Tombstone Tuesday: Maternal Grandparents

Photos by Brian Zoldak, 2016, used with permission
(These headstones are much more clearly photographed than mine.)

My Maternal Grandparents

(Elm Grove Cemetery History)
Blog post #1

When I decided to photograph the gravestones of my ancestral families, I didn't realize that I was going to get so involved with it. I didn't have a plan at all! I just wanted to get them recorded and to leave behind, in my records, the name of the cemetery and where "my people" were buried. I started the day I buried my mother, who was the daughter of these people in this photograph. It was a focused, purposeful start to my "modern genealogy". That was in 2002.

Evans and Jo were my rock. As you can see, these are their headstones. It is a long time between 1955 and 1992. When we buried my grandmother's ashes, we had to wait until spring. I didn't know that cemeteries did that. My husband, my parents and my daughter were with me the day we buried her ashes. It was just a graveside service. The headstones were already in place and my mother had contacted a carver to add the date. My mother was not in the mood to answer questions, so I started a list in the car on the way home. 

Prior to this, it was both of my families, paternal and maternal, to go to the cemetery near or on Memorial Day. My grandmother was very good at explaining that my grandfather's parents and grandparents were buried there too. She told me that Grandpa was buried in a casket but she wanted to be cremated. Under no circumstances was I to waste money putting their names on the back side of the big Denison monument. "Yes, grandma", I said, obediently. 

Later, when I took photographs of all of the people in that section, I found out why she said that and that will be part of my next blog post.

This is the "Denison" section of Elm Grove Cemetery, Mystic, New London, Connecticut.

Photos by Brian Zoldak, 2016, used with permission