Inscribed in stone

It’s not hard too find the monuments that have been erected all over the Gettysburg battlefield – in fact, one of the challenges for movies like Gettysburg is hiding the monuments from film. But there are other monuments that are more obscure, like stone carvings. One of these is on Little Round Top, on the boulder below and behind the 91th PVV monument. It marks the approximate location where Lt. Charles Hazlett died with the words: “Hazlett fell com’r Batt’y D 5 U.S.Art’y in battle July 2nd 1863.”

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A Grave Concern: I got a rock

I find the choice to use a carved boulder as a monument interesting. I haven’t found a definitive explanation of the practice. I’ve read that it is a harkening back to graves in more primitive times and places, where graves would have been covered with rocks to keep animals from disturbing them. Another theory is that is a part of a naturalist aesthetic to use the rocks in a form closer to their natural state.

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I got a rock

I have run across a number of grave markers that are boulders in more or less their natural form. This one is in Chester Township Cemetery.

I don’t know enough about geology to know why this rock looks the way it does or if there might be any significance to it, I just needed to show it to you.

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