We were out of town this weekend in Perrysburg, Ohio, attending an event at Fort Meigs, a reconstructed War of 1812-1814 fort. Every time we drove from the site to the hotel, we passed the Fort Meigs Cemetery. While sitting at the traffic light at the intersection, I scanned the cemetery and noticed the bluish gray patina of a zinker. I convinced my significant other to let me wander through the cemetery and specifically look at the zinker before we left for home on Sunday.
Unfortunately my comfortable walking sneakers were caked with mud from Saturday’s event and so I was wearing shoes that were not meant for trekking around the squishy uneven ground of a cemetery, so I settled for exploring just 1 and a 1/4 sections of the cemetery.
The zinker I spotted from the road was this one:
It’s for the Spinks family, and three of the four sides contain the names of the family.
The photos really show how much the appearance of a zinker can change depending on the available light.
The fourth side contains a decorative panel, a placeholder for additional family members if they needed to be added.
We found the other zinker over in the next section on a rapidly disintegrating concrete base.
This one had a “family record” on one side with the names, birthplaces, and birth years of all the family members listed.
What made this zinker different from others I have seen is that the two sides do not seem to be removable panels. There is no sign of the decorative screws that would verify that these are panels.
A Grave Concern 