Walking through cemeteries is a favorite
pastime of mine. In my eyes, a walk through a cemetery is paramount to opening a history
book. Cemeteries are the resting place for community leaders, doctors, lawyers, educators,
preachers, farmers, paupers, villains and victims, and a wide range of everyday folks.
Sooner or later, everyone ends up there. Unfortunately, too many pages of our history are
being left blank.
Cemeteries are the sources of information that are not found anywhere else. My great
grandmother Rhoda Daugharty Mobley, the wife of Solomon S. Mobley, was erroneously listed
as Rhonda Daugharty Mobley on numerous genealogical sources. My visit to the cemetery in
Echols County, Georgia cleared up the mystery and provided me with the correct spelling of
her name. Your discoveries could be like mine, on a small or large scale.
Cemeteries provide the names, birth and death dates, marriage dates, family relationships,
marriage dates, religious and civic affiliations, and whatever else the person deemed
necessary for inclusion. Unfortunately, many families fail to provide the historic
information that will be valuable to genealogists, historians, and families generations
from now. Today, more and more families are including a “living epitaph” that
celebrates the life of a loved one. Additionally, many families are ill prepared for
death, so recognizing the need for pre-planning helps to relieve the burden on survivors.
If you are preparing for death but do not yet having adequate finances for the costs for a
memorial, then we advise clients to provide instructions in their will regarding the
memorial, epitaph, location of burial, and the like. An uncle of mine of some means died
without pre-need planning. It is true enough that he knew he had heart problems, and he
had years to prepare, but he procrastinated and died without having designed or purchased
a cemetery monument. With all of his financial resources, his neglect resulted in a
monument that is well below his financial standing in the community. His monument is
plain, giving no details of his life beyond his date of birth and death. Was his a life
well lived? No one will ever know beyond those who knew him, and these relatives and
friends will be gone one day as well. If there was anything unique about his life, it will
not be known to descendants, genealogists, or to historians, and, like so many others, the
tale of his life will be unknown to future generations. With the services of a
professional memorialist, this tragedy could have been avoided. Plan now!
Walking through cemeteries is a favorite
pastime of mine. In my eyes, a walk through a cemetery is paramount to opening a history
book. Cemeteries are the resting place for community leaders, doctors, lawyers, educators,
preachers, farmers, paupers, villains and victims, and a wide range of everyday folks.
Sooner or later, everyone ends up there. Unfortunately, too many pages of our history are
being left blank.