A Grave Concern: Celtic crosses at Calvary Cemetery

Read Full Post »

A Grave Concern: Cemetery tour this weekend

This Sunday, October 2, 2011, Woodland Cemetery Foundation is offering their Killer Cleveland Tour at 1 pm and 3 pm. This is a fundraiser to help with their efforts to repair and maintain this historic cemetery. Please see their website for more details.

Read Full Post »

A Grave Concern: Interesting decor

If you look very closely at this cross, you can see lines and shadows of something fairly narrow wrapped around it.  It’s a wire and green foil disposable garland with shamrocks like you might find in a craft store in the weeks before St. Patrick’s Day.  I’m not sure when it was placed there.  It’s a little tattered, so maybe it could be a leftover St. Patrick’s Day decoration or placed there for a more personally specific day, such as a birthday or anniversary.  In a city with such a strong Irish heritage, I wasn’t surprised to see symbols of Irish ethnic pride, but this was a little unusual.

Read Full Post »

A Grave Concern: Hurley Wordless Wednesday

Read Full Post »

A Grave Concern: Melting angel

This is as closely as I was willing to get to photograph the little angel next to this monument. The angel does not look original to the family plot, and it startled me as I came around the monument.  Whatever material it is made of, it is not as strong as the monument beside which it sits, and the weathering on it has created an eerie illusion that the angel is melting.  You can kind of see it in the fact that one wing has slid slightly to be lower than the other.  The impact on the face is even more disconcerting.

Read Full Post »

A Grave Concern: You are ever a priest

The epitaph on the lower right hand side of the monument is “Tu Es Sacerdos In Aeternum,” which translates from Latin as “you are ever a priest.”

Read Full Post »

A Grave Concern: Mc or W

I nearly walked by this stone when I noticed what is so unusual about it.  My first thought when I glanced over was how extraordinary it was for all members of the same family to have middle names beginning with the same letter.  Then, when I examined it closer, I have come to the conclusion that the W. or Mc. beside each first name is not a middle name, but a last initial.  It looks to me like the letters indicate for you which surname the person carried with them.  It’s a very interested way to incorporate that information into the monument.  I wonder if it was done for space reasons.

Read Full Post »

A Grave Concern: The Lynch Family Plot

I have not found much information about the John and Clara Lynch family or where their money came from, but it is clear they had some based on their cemetery plot at Calvary Cemetery. This is one of the most photographed monuments at Calvary, and every article notes the little island in the road that it sits on.

The monument group features a central family marker topped with two statues.  Each family member has an individual marker.  The whole thing is surrounded by a low wall.  At the entrance to the plot, the wall supports two urns and then two pedestals supporting praying angels.

Read Full Post »

A Grave Concern: Celtic Crosses at Calvary Cemetery

Read Full Post »

A Grave Concern: Another mystery

This stone intrigued me because there aren’t a huge number of large memorials with multiple adult names on them in any cemetery, yet alone one to a school. I’ve not come up with a lot of information so far. At the time of the Colombian Exposition (1893), there was an Epheta School for the Deaf, and a few sources mention the school and a St. Joseph’s Home as being one and the same, but I haven’t found anything very concrete on them.

Read Full Post »