A Tennessee man doing some backyard maintenance was surprised to stumble across tombstones buried in his walkway. Jason Blackburn, 35, of Memphis was cleaning a stone walkway when he discovered 13 tombstones from a historic military cemetery buried about three inches deep.
"My first reaction was, 'Oh my goodness, I hope there's not dead bodies in my backyard,'" said Blackburn.
Turns out, there were no dead bodies, just the headstones. But typically when headstones are replaced, they are destroyed at the cemetery.
All the headstones were on record to have been removed in 1970, according to Ramon Miller, director of the cemetery, in the report. They found no headstones missing in the cemetery.
3 comments:
I'm originally from Central PA and this was a common practice. Cemetary workers would use old, damaged replaced markers to build up walkways and stairways around the cemetary and would occasionally give some away or use them theirselves.
Mis-cut tombstones, with dating and/or spelling errors, were commonly sold as paving material for private garden walkways, inscribed sides facing down.
It's a little bizarre to me, but again, if there is no problem with reselling and using again deceased's things, why should the tombstone had special treatment?
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