Certain kinds of stones and monuments interest me more than others:

• I love antique typography, so excellent examples of carved lettering interest me.

• Certain motifs are lovely, like the willow, and the pointing hand. Fraternal symbols are always cool (I am myself a member of the I.O.O.F.), especially of the lesser-known societies. I am less interested in the typical angels and lambs, but an unusual or exceptional example of either is not out of bounds.

• I love stones that tell the story of a cross-country migration or foreign immigration, and this is very common for me to find in my current state of Texas. Especially common are stones for mid-western and southern US transplants, and of course there were many settlers from Europe, most notably Germans, Czechs, and Scandinavians.

• For me, older is not always better. I don't have much interest in graves that date past 1910 or so, but I don't particularly crave the ancient stones of Europe or the very old graveyards of the eastern United States. Those are beautiful, of course, but because I have a special interest in the settlement of this country in the middle 19th century, I am most pleased to find "old for the area.” THEN AGAIN, when I do travel somewhere like Massachusetts or go abroad to much older nations than the US, I do like to see what's on offer ;-)

• I adore finding little, out of the way rural cemeteries. City yards are nice, too, but a great old grave on a country hillside or peeking out of the prairie grasses is what I really love. I lived in Connecticut for a short time, and the small neighborhood burial grounds found ubiquitously behind the low, stone walls characteristic of that region are also special. I suppose the common thread is finding a feeling of the dead being in peaceful, tucked-away places that aren't often seen or noticed.

• As a final note, markers found in older segregated graveyards are fascinating, but because they so often reflect the relative poverty and lack of formal education of their historic communities, they can appear to be treated as a curiosity. That is not my intent. Rather, I find it important to show how vastly different the means of burial marking were. On a related note, these days cemetery segregation is still rampant but is self-imposed. I'm not sure it wouldn't have been so back in the 19th century, too, but of course it's still unpleasant knowing that people did not have a choice.

I post photos of things other than gravestones and cemeteries at my general stream.

I also post Victorian and early 20th century ephemera at my stream called Collectrix.

Thanks for visiting!