Tombstone Tuesday: Summer in the Cemetery

Finding Rhode Island Cemeteries

Barber Section, River Bend Cemetery, Westerly, Washington, Rhode Island

River Bend Cemetery in Westerly, Rhode Island is my favorite Rhode Island Cemetery because it is so beautifully maintained. 

My parents chose to be interred here because they were both born in Westerly, RI.

A summer day taking photographs at River Bend is lovely. The cemetery is well organized, there is a map, and the cemetery office is staffed with friendly people. It doesn't get better than this! 

As a child, I visited here and it really did give me a love of the graveyards. My maternal Grandparents are buried in the Elm Grove Cemetery in nearby Mystic, Connecticut. On or near Memorial Day, we decorated graves in both places and then went out to lunch or went to my grandparent's beach house. To me, it meant the beginning of summer and that I was learning about my ancestors. 

It still took a lot of helpful people for me to find as many gravestones as I have. I am grateful to my friends who live in the area and can help me. 

For this month, I am going to work on my understanding of why Rhode Island gravestones are so hard to find. Grab your sunscreen, bug spray, hat and camera and come along. There are about 3, 143 cemeteries in the state of Rhode Island. Don't worry we won't be visiting all of them.

In this series of blog posts, I will show you the improvements made in locating Rhode Island cemeteries since I started photographing gravestones.