I Love Cemeteries

journal entry:

It is impossible to compile and research family history without falling in love with cemeteries. Especially those where ancestors sleep. We discovered the burial places of many ancestors only recently. We discovered this mountain-top cemetery named Pleasant Green Cemetery only a few years ago. There we found Tom’s great-grandparents John and Rosella Jenkins. Closer family members knew where they were buried all along. Since their daughter who was Tom’s grandmother Mary died before he was born, his family did not know much about them.

 

 

Soon it will be the 24th of July.  On that date we will celebrate the day that the early pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley. John Jenkins and his family settled in a beautiful place on the west side of the valley and named it Pleasant Green.  Today it is called Magna. As the members of the community began to die, they were buried on top of the hill in what became the Pleasant Green Cemetery. We stop by now and then.

 

 

It is a neglected cemetery. Overgrown with weeds. Uneven. Only a few of the family plots are cared for, even though new people are buried here all of the time. It is in fact so overgrown that many grave stones are hidden. Completely. We shared the cemetery this day with the grasshoppers and nothing else.

 

 

The wind has been blowing each time we have visited. A few trees have hung on through the winters and the summers without water. Not the tree in this family plot. It is simply a place for birds but has long since quite giving shade to those buried among its roots.

 

 

Someone placed a flag on the grave in the middle of these weeds.  Who knows how long it has been there. It can barely be seen. Someone planted iris bulbs around the grave but they have quit blooming and barely come up at all without any water. We wondered who was buried there and how he had served his country. Somehow it didn’t seem quite right.

 

 

There was a time when someone went to some trouble and expense to create a beautiful family plot. All that remains is the fence with it’s granite posts and beautiful, rusted ornamental bars.  The gate is missing. It’s hinges remain. No grave stones inside of this beautiful fence. No doubt someone’s family is buried there but markers are long gone. Still, we stopped and touched the ornamentation and thought about the beauty of it.   And, we wondered who it belonged to.  When it was built and now.

I usually put fun and crafty things on All Things Grandma.  I usually put posts like this one on my other blog: All Things Ancestor. I decided to share out visit and the photographs I took in both places.

A new sign had been hammered into the hard dirt. The cemetery was still in business although you would never know if someone didn’t tell you.  I do think that the sign was meant to tell visitors that grave sites were still available.  Somehow, the sign accidentally suggested that future graves would be “quite a sight” along with all others within our view.  Funny, isn’t it?

I love cemeteries.