Once you visit enough cemeteries, you can start to get a feel for the age of the gravestones just by surveying the color, shape, and size from a distance. When I am in a massive garden cemetery like Lake View or Spring Grove, it’s simply impossible to look at everything, so I pick a section and walk through with an eye to the old and unusual. That was how I found this line of stones at Spring Grove.
I don’t know if all of these are half-buried because the sediment has collected around them over time or if some were broken and only the surviving tops reset. It was a chilly day and we were somewhat limited for time, so I didn’t get to inspect then carefully.
An inscription that can be made out for Isaac Conklin says that he died in 1829, which is reasonable given the color, style, and wear on the stones.
The information on most of the others is lost to our eyes, whether to a broken stone or the dirt that envelopes it. The fact that they are lined up in such a perfect line in a cemetery that overall has a very haphazard arrangement and the fact that the bodies (if lined up with the stones) would be lying very close together with their heads to the south and the feet to the north makes me consider strongly that some of these stones have been moved or reset.
A Grave Concern 