In considering what to write about this month I remembered this post from six years ago, ruminating about the places that can trigger story ideas. Like obituaries, cemeteries are full of jumping off points for stories. Do you agree? If so, please share in the comments.
Is it just me, or do all mystery writers feel at home in old cemeteries?
The breeze carries stories of those whose names and dates of death are chiseled into marble headstones, tangible markers of the earthly existence of both the long-lived and those who trod this earth only for a few short years.
Flags denote the final resting place of veterans. Flowers grace the graves of those who are gone but certainly are not forgotten. Elaborate tombs sit across narrow roadways from flat-to-the-earth markers.
A good wander through a burial ground fills me to the brim with ideas.
Old grave marker in the Ventry Burying Ground, County Kerry, Ireland
When we were in Ireland in April, 2017, we spent a lot of time exploring an old cemetery overlooking the sea in the town where my maternal ancestors once lived. There’s a newer section and an old one, the latter pocked with holes dug by rabbits who energetically co-exist with the dead.
It’s a place where you must watch your step lest you find yourself face down atop an old grave.
We quickly realized it was important to heed this warning.
Michael was likely a cousin of my grandmother, from the side of the family that stayed in Ireland when she and her siblings immigrated to the US around the turn of the century.
My grandmother died in this country. She rests next to my grandfather, my parents and other family members in a much more modern cemetery in Massachusetts. I searched the Ventry graveyard unsuccessfully for stones naming her parents, John and Mary (McKenna) Fenton, but was unable to find them. It may well be that their bodies were interred in a private graveyard a mile up the hill in the townland of Baile an Chotaigh (in English, “Ballincota,” as in the adjacent photo), where the family lived for generations.
I did come upon the grave of Michael and Margaret Fenton who would have been rough contemporaries of my grandmother. He was a cousin, I suspect. How sad they lost a daughter at age three. How interesting that their son – year older than little Marguerita – lived to the age of 83.
NOTE: On a return trip to Ireland last spring, I learned from my cousin Muris Fenton that my maternal ancestors are indeed buried in the seaside cemetery, in a plot marked by unengraved head and footstones. Because he’s lived there his entire life he knows a great deal about family history, and was able to show me the exact location. Most of the engraved stones, even in the old part of the graveyard, are relatively new, he said, because generations ago, families could not afford them.
In Portland, we like to walk through Evergreen Cemetery on Stevens Avenue. A National Historic Landmark managed by the City, it covers 239 acres and is known for the “diversity of over 40,000 monuments, including large-scale, distinctive pieces of funerary sculpture of high artistic quality,” according to the City’s website. Evergreen was modeled after Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, founded in 1831 as a “rural cemetery and experimental garden.”
If you’ve never strolled through Evergreen, I recommend a springtime visit to this serene, historic place.
We make early morning visits to Evergreen in early May to witness the warbler migration, which is especially active around the ponds near its back boundary. Maine Audubon leads guided bird walks in this area that are free and open to the public. For more information: https://maineaudubon.coursestorm.com/course/warbler-walks-at-evergreen-cemetery1?page=3
Another historic cemetery we make a point to visit each spring is Laurel Hill in Saco. According to its website, this burial ground was created in 1844 “to replace the town common’s crowded, neglected cemetery.”
Also inspired by Cambridge’s Mount Auburn Cemetery, the architect “included meandering paths and roads, with deciduous trees and evergreen shrubs punctuating broad expanses of open lawn. Situated on the banks of the Saco River, the cemetery’s lawn areas merge with marsh grasses at the river’s edge. A Queen Anne-style chapel built in 1890 remains in use.”
Laurel Hill Cemetery sits on a bluff above the Saco River.
Like many who have no family buried there, we’re drawn to Laurel Hill in May, when the tens of thousands of daffodils planted over the years are in bloom.
Thousands of daffodils are an intentional part of the architectural landscape at Laurel Hill Cemetery.
The search for family history, the bird habitat and the floral burst of spring are secondary, though, to the stories embraced in old cemeteries. Lives are summed up in a few short words, offering writers a thousand ideas on which to ruminate.
Readers: Do you visit cemeteries? When and why? What are your favorites?
When we lived in Hartland, I used to walk through the cemetery just up the road from our house that abuts the Sebasticook River as darkness fell. I got some terrific photos of the more ornate headstones. Sometimes loons would utter their eerie call while I was there, making it a perfect experience.
Living in rural Maine, I am fascinated by the number of small family cemeteries that pop up unexpectedly. The old homesteads and farms are long gone and swallowed by woods. The iron fences are in often in good repair and the gravestones are frequently decorated or at least tended.
My favorites in my county are in the ghost town of Chloride, New Mexico, a former mining boom town now inhabited by around fourteen people. There are two graveyards at opposite ends of the town dating back to the silver mining days of the nineteenth century, one with all the stones engraved in Spanish and another with all the gravestones in English. I was surprised to see that both are still in use for modern burials, though very few. Haunting places on the edge of wilderness. I don’t wander there often, but characters in one my books do.
I use to go with my Father in the cemeteries of Carroll Ct NH. Many were way back in the woods as they were my Father’s maternal side of the family. Sometimes we took roads that seemed almost impassable. Roads he remembered as a child and young person. They are good memories of him.