It's no secret I love cemeteries: they're old, they're cool, and they're usually really beautiful, kind of like sculpture parks for the dead. They're fun to explore, and because they're taboo, they're usually devoid of humans, too (live ones, that is).
Walking back and forth from the local library, I caught street signs for the town cemetery, and one day when I had more free time, I took a detour to look at the headstones. It did not disappoint. You can learn a lot about a local area's history looking at the names and dates.
I found some old French names among the oldest stones, which made me happy, believe it or not. Being an Acadian is sort of a rare thing in lower New York, so seeing signs of earlier settlers with perhaps the same lineage comforted me, especially since this town is now predominantly Irish, and not in hyphenated form.
As much as I love that part of my ancestry, it is not present in my surname, which makes my family history rather hard to explain to someone of decidedly singular Western European stock. It's a bit epic, and the story of who I am is not always well received. I was glad to see that I wasn't the first one to walk these parts.
It also took me back to the hikes of my childhood, hunting down old graveyards in the wilderness of long-abandoned towns, so we could do charcoal rubbings of the headstone designs. I thought they were incredible then, and I still do. If you get the chance, why not take a walk through history sometime? You might just find your roots.
