Headstone Hunting

Have you ever walked through an old cemetery and read some of the inscriptions on the stones? As you were reading them, did you wonder how someone died since the stone read that they were so young? Were you surprised because another stone nearby read that the person lived to be soooo old!

Old cemeteries hold so much history. They can tell us the birth and death of an ancestor, maybe some military information, the name of the spouse and even the children's names if we get lucky. For most of us, our entire life ends up in a box and buried in the ground. All that is left of our life is what people can remember. The old adage, "memory is short" holds true. Ask a grandchild when their grandmother passed away, ask them where she is buried...and most of the time you will hear..."I don't know", "I don't remember", or "no one ever talked about her, she died before I was born". It's sad that we live our entire life, only to be forgotten! There are so many stories that could be told and passed on through our families, stories that could make us have pride in who we are, but no one seems to do that anymore. The search for history has taken me to so many local cemeteries. They seem to hold the key to so much information. The headstone can be the door to finding it all.