The Cemetery Detective, Author at The Cemetery Detective™

Mount Moriah Cemetery – Butte, Montana

Grave markers in Mount Moriah Cemetery, Butte, Montana

Name: Mount Moriah Cemetery
Location: Butte, Montana
Coordinates:

“Oh, you have to get a Cornish Pasty while you’re in Butte” so the tourist information leaflets told me. While I was more interested in the beautiful Butte cemeteries, I did stop by a Cornish pasty shop for a quick bite to eat.

Early city formation and the mining activities in the area attracted miners from many nationalities. Notably, miners from Cornwall, England, true to their ancestry, brought two loves with them from their homeland: a love of mining and a love of Cornish pasties.

They also brought a devotion to their loved ones who passed away in their new found homeland. The cemeteries in Butte, MT pay tribute to that devotion. The surrounding rocky landscape can be barren but the cemeteries I visited were lush and green. Mount Moriah was no exception to the lush beauty.

Grave markers in Mount Moriah Cemetery — Grave Markers in Mount Moriah Cemetery

Grave markers contrast against the stark Butte, Montana backdrop.

The Old Granary Burying Ground – Boston, MA

If you are a student or lover of American history, you owe it to yourself to visit the Granary Burying Ground in Boston, Massachusetts.

Name: Granary Burying Ground
Location: Boston, MA
Notable Residents: Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, 3 signers of the Declaration of Independence, many Revolutionary Statesmen.

The Granary Burying Ground was established in 1660 and it is the third oldest cemetery in Boston. It is also one of the oldest cemeteries I have visited inside the United States.

This cemetery is steeped in history and it is fascinating to take a self-guided tour. I did not realize until I read the Wikipedia page on the Granary Burying Ground that there are over 2300 grave sites within the burying ground. In fact, new crypt are occasional discovered as was the case in January 2009 when a woman fell through the ground onto the steps of a previously forgotten crypt.

If you are a student or lover of American history, you owe it to yourself to visit the Granary Burying Ground in Boston.

Ray Cemetery – Harrison, Tennessee

Ray Cemetery outside of Chattanooga Tennessee is an abandoned and uncared for cemetery with field stones and unmarked grave sites.

Ray Cemetery. Harrison (Hamilton County) Tennessee — Ray Cemetery. Harrison, Tennessee. An old, forgotten, and neglected cemetery.

Name: Ray Cemetery
State: Tennessee

Ray Cemetery is currently my favorite type of cemetery to discover. I found this cemetery purely by using an old topo map and my trusty Garmin GPS. Ray Cemetery is located on an old piece of farmland. The cemetery is completely neglected and largely forgotten. I knocked on the door of a couple of farm houses before I found a man who remembered the cemetery from when he was a boy. He told me no one had been on that part of the farm in well over 15 years. Though he did not offer to show me around, he welcomed me to walk through his property and pointed the way.

Rarely do I find such overgrown cemeteries. Ray Cemetery is in a low-lying area of 200 year old farmland. This particular area is frequently muddy from rain runoff and heavy vegetation means nature is gradually reclaiming the land.

The cemetery was difficult to find in such heavy undergrowth and I was only able to find the cemetery when my research assistant point out a barely visible cattle trail leading into otherwise impenetrable thickets.

We noticed haphazardly placed field stones that we mistook for simple rocks lying on the ground. Only after noticing an engraved tombstone did we realize that the field stones were marking gravesites. Many plots were caved in and there were still many more (we assume) unmarked grave sites.

Ray Cemetery Headstone — The only carved tombstone in the cemetery.

Unmarked fieldstone in Ray Cemetery

Beck Cemetery – Chattanooga Tennessee

Beck Cemetery in Chattanooga Tennessee contains a single memorial marker dedicated to all those who are known to be buried within the cemetery.

Beck Cemetery Marker Chattanooga Tennessee — Beck Cemetery – Chattanooga Tennessee

Engulfed by an active golf course and residing adjecent to green Number 3, Beck Cemetery in Chattanooga Tennessee risked being forgotten forever.

Beck Cemetery dates back at least to the mid-1800’s when early settlers of Chattanooga who were involved in sawmills, passenger ferries, quarries, and produce trading founded this plot of land as a family cemetery. Shortly after World War II the cemetery was damaged. It laid neglected for decades until two local residents began independent efforts to rehabilitate the cemetery and pay homage to those buried there.

Beck Cemetery contains a single memorial marker dedicated to all those who are known to be buried within the cemetery.

Chattanooga Memorial Park Cemetery – Chattanooga, Tennessee

Chattanooga Memorial Park Cemetery is a large, sprawling cemetery located within the town of Red Bank, Tennessee.

Name: Chattanooga Memorial Park Cemetery
State: Tennessee
Coordinates: 35 05’39.87N 85 18’07.01W

Chattanooga Memorial Park Cemetery is a large, sprawling cemetery located within the town of Red Bank, Tennessee. Red Bank lies entirely within Hamilton County, Tennessee and immediately adjecent to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Memorial Park is a rolling

Chattanooga Memorial Park Cemetery is one of my first experiments using GPS and Google Earth to map locations of individual grave sites within a cemetery.

I have been experimenting with using my GPS to record individual gravesites and take pictures of the headstones. Using a program called Google Earth I have been able to import the photographs and the GPS coordinates to give a visual representation of the location of each grave site.

This data is saved as a .kml (Keyhole Markup Language) file. To see the .kml file of the Memorial Park Cemetery, please install Google Earth and then download this file. This is an experiment only. Memorial Park Cemetery Map

Aetna Cemetery – Haletown, Tennessee

Grave sites within Aetna Cemetery date back to the 1860’s and are marked with crude hand-carved tombstones.

Name: Aetna Cemetery
State: Tennessee

Aetna Cemetery is a small volunteer maintained cemetery located atop Aetna Mountain just outside Haletown, Tennessee.

The grave sites within Aetna Cemetery date back to the 1860’s and are marked with crude hand-carved tombstones.

I love hand carved grave markers. They show the personality not only of the carver and the individual they are carved for but also for the community at large. I believe hand carved tombstones are treasures of the community and time from which they were made. Hand carved tombstones are in abundance in Aetna Cemetery.

Aetna Cemetery will probably never be described as “beautiful” but the rugged rural nature of this cemetery gives it a character hard to find in modern, landscaped, and perfectly manicured cemeteries. I don’t often feel a presence of the people who are buried in cemeteries I explore. However, when I visited Aetna Cemetery, I felt like I was not only observing burial sites but also the burials themselves. I felt the heartbreak of rural mountain people as they buried their sons, daughters, Mothers, and Fathers during driving rains of Tennessee Novembers and the blistering heat of an outdoor funeral in the South during the height of summer.

Aetna Cemetery - Haletown, Tennessee — Aetna Cemetery – Haletown, Tennessee

Name: Aetna Cemetery State: Tennessee

Name: Aetna Cemetery
State: Tennessee