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Updated: June 5, 2025
At the back of the tomb, in the wood behind it, the headstones of old graves show above the ground, though the earth has nearly claimed them; only a few inches show above the dead leaves; all this hillside must have been a graveyard once, hundreds of years ago, and this ancient graveyard has never been forgotten by me, principally on account of something that happened long ago when I was a little child.
Charles Boutell published, in 1849, parts 1 and 2 of a periodical work entitled "Christian Monuments in England and Wales," proposing to complete the same in five sections; the fifth to treat of headstones and other churchyard memorials, with some general observations on modern monuments.
"Good-bye," she whispered, turning for one more look at the familiar headstones. They were like old friends; she had wandered among them so often. One held her gaze an instant, with its well-known marble hand, pointing the place in a marble book in which was carved one text. How often she had spelled the words, pointing out the deeply carven letters to Davy: "Be ye also ready."
The orderliness and beauty of the churchyard struck her as it always did a veritable garden of sleep, with level close-shorn turf set thick with standard rose trees, that even the clustering headstones could not make chill and sombre. From the radiant sunshine without she passed into the cool dimness of the little building.
We followed it from field to field and from stile to stile. It was the way to church. At the church we finally arrived, lost in its rook-haunted churchyard, hidden from the work-day world by the broad stillness of pastures a gray, gray tower, a huge black yew, a cluster of village graves, with crooked headstones, in grassy, low relief. The whole scene was deeply ecclesiastical.
Whites were buried inside of railing and the slaves on the outside. The members of the white family had tombstones, the colored had headstones and cedar post to show where they were buried. "In Charles County and in fact all of Southern Maryland tobacco was raised on a large scale. Men, women and children had to work hard to produce the required crops.
I dismounted and hitched my horse to the fence and followed him into the old churchyard, between weather-stained mossy headstones and graves overgrown with wild roses. Near the far end of these thick-sown acres he stopped. "Here's where the buryin' begun," said my guide. "The first hole in the hill was dug for a Fullerton."
We had paused at the edge of a level cleared place, bordered all around with primly trimmed evergreen trees. Between them I caught a glimpse of starlight shining down on rows of white headstones and an occasional more imposing monument, or towering shaft. In spite of myself, I drew my breath in sharply. We were on the edge of the Casanova churchyard.
But the part this man played in that past lives only in the rude court records of that day, in the traditions of the gambling-hell and the saloons, and on the headstones of his victims.
This indeed has happened in a multitude of places. Who has not seen in ancient churchyards the headstones leaning this way and that, tottering to their fall? Are there not hundreds of proofs that the unclaimed stones have been used, and still serve, for the floors of the churches, and actually for the paving of the churchyard paths?
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