Older cemeteries in general are today left in various states of care.  Large city cemeteries often have regular maintenance crews.  Smaller communities and churches recruit volunteers for the purpose of keeping the cemeteries in good shape.  Old, rural cemeteries are somwhat problematic.  In many, if not most, cases the family of the deceased no longer lives nearby.  The person who now owns the property may or may not care about keeping it in good repair.
        It takes some effort to keep an old cemetery from crumbling.  Mowing the grass and weeds around the stones is tedious, and is more so if the cemetery has a wall or fence around it that also requires careful mowing.  Many rural cemeteries are surrounded by trees, and also have trees inside the walls.  After storms, limbs fall, sometimes damaging the stones.  Roots of the trees can also be a problem, pushing stones out of the ground from underneath.
        The triangular markers I have been studying are even more tedious to mow around.  Because of their size and careful construction, they are more susceptible to damage from fallen limbs and from roots.  Some of the triangular stacked-stone monuments in this study are over 150 year old, and have simply collapsed.  One man I spoke to has a single triangular monument in his field -- he says he constantly picks up fallen stones and puts them back in the pile that now constitutes the old monument.  He says that it just seems to want to fall down.
        This section of the project presents photographs of the triangular monuments in order to demonstrate various states of repair.  Some of the monuments have been put back together with mortar, others seem to be standing well on their own, and still others appear to have been totally left behind and forgotten.

Lonsdale MacFarland Green
May 1999
The University of the South

TYPOLOGY || CONDITION OF STONES || AREA INFO || METHODS AND STAGES || LINKS