I Told You

Matt and I were watching "A Cemetery Special" on APT Sunday evening. It was actually very interesting, and gave a lot of the history of the first American cemeteries, their designs, and identifying characteristics.

Matt was most impressed with the downtown Atlanta cemetery (historic Oakland Cemetery), just a couple of blocks from his brother's house. He told me that he was eating at the restaurant across the street from the cemetery, called Six Feet Under, when the tornado that ripped off the roof of the Georgia Dome during the SEC basketball championship came through the neighborhood this past spring.

But, back to cemeteries. Did you know that America's first "cemetery", Mount Auburn in Boston, was built in 1831? It was the first to use the term cemetery, from the Greek koimeterion for "place of sleep," rather than burial ground. The only U.S. President whose casket is visible is President Garfield, who was shot just a few months after taking office (all of the other presidents are either buried or entombed). Garfield is "buried" in Cleveland, Ohio, at Lake View Cemetery in a monument where his casket is on a raised bed. Atlanta's Oakland Cemetery is the final resting place to almost 3,000 Confederate soldiers. It filled up quickly though; it sold its last burial plots back in 1884. If your family owns one of the unfilled plots, it's worth a LOT of money!

My favorite was this epitaph, found at Key West Cemetery. Apparently B.P. was a bit of a hypochondriac, but it appears she got the last word.

"I TOLD YOU I WAS SICK"