Cemetery Alignment

The township cemeteries aren’t noted on maps. You can find them just touring back roads, and often you have to really get on the back roads, unpaved gravel roads, and you’ll find them. They are small, so if you’re driving the speed limit you’ll see them too late to find a drive to turn in; then you have to find a drive and turn the car around, as usually happens to me. But a stop is a history lesson and gives us occasion to consider our own mortality.
So here I am on my hands and knees tearing the overgrowth grass off old marble slabs in an effort to get a clear photo for the online archives. I’m sure it has been a very long time since anyone fussed around this grave. These old ones set upright in the dirt and over time tipped over. Every year the visible portion shrinks a bit as grass clippings accumulate, dirt blows in and rain settles in the crevices. The marble is easily eroded and the letters on many are illegible.
Generally around 1880’s granite markers are first seen. The new granite monuments are more solid, sit upright and regulations require a concrete base for the marker. This alleviates a lot of the settling problems that happen when several hundred pounds of stone is set on bare earth.
The old graveyards are laid out with the bodies on an east – west axis. Heads should be in the west according to the Christian belief that bodies need to be ready for Judgment Day. When the sun rises on that great day, the dead can sit up and face the coming of the Lord.
New cemeteries are laid out according to the principles of efficiency and economy – need to make money and keep the lawns well manicured. They are platted out like a Michigan campground – every square foot maximized.
This process of first taking a photograph then transcribing the information readable on the tombstone gives ample opportunity for insights. I can see what is important to each generation in what they want remembered. I also see how the different eras relate to death. Generally, as far as U.S. history goes, we have a relatively short time span of tombstones to work with. In this area of Michigan you don’t find many gravesites dating before 1850. And even from that date, markers are gone, eroded, and many graves are just unmarked. People didn’t always purchase tombstones. So I am working with only about 150 years of source material in these township country cemeteries.
In older cemeteries the ground made be slightly sunken in places. This was thought to be enough of a problem that in the 20th century regulations required use of a burial vault to prevent the earth settling. Old coffins deteriorate with time and then the earth collapses in. Some burial vaults are available with the bottom open to allow for the normal process of ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The process is inevitable regardless of what measures you take to slow it.