, newville, pennsylvania on January 26, 2013 | 1 Comment »
I found two particularly interesting names when I visited Big Spring Presbyterian Cemetery. The first one, Abbidora, I can’t find anything about online. Now, not everything is on the internet (gasp!) but when I did a Google search for the name, the only Abbidora I found was…this one, on a cemetery transcription project website. I’m guessing that it’s probably a compound name made from two more common names, but that’s just an assumption.
Fleeta is also an unusual name where I live, but not nearly so obscure. All the baby names websites that track name popularity in history showed that “Fleeta” appeared on the top 1000 baby names in the United States in the 1890s. (Not high up in the top 1000, mind you – it was definitely towards the bottom.) With it being less popular, none of them I checked even attempted to provide a meaning.
Help me out here
Posted in Morbid Musings, tagged cincinnati, ohio, place of death, spring grove cemetery, unsolved on January 19, 2013 | 2 Comments »
So help me out here. I’ve been trying to figure out the name of the farm where this young man died. I think it’s a capitalized proper noun. If it helps to know, this photograph is from Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, and the year of death is 1822, so the location would have existed in the early days of Cincinnati or the outlying areas.
Nicknames
Posted in Morbid Musings, tagged allen, fraternal organization, grave art, names, nicknames, ohio, sculpture, symbolism, williston cemetery on January 1, 2013 | 1 Comment »
I know exactly why I took this photograph. “Whitey” was not just Lewis Wagner’s nickname, it was also my maternal grandfather’s. I’ve posted before about how fascinating I find names, and that includes nicknames. I suppose my grandfather could have gotten the name “Whitey” from a brief period of time where he had white hair, but the photos I have seen of him indicate he began losing his hair fairly young and took the same approach my middle brother has to the problem – purposely buzzing or shaving the remaining hair makes it much less obvious how much of it has disappeared.
AuVergne
Posted in Morbid Musings, tagged kirtland, kirtland historic north cemetery, names, ohio on November 29, 2012 | 1 Comment »
The name on this stone caught my eye because I had never seen it before. My great-grandfather was LaVergne, a name that I don’t usually see applied to men, but I’ve never seen AuVergne before. While researching the name, I found out that it’s actually is the name of a historic province and now a region in France. Because of that, almost all of the links I could find were about the place, rather than establishing for me whether the name was more popular in an earlier time or whether this person had an unusual name, possibly harkening back to the French place.
Death is but the portal to eternal life
Posted in Morbid Musings, tagged cleveland, lakeview cemetery, ohio, ohio history on November 8, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Joy
Posted in Morbid Musings, tagged beth shalom cemetery, ohio, oregon, portrait on October 14, 2012 | 1 Comment »
When I flipped open the locket on Jacob Stein’s headstone to find this photo, I laughed out loud. The whole photo just exudes life and joy – he looks so happy and comfortable, with an expression that gives you the feeling he’s just enjoyed a good joke or story.
Bloom Wordless Wednesday
Posted in Morbid Musings, tagged beth shalom cemetery, epitaphs, grave art, lamp, ohio, oregon, symbolism on October 10, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Births and deaths
Posted in Morbid Musings, tagged beachwood, ohio, warrensville east cemetery on October 2, 2012 | 1 Comment »
This monument is a little different from the usual. Instead of listing each family member’s name and birth and death dates (or years), two panels have a heading of “births” and list the name of the family member and his or her birthdate. Another panel lays out “deaths” in the same pattern. Of course, two of the birth panels are completed and only one death panel, so we have a few options here: 1. some family members ended up buried elsewhere; 2. nobody paid to have the death information added after the burials, or 3*. there are some vampires in the family. You decide.
* 4. I should not be permitted to write blog posts after a certain hour.
Last words
Posted in Morbid Musings, tagged east cleveland, epitaphs, first presbyterian church cemetery, links, nelaview cemetery, ohio on September 24, 2012 | 4 Comments »
Far from affliction toil and care
The happy soul is fled
The breathless day shall slumber here
Among the silent dead
When I started looking up information on this epitaph, I discovered this website, Last Words. There was an entire page of “last words,” by which they meant epitaphs.
