Memento Mori Cemetery Visit

Mike and I went to a graveyard yesterday afternoon. I had to do a project for Archeology, where I had to collect some information about twenty five gravestones older than 1880 (the death date had to be before 1880).

I had some issues actually finding a place, I was going to go to the Green Lady Cemetery, but I actually called the Burlington Police to make sure it'd be alright as long as it was in daylight, and while they said yes, they also told me it didn't have a lot of stones left - a lot were kicked over, and destroyed. So we ended up going to this cemetery.



It was called the Old Farmington Cemetery (it's off of Rte 10 in Connecticut, near Miss Porter's School) on the internet, but I guess it's really called the Memento Mori Burying Ground. Most of the stones I got information on were older, about the mid-1700s.

This was the oldest I saw:



It seemed to be in some sort of shorthand, because then we saw another similar stone that was very interesting - it had another sort of complementary stone that was obviously slightly newer and was made out of more expensive material.



It must have been put up by a son or grandson (a couple stones said they were erected by a grandson or great-grandson, and normally were to honor war veterans or important people).

There were some really pretty stones, but my teacher told us to avoid larger stones - we also had to measure the height and width.



It was really interesting - my teacher told us we'd being seeing alot of people our age (18-22ish) dead. I saw only two people below the age of 20 (one 12 and the other 2 years old, it was quite sad), and a lot of husbands and wives over 50 years old! There were a couple people over 80!

Overall, it was a wonderful to spend a couple hours in the not-so-cold with Mike, a nice way to spend a fall day the day before Halloween! It was very picturesque.