So, do you send out forwarding address cards?

So, in East Cleveland Cemetery, I’ve already posted photos of this obelisk.

I started out trying to find out if this obelisk in Woodland Cemetery was for descendants of the original family in East Cleveland.

Then I realized that the names and death years matched on one panel. It appears that at some point, the Edwards’ descendants erected a monument for them in Woodland Cemetery, and possibly moved the remains from East Cleveland. Then they continued adding other family members to the new monument and buried them in the family plot at Woodland Cemetery.

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Left behind

Lincoln Park in Chicago was once the city’s cemetery. As Chicago grew and changed, as so often happens, the land the cemetery sat on was deemed desirable for other uses – in this case, a lakefront park. In theory, the tombstones were removed, the bodies disinterred, and nearly everything was moved to the cemeteries outside of Chicago proper.

As is so often the case with these sorts of moves, the removal was not as complete as hoped, and periodically remains dating back to the days of city cemetery are unearthed in the area. For reasons lost to time, there is also one remaining vault in its original position. There are no records to conclusively state why the Couch vault was left in what became the park, but it stands there alone now, making it the oldest strucuture still standing within the Chicago fire zone and a beacon for the curious.

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Beneath my feet and enigmatic face…

I don’t know any more about this monument than what is engraved on the stone. Davis Lawler erected it in memory of his parents – why a Sphinx made an appropriate monument to them, I don’t know. But then, that’s kind of appropriate, isn’t it?

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I got a brand new pair of roller skates…

I want to know why there are roller skates on this tombstone. It calls to mind one of the words of wisdom from the seniors the year I was a freshman in high school: “Leave them laughing or leave them wondering what the heck you meant.”

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Aged 0 years?

I have stared and stared at the scroll hanging below the urn on this monument, and what I am seeing doesn’t make sense. What I can make out is

Died
July 29,
1879
Aged
0 Y’rs
6 Mo’s

But it doesn’t make sense. Why would you list out the fact that someone had not lived a year? So either this is a very unusual monument or the number in front of the zero has been damaged or broken off. I tried looking at http://www.findagrave.com in hopes that they would have a detail shot that showed an obscured digit, but the photos I found didn’t look any different.

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AE

You can pretty easily derive the meaning of AE when it appears like this on a tombstone: clearly, it signifies “aged,” as in aged a certain number of years at death. In Latin, “anno aetatis suae” means “in the specified year of a person’s age.” AE, which should actually be squished together so that the rightward most stroke of the A is also the vertical line of the E, is an abbreviation for that.

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A Grave Concern: A reinterment

This seems to be a reinterment, since the stone has a date from the 1830s and Lake View Cemetery did not exist at the time. I have been trying to puzzle out the epitaph. I believe it says “died in the triumphs of faith.” Can anyone else make out something different?

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A Grave Concern: Great shall be thy strength

The sentiment on this stone sounds Biblical in origin, but I haven’t yet been able to find this phrase. I am usually able to discern Bible quotes simply by entering them into an internet search, but I’m not always as successful with locating quotes from religious poetry or hymns. If someone out there is more knowledgeable than me on the source for this epitaph, I look forward to hearing from them.

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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.

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A Grave Concern: Uncle Jimmie

It may not be as clear in the photo as it was in person, but someone has taken the time to carve the name Uncle Jimmie into the top of this stone more deeply than the rest of the inscription. It appears to me that this was done a number of years ago, as the beginning of the name has begun to be obscured again by dirt and weathering, but I wonder who would make the effort to go to the cemetery and do this but only work on that first line?

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