Green-Wood has over 560,000 people interred in its ground. It also has tens of thousands of monuments and gravestones.
Not surprisingly, some of those monuments topple over every once in a while. And, when they do so, the grass will grow and they may disappear into the earth. In fact, since we started our Civil War Project in 2002, I know of about 20 monuments that cemetery workers have found and pulled out of the ground.
Here’s the latest. One of our grass trimmers was doing his job recently when something in the grass caught his eye. He looked closer and started to pull clumps of grass away. There it was: this cast zinc gravestone (we have several in this same pattern standing across the grounds) that, apparently, had toppled over and been covered by grass.
How unearthly! … Not literally, of course.
I love the discovery of hidden/ lost treasures
That is part of the joy of being the Green-Wood historian. With so many gravestones and so many permanent residents, there is always a new mystery to be solved. Five minutes ago I got confirmation from the cemetery’s archivist, Theresa LaBianca, that an actor who, based on my search of our online burial search database on our website, I suspected was interred at Green-Wood, is in fact there. I wanted to know because I came across a carte de visite photograph of that actor in an online auction. Now, hopefully, we will not only be aware that he is interred at Green-Wood, but will also have a volunteer write up a biography for him that we will add to our biographical dictionary, and will have a photograph of him in our collections.
Jeff do you know the name of the Civil War Vet this monument belongs to and any background on him? I love Zinkers!
No, sorry I don’t.
We have several of these scattered about–probably, like most zinc, dating anywhere from the 1870s to about 1900.
They have two flag holders at their tops–a very nice touch.