Two years after the American West trip, I earned my final credits for graduation on another road trip course that toured the American South, and that was really the next time that I took any tombstone photographs. But I began to feel the pull of graveyards – during our visit to New Orleans, one of my disappointments was that I didn’t manage to squeeze in a tour of any of the famous cemeteries (My friend Matt and I did join in on a Ghost Tour that centered on the French Quarter.)
As part of the course, we visited the cemetery where General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson is interred and General Robert E. Lee’s tomb on the campus of Washington and Lee University. I still restricted my cemetery photograph to “famous” graves, but my definition of famous had expanded a little. In addition to Stonewall Jackson and Lee, I took photographs of other Confederate officers’ grave markers.
I look back at the photographs from this trip, and I could kick myself. I see all those other tombstones in the background of the Jackson and Pendleton photos, and I wish I had known then how fascinated I would become with cemeteries.
And, why, oh, why, didn’t I get a photograph of the marker for Lee’s horse, Traveller, who rests just outside the chapel door?
A Grave Concern 
Leave a Reply