I found some more interesting cenotaphs in Carlisle’s Old Graveyard while I was on vacation. For those of you who don’t remember or haven’t been with us long, a cenotaph is a memorial to someone whose body is elsewhere. We have lots of monuments that honor people who aren’t buried underneath (or nearby) them, but cenotaphs within the cemetery itself usually just look like normal grave markers. The difference will be that they have engraved on them that the person is buried elsewhere.
Some cenotaphs I have found are for people whose bodies were lost, such as for the Perrys who died in the Galveston hurricane. Others are for those whose ashes were spread somewhere else, like John van Winkle Newberry. Obviously, there aren’t going to be markers where their bodies are buried. But for those like the ones I found in the graveyard this day, I have a question. Are there also markers of some kind in the other cemetery? Has anyone ever been able to document what are essentially two tombstones for the same person in different cemeteries, on a cenotaph and one a grave marker?
A Grave Concern 