A Grave Concern: Mausoleum doors

Mausoleum doors can be simple, but they can also be fascinating.

When we visited Forest Lawn Cemetery, my friend said she was going to make a bracelet based on the design on the Cowan doors.

The Stachura mausoleum has a mourning figure worked into the doorway.

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A Grave Concern: Blue Sky Mausoleum

At the edge of this pond on the right side, you can see the Blue Sky Mausoleum, an architectural design by Frank Lloyd Wright. Although Wright designed the mausoleum in the 1920s for his friend Darwin Martin in the 1920s, the mausoleum was not constructed until 2004.

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A Grave Concern: Just like home

I’m used to benches (or exedra) in cemeteries, particularly garden cemeteries, but there were many more of them in Forest Lawn that I have seen anywhere, particularly more worked into monument groups rather than being physically attached to monuments. But none were as cool as this. This is a very contemporary mausoleum – our guide reported that the husband of the couple was still alive at the time of our visit and comes frequently to visit his wife who rests here.

M told us that the couple shared a dream of having a mausoleum in Forest Lawn Cemetery and had saved their money for many years to build the one you see in the photos. The loveseat and easy chairs of stone in front of the mausoleum are modeled after the ones that they had in their living room, and, as my friend and his son report, are fairly comfortable as stone upholstery goes.

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The other Ashtabula Horror ghost

Fate, they say, is a cruel mistress. The ghost of Charles Collins may be more acutely aware of that than most. Charles Collins was the chief engineer for the Lake Shore and Michigan Railway – the man who helped Amasa Stone design the fatal bridge and who inspected it very soon before the accident. In the ensuing investigation, he was heavily interrogated about his role in failing to prevent the disaster. And, the newspapers reported, one day after testifying, Charles Collins returned to his room and put a gun to his head. And that is how the story has come down to us. One of the two primary villains of the Horror was conveniently dead, and the public seemed to feel that his blood was some small payment for the destruction he caused.

In fact, investigators at the time saw all the signs of a homicide rather than a self-inflicted gunshot wound. But at the time, allowing Collins’ death to go down on the books as a suicide resulting from his feelings of guilt was the more politically expedient choice than attempting to identify the murderer of a highly unpopular man.

Collins’ family laid him to rest in the mausoleum in quiet Chestnut Grove Cemetery, mere miles from the disaster that seems to have precipitated his death. And then in 1895, the monument to the unrecognized dead was placed in the cemetery in the exact same section, almost next door to the Collins’ mausoleum. Cemetery visitors occasionally report a repentant, weeping man wandering that section. If ghosts do exist, it appears that Charles Collins can never escape his culpability for what happened outside Ashtabula in that gorge on a freezing December night. He and those who his negligence killed seem destined to haunt the same piece of hallowed ground, their fates permanently entwined.

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Medal of Honor

Joel Parsons was a private in the 4th West Virginia Infantry and received the Medal of Honor for his actions at the Battle of Vicksburg. According to the West Virginia Medal of Honor Recipients “>list, he “stormed a Confederate stronghold” on May 22, 1863. I noticed that the Medal of Honor winner listed above him, a Pvt. Jasper N. North from the same unit, received his Medal for the same action. Searching the page, I found Pvt. James C. Summers (4th West Virginia Infantry), Thomas J. Ward (116th Illinois Infantry), Pvt. William H. Barringer (4th West Virginia Infantry), Sgt. John C. Buckley (4th West Virginia Infantry); all awarded the Medal of Honor for this same action. From looking at regimental histories, it seems that the 4th West Virginia Infantry participated in assaults on the besieged city of Vicksburg on both May 19 and May 22. Vicksburg did not fall until July 4, 1863.

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Scavenger Hunt

I did this scavenger hunt that was posted to the Association of Graveyard Rabbits, although I didn’t get the post written before the deadline for the carnival itself. I twisted my ankle walking around Union Cemetery doing the carnival and then limped my way around Origins gaming convention for four days.

All scavenger hunt photos were taken this past Wednesday morning at Union Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio. Below I’ve listed the scavenger hunt item and then a photo of the grave marker that fulfilled that requirement.

Cross – The Birk monument culminates in a cross.

Heart – This very worn marker for a baby named Paul is heart-shaped. I can’t even make out his surname.

Fraternal symbol – For the fraternal symbol, we have the marker for Frank P. Walters, a Marine who served in the first World War and has a Masonic symbol on his tombstone.

Monument – This seemed so general that I decided to feature the Gaddis family marker. A metal sundial sits atop the center column.

Flower – A carved flower decorates the top two corners of the Hagans’ stone.

Hand – The gravestone for Amanda Evans includes a single hand holding the stem of a flower.

Angel – The names of the two Cooper children are flanked by praying angels.

Bird – A bird, likely a dove, is carved into baby William Wiedemann’s tombstone.

Tree – A weeping willow grows on the tombstone of John Lisle, whose 1808 burial must have been one of the earliest in the graveyard, which was only founded two years before.

Star – I wandered around looking for a star for while before it dawned on me that the Civil War veterans’ markers contain or are stars, like these two for George Lakin.

Obelisk – This obelisk memorializes the Lakin family.

Four-legged animal – The marker for little Mildred Ferguson, who sadly did not live to see her 2nd birthday, is topped by a lamb – a four-legged animal.

Photo – Dorothy Price Walsh’s tombstone preserves her likeness for us.

Military gravestone – For the military tombstone, I found the memorial for Medal of Honor recipient Joel Parsons, a Civil War veteran.

Mausoleum – Amaranth Abbey is a giant mausoleum.

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