Category Archives: Cemeteries

Forest Hill Cemetery, Duluth

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Late in the afternoon on the last day of July, I visited Forest Hill Cemetery in Duluth. I didn’t explore it as well as I might have. I’ve since read that there’s a “millionaire’s row” of mausoleums that I completely missed.

Ah, well. C’est la mort. Forest Hill Cemetery has a pleasant setting in the hilly land toward the northeastern edge of the city. When founded in 1890, Forest Hill wasn’t in the city, but part of the rural cemetery movement — a fairly late entry, since the movement had kicked off more than 50 years earlier.

Maybe that helps account for the relative lack of funerary art so beloved by Victorians. Or maybe the cemetery is characteristic of Minnesota reserve. Anyway, mostly it’s headstones. Parts are lightly forested.
There are slopes, which is characteristic of much of Duluth.Whoever Carl Nelson was, gone these 60-plus years, he still seems to get visitors.
Nearby, Clarence R. Nelson has a fair number of stones as well. His headstone says he was a sergeant in WWII, with the only date given being Oct. 20, 1942, presumably his death.

One of the few statues that I saw. A somber Jesus overlooks a melancholy section called Babyland.

Which includes such residents as baby Ella.
Elsewhere is a small set of columbaria, complete with a small praying hands (diminutive compared to these in Tulsa, which I saw back in ’09).
Not sure I’d want my memorial quite so close to a parking lot. Oddly, a road would be OK, at least a lightly traveled one like in a cemetery. But it’s a matter of de gustibus non est disputandum anyway.

Duluth & Environs ’18

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When I was very young, I had a U.S. map puzzle that I put together who knows how many times, fascinated by the individual shapes of the states. Some states more than others, including Minnesota, with its rough northern border, more-or-less straight-back western border, concave eastern border and pointy southeast and especially northeast corners.

The northeast corner still holds some fascination, and for more than just the shape. There’s the lure of the North Woods, and Lake Superior is always calling. Enough to inspire a short trip. On July 27, after I finished my Friday work, we hit the road for a five-night trip to Duluth and environs.

Since reaching Duluth means crossing northwest all the way through Wisconsin, a few points in that state were part of the trip as well, especially Eau Claire, where we spent the first night at a spartan but tolerable chain motel.

From Saturday afternoon until the morning of Wednesday, August 1, we stayed at the non-chain Allyndale Motel, a notch up from spartan. It’s in west Duluth, almost at the edge of town, but actually Duluth isn’t that large, so the location wasn’t bad.

I guessed that the Allyndate dated from the golden age of independent motel development, namely the 1950s. The details were right, except no bottle opener attached to a surface somewhere in the room. Just before we left, in a talk with the owner, I was able to confirm that vintage. The first rooms dated from 1952, he said, with later additions.

Before checking into the motel that first day, we spent a short while in downtown Duluth, walking along E. Superior St., which features shops and entertainment venues, including a legitimate theater, art house cinema and a casino. Rain, which had been holding back on the way into town, started to come down hard, so we ducked into the Duluth Coffee Company Cafe long enough to wait it out over various beverages.

That evening, we took in a show at the Marshall W. Alworth Planetarium, which is part of the University of Minnesota Duluth. The recorded show, narrated by Liam Neeson, was about black holes, and then an astrophysics grad student (I think) talked about the night sky. Many planetariums don’t bother with live narration anymore, so that was refreshing.

On Sunday we drove along much of the winding and often scenic Skyline Parkway in Duluth, stopping along the route to take in the sweeping view of the city, as well its twin city of Superior, Wis., and a large stretch of Lake Superior, from the Enger Tower in the aptly named Enger Park.

There happened to be a coffee and ice cream truck in the park, so Lilly had iced coffee and Ann had ice cream. The truck showed its regional pride in the form of a Minnesota flag.

The design needs work, like many Midwest state flags. Here’s an alternative.

Late that morning we saw Duluth’s Aerial Lift Bridge up close, along with other parts of Canal Park and lakeside spots. The lofty bridge — crossing the entrance to Lake Superior from St. Louis Bay — is the Eiffel Tower of Duluth, a stand-in for the city that appears in a lot of places, including a refrigerator magnet that we brought home. (But I refuse to use the i-word.)

In the afternoon, we headed northeast from town along U.S. 61, which follows the shore of Lake Superior. That region, I discovered, is known locally as the North Shore. We made it as far as Gooseberry Falls State Park.

On Monday, July 30, we headed north, mostly via U.S. 53, to Voyageurs National Park, which is hard by the Canadian border. The trip up and back from Duluth is a little far for a single day, but ultimately seemed worth the effort. Besides, something about the symmetry of visiting Voyageurs NP and Big Bend NP during the same year appealed to me.

As the girls slept late on the last day of July, I made my way to Superior, Wis., and visited the Richard I. Bong Veterans Historical Center, a small military museum. WWII is increasingly distant, and except in Wisconsin, the memory of air ace Bong’s deeds has faded. But he had his moment.

The main event of July 31, our last day in town, was the Great Lakes Aquarium, which is in downtown Duluth, on St. Louis Bay not far from the Aerial Lift Bridge and Canal Park. The aquarium’s distinction is that it focuses on freshwater creatures.

Late that afternoon, I struck out again on my own to see one more place: Forest Hill Cemetery, which is in the hills northeast of the University of Minnesota Duluth. My kind of site, not the girls’.

On August 1, we got up early and drove home, stopping only to eat lunch in Madison. I wanted to take Lilly to Ella’s Deli, since she wasn’t with us last year when we went. But it’s closed.

Too bad. Wonder what happened to all the oddball stuff Ella’s had. Instead we found Monty’s Blue Plate Diner. Not as much whimsy on the walls as Ella’s, but the food was good.

A Day in Malacca

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July 5, 1992.

Up fairly early and went to Bukit China, which sports a massive hillside cemetery populated by Malaysian Chinese. The graves have peculiar, horseshoe-shaped walls surrounding small areas dug out of the side of the hill; the gravestones themselves are in the dugout. Some look new, others neglected.

A long walk then took me to (1) the Dutch Cemetery, which contained mostly British graves and (2) the Dutch Church, which is Anglican — and there was a service going on in Cantonese, I think. I sat in a while.

Had lunch at Kim Swee Huat, not bad fried noodles, sweet and sour pork, and a great fruit lasi. On the way to lunch I saw a Chinese funeral procession pass by on the street.

[Wish I’d added a little more detail about that, but I did take a picture in which the procession is barely visible.]
[As well as some pictures of the streets of Malacca. Including an example of baking fusion of some kind.]
From lunch I went back up to Bukit St. Paul (St. Paul Hill). [Bukit St. Paul features the ruins of St. Paul’s Church, among other things. A church structure of one kind or another has been on the site since shortly after the Portuguese conquest of Malacca more than 500 years ago.]

Afterwards I visited the Muzium Budaya, the Cultural Museum. The wooden building is a marvel of its kind, and the displays interesting.

[Again with an abbreviated description. Per Wiki, “the building is a modern reconstruction of the palace of the Melaka Sultanate. It showcases the history of the region.]

Afterwards, I went back to my room to cool down, though stopping at a bookstore I discovered along the way, where I bought The Roman Games by Roland Auguet.

Around sunset, I sought out dinner, and had a remarkable one at Sri Lakshmi Vilas [even more remarkable, it may still be open], a south Indian daun pisang. That means banana leaves, the “plates” on which the food is served.

I had mutton and fish and rice and veggies on a banana leaf that I ate with my fingers, which is the way to do it. Not the best Indian food I’ve ever had, but pretty good, and certainly the most interesting presentation. Even better, it cost M$5.30, or a little more than $2.

After eating, I took a walk through old Malacca. The Kampong Kling Mosque wasn’t open to me, but light and noise were pouring from the open windows of one of the side structures, which I figured might be an attached school. Some rambunctious kids were inside.

Nearby, I saw the Sri Poyatha Moorthi temple and the Cheng Hoon Teng temple. At Cheng Hoon Teng, a large ceremony of some kind was going on, with a lot of chanting. I watched for a while. No one paid the slightest bit of attention to me.

Three West Texas Cemeteries

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Heading out from San Antonio on U.S. 90, I considered a stop in Uvalde, Texas, to see the Briscoe-Garner Museum. Briscoe, as in Dolph Briscoe, 41st governor of Texas (in the 1970s, so I remember him), whose family owned 560,000 acres of Texas land not long after his death in 2010. That’s about 875 square miles, or about two-thirds the size of Rhode Island, and not a lot smaller than the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

Garner, as in Cactus Jack Garner, 39th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and 32nd Vice President of the United States, who famously said the vice presidency wasn’t “worth a bucket of warm piss.” Especially when you end up at odds with your president. So far he’s the longest-lived vice president or president in United States history, and, as some anonymous writer at Wiki points out, had the distinction of living during the presidencies of both Johnsons: Andrew and Lyndon.

Enough there for a pretty good museum, I’d say. But as I stopped at a rest area along U.S. 90, I did a little more checking and found that the museum is closed on Mondays.

So I decided to drop by Uvalde Cemetery and find Garner’s grave. It’s a large burial ground, marked by some trees and greenery, but not overly garden-like.

Still, I figured I could find Garner. There would probably be flag poles near him. So there were.

Here’s the grave of John Nance Garner and his wife Marietta Rheiner Garner. Imagine that, he was a fully grown man at the turn of the 20th century, and yet lived to see men travel into space.

How many vice presidential graves have I seen? That is, the resting places of men who were never also president? Only one other that I can think of. I got a look from some distance at the stone of John C. Calhoun in Charleston. I need to seek more of them out.

In Fort Davis, Texas, after visiting the National Historic Site of that name, I dropped by the Jeff Davis County Library to check my email, and found it to be a fine adaptive reuse of a late 19th-, early 20-century building complex that had once been a general store, post office, an early telephone exchange and other things.

Just off Texas 118 in Fort Davis is a sign that says Pioneer Cemetery. I had to take a look at that. A narrow path, completely surrounded by the kind of diamond wire-mesh fence that you might see in any suburb, led to the cemetery gate. That was the only entrance that I saw, and otherwise the cemetery grounds were surrounded by fenced-off private houses. That felt a little odd at first, but soon I got used to it.

Like the region, the cemetery is sparsely settled.

But there are a few headstones and fenced-off plots.
One old soldier that I could see, Joseph Granger, CSA.

According to the plaque at the entrance, the cemetery was active from the 1870s to 1914, which also says that immigrants named Dutchover are buried here, along with a madwoman and a couple of horse thieves. Sounds like a motley mix of pioneers, all right. Here are some Dutchovers.

Marfa, Texas, famed among the glitterati these days, still looks a lot like a small West Texas town, though with galleries, tony hotels and Manhattan-priced shops thrown in the mix. Unfortunately, after visiting the McDonald Observatory and Fort Davis, I didn’t have the time or energy to visit the sizable Chinati Foundation in Marfa, which I’m sure is a worthwhile destination.

I did look around at some other spots. The Presidio County Courthouse is handsome, for one thing.

The Hotel Paisano is decidedly handsome, too.
Before I left Marfa, I stopped at Cementerio de la Merced, a desert cemetery with a mix of wooden markers and more formal stones. Bet not many of the glitterati pause there to pay their respects.

The names on the graves are largely, but not completely, Hispanic in origin. Not far away, but separated by a fence, was a graveyard mostly of formal stones, and Anglo names.

Marfa Public Radio had this to say: “One cemetery is known as the Anglo cemetery. The other two — Cementerio de la Merced and the Marfa Catholic cemetery — are Hispanic…

” ‘Well, it was not legally segregated, but it was segregated by custom,’ says historian Lonn Taylor, a former curator at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC…

“In this part of Texas, Hispanics hold many key political offices. Yet a visible reminder of historic inequality are the cemeteries, where in death, people remain divided.”

Back to the Bronx

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Early in the afternoon of Easter Saturday, I boarded a 4 train at Atlantic Ave.-Barclays Ctr. in Brooklyn and rode it all the way to the Woodlawn station in the Bronx, which is the end of the line and nearly as far as you can go in New York City in that direction. It was a local train. As far as I could tell, there were no expresses to be had on that line that day, though I might have been wrong.

It was a long ride: the better part of two hours. But it was a ride I wanted to take, watching a shifting array of passengers get on and off, and when the train got to the Bronx, watching the borough go by, since the train is elevated up that way.

Some time ago, I wrote about my passage through the South Bronx in 1983: “Before long I was on the #5 IRT, which after leaving Manhattan becomes an elevated train and gave me a full look at the wasteland that is the south Bronx. Blocks of rundown buildings are one thing, but what’s astonishing is how few buildings stand on many blocks, and how much rubble there is. I’ve never seen the aftermath of a city shelled by an enemy, but I’d think it would look like this place.”

That impression of the South Bronx never quite left me. Of course things were different this time, because of the passage of 35 years, and the fact that the 4 takes a very different course than the 5 (which, note, I called the IRT 5 in those days). The 4 train took me past block after block of large apartment buildings, as you’d expect in much of New York, as well as by Yankee Stadium. A casual look at the route of the 5 on Google shows that much redevelopment has been done in that part of the borough, which I’ve also read about.

My goal for the day wasn’t riding the train, but walking through Woodlawn Cemetery. After I first visited Green-Wood Cemetery, I became intrigued with the prospect of seeing Woodlawn, which is an equivalent historic, park-like cemetery in the Bronx, founded in 1863 and so part of the rural cemetery movement. More than 300,000 people are interred there. When Saturday turned out to be clear and almost warm, that tipped my decision toward taking the trip up to Woodlawn.

The cemetery’s web site says: “Our 400-acre cemetery has become an outdoor museum to more than 100,000 visitors who tour our grounds each year. Our celebrated lot owners comprise artists and writers, business moguls, civic leaders, entertainers, jazz musicians, suffragists, and more, including Herman Melville, Joseph Pulitzer, Fiorello LaGuardia, Celia Cruz, Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, just to name a few.

“The cemetery’s collection of monuments — including over 1300 mausoleums — were designed by American architects, landscape designers, and sculptors. The work of McKim, Mead & White, Carrere & Hastings, Beatrix Farrand, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Daniel Chester French graces Woodlawn’s grounds.”

I entered at the Jerome Ave. entrance and walked across the cemetery, generally heading northeast along the main road toward the main entrance. The cemetery isn’t kidding about its many mausoleums. A lot of really large ones seem to be concentrated close to the Jerome Ave. entrance. The result of lots of wealthy people imagining they would be remembered when, of course, they are not.

Still, they’re wonderful to look at. Here’s the stately mausoleum of Julius Manger, early 20th century hotel mogul.

A Greek temple of a mausoleum for Francis Patrick Garvan, lawyer and long-time president of the Chemical Foundation.

The resting place of George Ehret, early 20th century beer baron. I was hoping it was the food faddist Arnold Ehret, but no.

Here’s more Egyptian revival. Always makes my day to run across an example of it.
Woolworth? That Woolworth? Yes, indeed. F.W. Woolworth, the king of the dime store, who died in 1919.

Among these major mausoleums, Woolworth was the only one I’d heard of before looking them up. I wasn’t out to look for famous graves, though I knew Woodlawn has plenty. I had no guide or map. I was just walking to see what I could see.

Mausoleums weren’t the entire scope of the cemetery. I saw many more modest markers, or not so modest, some very elegant.

This one was unusual: Jerome Byron Wheeler (1842-1918). Seems like he wanted to be remembered as a man of refined literary tastes. Or at least as a lover of books.

Wiki, at least, claims his mother was a second cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson. That didn’t pay for the stone and the relief, however: Wheeler owned mines in Colorado.

One more grave of a noted person: Joseph Pulitzer and other family members, which I found by chance.

Near the main entrance, I saw this wood carving.
Glad to see that the cemetery didn’t simply rip the stump out. Like all the best rural cemeteries, Woodlawn is an arboretum too. This is a kind of memorial to the tree.

Return to Green-Wood

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About three and a half years ago, I took a brisk walk through Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, a hilly, wooded place featuring a vast array of headstones and funerary art. The very model of a Victorian rural cemetery, you might say, except that the city has grown around it. Also, it’s still an active cemetery in the 21st century.

I wanted to go back, especially since I spent the latter part of my recent trip to New York staying with my nephew Robert and his girlfriend Meredith at their apartment in Brooklyn, which happens to be two subway stops away from the main entrance of Green-Wood. Even better, I discovered that a tour — the Twilight Tour — ran from 6 to 8 p.m. on Friday, March 30, after my work obligations were over.

So I bought a ticket online, and showed up at the main gate not long before 6. The gate itself is a striking bit of Victorian Gothic Revival. Outside the entrance:
None other than Richard Upjohn, the same architect who did Trinity Church Wall Street, designed the gate. Looks like it, too. Inside the entrance:
A resurrection-themed detail on the gate, one of four by John M. Moffitt.
Gray clouds hung over the cemetery and there was occasional drizzle. But I was dressed for it, so that didn’t interfere with the pleasure of walking through Green-Wood again, into parts I didn’t go to last time, so vast is the cemetery.

Even the bare trees and brown-green grass had their charms.

The tour wound up hills and down and around. I didn’t even bother trying to keep track of where we were. I just followed and listened to the guide, who knew a lot and pointed out things you might otherwise miss.

For instance, there aren’t that many Confederates in the cemetery, but there are a few. Such as Col. George Henry Sweet.
We soon came to the highest point in the cemetery, and in fact in Brooklyn, called Battle Hill for its part in a bloody episode in the Battle of Long Island (a.k.a. the Battle of Brooklyn) in the Revolution.

About 100 years ago, that event was memorialized on the hill by a sculpture called “Altar to Liberty: Minerva” by Frederick Ruckstull, which faces toward New York Harbor.

On a clear day, you can see the Statue of Liberty from Minerva’s perch, but we didn’t have a clear day. I understand that that particular the sightline is protected by law, like views of the capitol in Austin.

Also on Battle Hill is a sizable monument to New Yorkers who fought for the Union.

Not far away is the Van Ness-Parsons Egyptian Revival tomb. Pianist, teacher, organist and composer Albert Ross Parsons is interred there, among others.

Clearly they wanted everyone to know that the tomb doesn’t evoke pagan Egypt, but rather Christian Egypt.

Soon we came to the grave of Leonard Bernstein.
Then the more elaborate memorial to Elias Howe, improver of the sewing machine and archenemy of Issac Singer.
As promised, the tour started to become a twilight tour after sunset. The last large tomb I had light enough to shoot was a doozy, though: Charlotte Canda.
I didn’t know the story of Charlotte Canda. The guide informed us. Charlotte, daughter of a wealthy New Yorker, died on her 17th birthday in a carriage accident in 1845. Her tomb is based on unused sketches she made herself a few months earlier, for an aunt of hers who had predeceased Miss Canda.
Restoration efforts have been underway in recent years. According to the guide, back when Green-Wood was treated as a city park, Miss Canda’s tomb was an especially popular place to visit and picnic. The pathos of her story appealed to Victorians, I guess.

We carried on in the near-dark, often using smartphone flashlights, and saw the remarkable gravestone of Cortland Hempstead, chief engineer of the steamship Lexington, which burned and sank in Long Island Sound in January 1840. Of the 143 souls aboard, only four are known to have survived. Hempstead wasn’t one of them.

As seen here, the stone includes a relief based on a Nathaniel Currier lithograph originally published in the New York Sun: “Awful Conflagration of the Steam Boat ‘Lexington’ in Long Island Sound on Monday Eveg Jany 13th 1840, by Which Melancholy Occurrence Over 100 Persons Perished.”

We also saw Green-Wood’s catacombs, which are usually closed to the public. They aren’t remotely as extensive as the catacombs of Rome or Paris, but they were interesting: a long concrete tunnel dug into a hill with some dozens of chambers off to the sides, and people interred in the walls of the chambers. The place was dank and smelled like a cave. According to the guide, the catacombs were a more economic alternative than burial in a plot for a while in the 19th century, but they never really caught on, probably because water always made its way in.

After leaving the catacombs, we passed by the single grave at Green-Wood that I wanted to see more than any other: Boss Tweed. Not for the aesthetics of the marker — it’s large but fairly ordinary — but for making the passing acquaintance of such an infamous scoundrel, when he’s no longer in a position to pick one’s pocket.

Trinity Church Wall Street, Alexander & Eliza Hamilton, and Norges Bank Investment Management

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On Broadway in Lower Manhattan, near the intersection with the storied Wall Street, stands the church and graveyard of Trinity Church Wall Street. Looking at the property means you’re peering deep into the history of New York and the early days of the Republic — and into a modern-day real estate story involving Norwegians.

First, the church building.

The current church is the third one on the site, completed in 1846, so it isn’t the building that George Washington and especially Alexander Hamilton would have known. The second building was completed in 1790 to replace the original, which burned down in the Fire of 1776.

Richard Upjohn designed the current Gothic Revival structure as one of the first in a very long list of churches that he did. For a good many years, it was the tallest building in New York, or in the United States for that matter, which is a little hard to imagine in its current setting among taller buildings.

Being Holy Week, the church was fairly busy, though no service was going on when I visited.
Busy inside, but the real crowd was outside, in the graveyard.
A school group happened to be wandering through when I arrived. They might have come for the history of the entire place, but who had they really come to see?

Alexander Hamilton, of course.
I have to admit that I either didn’t know, or had forgotten, that he is buried at Trinity. In a way, that was a good thing, since it was a nice surprise.

Note the enormous number of pennies and other coins at the base of his stone. Seemed like even more than I saw at Benjamin Franklin’s grave, who had the benefit of being associated with “a penny saved is a penny earned.”

Eliza Hamilton, who outlived Alexander by more than 50 years and is buried next to him, collected her share of pennies, too.
That’s what you get for being the subject of a very popular musical in our time. Even I’ve heard some of the songs. Ann plays them in the car. They’re interesting. I’m all for musicals about major historical figures, but I’m not going to pay hundreds of dollars for a ticket.

The Hamiltons weren’t the only famed permanent residents of the graveyard. There’s steamboat popularizer Robert Fulton, who has a memorial fittingly erected by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Here’s Capt. James “Don’t Give Up the Ship” Lawrence, hero of the War of 1812. His memorial’s looking a little green these days.
Nice detail on one side.

There are also plenty of memorials for regular 18th- and 19th-century folks. I’m glad to say they were getting some attention.

There are stones the likes of which aren’t made any more.

Or on which time has taken its toll.
About those Norwegians. Trinity Church Wall Street, which is part of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, is known for is being one of the wealthiest parishes in the nation. In 1705, Queen Anne granted the church 215 acres on the island of Manhattan. It still holds 14 of those acres, which these days are home to millions of square feet of commercial property. That kind of acreage would make anyone very rich indeed.

Recently —  in 2015 — the church monetized 11 of its office buildings by striking a deal with Norges Bank Investment Management, which oversees Norway’s sovereign wealth fund (a lot of North Sea oil money, I reckon). It’s no secret. I quote from the press release the church published:

“Norges Bank Investment Management will acquire its 44 percent share in a 75-year ownership interest for 1.56 billion dollars, valuing the properties at 3.55 billion dollars. The assets will be unencumbered by debt at closing.”

Unencumbered by debt. The sweetest words you can write about real estate.

“The properties are about 94 percent leased and total over 4.9 million square feet. They are all located in the Hudson Square neighborhood of Midtown South in Manhattan… The buildings were originally built in the early 1900s to house printing presses, but have been redeveloped by Trinity Church to attract a mix of creative office tenants.”

Twelve Pictures ’17

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Back to posting on January 2, 2018, or so. Like last year, I’m going to wind up the year with a leftover picture from each month. This time, for no special reason, no people, just places and things.

Champaign, Ill., January 2017Charlotte, NC, February 2017

Kankakee, Ill., March 2017

Rockford, Ill., April 2017

Muskogee, Okla., May 2017

Naperville, Ill., June 2017

Barrington Hills, Ill., July 2017

Vincennes, Ind., August 2017

Denver, September 2017Evanston, Ill., October 2017Chicago, November 2017

Birmingham, Ala., December 2017

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

Oak Hill Memorial Cemetery, Birmingham, Alabama

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At the Oak Hill Memorial Cemetery in Birmingham on December 2, I saw this modest obelisk. It was a surprise.

The carving is a little worn, but still legible.

G.A.R.
ERECTED
BY
GEO. A. CUSTER
POST NO 1 DEPT OF AL
APRIL 27, 1891

Scattered around the memorial are the graves of former Union soldiers, such as P.J. Crawford of Co. H, 3rd New Hampshire Infantry and Corpl. Chas. M. Robinson of Co. F, 8th Michigan Cavalry.

A surprise, but then again I’m sure a number of former Northern soldiers made their way to Birmingham in the late 19th century, looking for opportunity in the rising industrial city like anyone else. Enough to have a GAR post, and enough for the post to buy a small plot in the cemetery.

The Birmingham Public Library says that “in 1871 the City of Birmingham purchased from the Elyton Land Company 21.5 acres for a city cemetery (later named Oak Hill)… As the first city cemetery, Oak Hill became the resting place for virtually all of the Birmingham pioneers. Although the majority of burials at Oak Hill Cemetery date back before the 1930s, it remains an active cemetery, averaging fifteen burials per year.”

Plenty of other stones are just as old as the GAR ones, and in various states of decay.

The cemetery is marked by mature trees.

And evidence even in early December that it’s still fall in central Alabama.

The cemetery sports some mausoleums, but not many. They were often crumbling.
There are also larger stones, but not that many of those either. As city cemeteries of the late 19th century go, Oak Hill’s fairly restrained in that way.
Oak Hill, like much of Birmingham, has some hilly contour. I think that adds to the aesthetics of a cemetery, especially if there’s a variety of trees and stones.
Other parts are more level.
We didn’t look for anyone in particular, though a number of Birmingham and Alabama notables are buried at Oak Hill. Looking through a list of them, the only one I recognized was Fred Shuttlesworth, who died only in 2011. We didn’t see his grave.

As it happens, Bull Connor — another of the handful of Birminghamians I’ve heard of — is buried at a different large local cemetery, Elmwood. Which is on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. Heh-heh. Hope that sticks in Bull’s craw.

Birm-Tex ’17

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Before spending the last week in San Antonio visiting family, I spent about 36 hours in Birmingham, Alabama, during the first weekend in December. I went there to visit my old friend Dan, whom I hadn’t seen in about 18 years.
That’s too long, as the Wolf Brand Chili man said. See your old friends if you can, because we’re all mortal. I was also fortunate enough to become reacquainted with his wife Pam, whom I’d only met once, more than 20 years ago.

Dan and I had a fine visit, talking of old times and places — we’ve known each other 36 years — but not just that. He grew up in Birmingham and has lived there as an adult for a long time, so he was able to show me around and tell me about the city’s past and about recent growth as an up-and-coming metro. In this, he’s quite knowledgeable.

I’d heard something about that growth, but it was good to see some examples on foot and as we tooled around hilly Birmingham in Dan’s Mini Cooper, which was also a new experience for me. Not to sportiest version, he told me — he’d traded that one for this one he now drives — but it had some kick.

On the morning of Saturday, December 2, we first went to Oak Hill Memorial Cemetery, very near downtown Birmingham, and the city’s first parkland-style burial ground. Dan told me he’d never been there before. Not everyone’s a cemetery tourist. But he took to the place, especially for its historic interest, and he even spotted the names of a few families whose descendants he knows.

From there we drove to Sloss Furnaces, which, as the postcard I got there says, is “the nation’s only 20th-century blast furnace turned industrial museum.” Iron mining and smelting made Birmingham the city that it is. So it was only fitting that we went to Vulcan Park as well, to see the mighty cast-iron Vulcan on his pedestal on a high hill overlooking the city.

Toward the end of the afternoon, I suggested a walk, and so we went to the Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve, which has 14 miles of hiking trails. More than that, the earth there is honeycombed with former mines, all of which are now sealed. But we got to see the entrance of one of them, dating from 1910.

After all that, we repaired to Hop City Beer & Wine Birmingham, a store that has an enormous selection of beer and wine in bottles, as well as a bar with a large draft selection, where we relaxed a while. Had a cider and a smaller sample of beer that I liked.

Along the way during the day, we also visited Reed Books, a wonderful used bookstore of the kind that’s increasingly rare: owned and run by an individual, and stacked high with books and other things, with only marginal organization. I bought Dan a copy of True Grit, which he’d never read.

We drove through some of Birmingham’s well-to-do areas, sporting posh houses on high hills and ridges along roads that I could make no sense of, twisty and web-like as they were. Luckily, Dan knew them well.

In downtown Birmingham, we also drove by some of the historic sites associated with the civil rights movement, including the new national monument. According to Dan, it would take a day to do the area right, so we didn’t linger. I got a good look at the 16th Street Baptist Church, the A.G. Gaston Motel, where King and others strategized, and Kelly Ingram Park, where protesters were attacked with police dogs and water cannons.

During my visit, I ate soul food, breakfast at a Greek diner — Greek immigrants being particularly important to the evolution of restaurant food in Birmingham, Dan said — excellent Mexican food (mole chicken for me), and a tasty breakfast of French toast and bacon made by Dan and Pam. On the whole, we carpe diem’d that 36 hours.

In San Antonio, as usual, I was less active in seeing things, but one sight in particular came to me. On the evening of Thursday, December 7, I looked out of a window at my mother’s house and saw snow coming down. And sticking. “I’ll be damned,” I muttered to myself.

At about 7:30 the next morning, I went outside to take pictures. Nearly two inches had fallen, according to the NWS. The snow was already melting. A view of the front yard.

Of the back yard.

It occurred to me that hadn’t seen snow on the ground in San Antonio since 1973.