Grave stone engravings

When I first gained interest in taking photos of "Cemetery art" I had not given much thought past the statues. But then I started looking at headstones and the art work involved there. Looking at the headstones you start to read them. On the older stones you occasionally found corrections, a crossed off letter with the correct letter carved above the word with a line showing where the letter should go. Sometimes entire words were forgotten and added with a line locator. Occasionally you would find a stone where the engraver ran out of room and ran the word upward in the margin, or abbreviated a word that normally wasn't abbreviated.

But besides the errors, miss-spellings and omissions, the messages themselves can be inspiring, funny, in-sightful, or informative.

There is a saying on many stones that seems to have been very popular in the 17 and 1800s. the first time I came across it was near Saunderstown in the Kingston RI area. On a very narrow road off route 1 or 1a we came across a church on top of a hill. A very secluded area, a thin tall white church, behind it was a cemetery with plain stones as markers, (often used for slaves and native Americans). Across the narrow lane was a stone wall with a wrought iron gate leading to a cemetery. the entire area was over grown with briers, brush, and trees. The entire are looked like something out of the mind of that New England horror novelist, Stephen King.
I climbed over the stone wall pulled some briers aside to get access, some of the headstones were partially inside trees which had grown up and absorbed them, all the stones were partially covered with years of accumulated ground litter. The years had composted the leaves and twigs countless times and the soil had built up six to eight inches. Here I found a stone of a young woman, a wife, a mother, as I read down the stone I noticed at the bottom there was a saying, it read,

"You must see, as you pass by, As you are now, so once was I" 

Below that there was another line, it was covered with only the tops of the letters visible, so I kneeled down on the grave, reached in the dirt and started digging it out, the dirt was a mass of tiny to thin roots, like an intricate web. I pulled the roots out, I dug out the dirt, I rubbed the dirt out of the letters.
Now, picture yourself kneeling on a grave, with your hands resting in its earth and you read...

"As I am now, So must you be, prepare for Death and follow me".

This was kind of an awakening as to how they handled life and death in the more difficult times of our past, Death was part of life, something to expect, something you had to live your life for so you were prepared to meet your maker, stand in front of him, and be judged.

I would find this saying and other related sentiments many times on many stones later on.



klay