Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Wordless Wednesday - Cedar Hill Cemetery




Box or chest tombs marking graves in Cedar Hill Cemetery, Princeton, Kentucky. This type of tombstone is fairly common in western Kentucky, especially during the 1820s – 1840s. The monument is a box with a “lid” over the top. The body is not buried inside the box, but is interred below ground. The inscriptiion is on the "lid." Photograph dated 10 October 2009.

2 comments:

Genevieve Netz said...

I have seen quite a few of these, and I always had a vague concern that maybe skeletons lay just under the lids. Thanks for the info that they are safely in the ground.

Brenda Joyce Jerome said...

There are similar tombs with bodies buried inside the box, but those are usually in high-water areas.

One thing I noticed with these box tombs is that if the length of the box is any indication of the heighth of the deceased, people were quite a bit shorter than they are today.