Laid to rest at Mt. Rest Cemetery, established 1857

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Laid to rest at Mt. Rest Cemetery, established 1857
Laid to rest at Mt. Rest Cemetery, established 1857

Compared to many parts of the world, in the past 200 years there has been enough ground to bury wooden or metal boxes big enough to hold bodies of all dimension and mass. Once cement production became easy and cheap enough to do, then more and more cemetery administrators required the boxes to be encased in a cement shell (burial vault) so that weight of the soil and the freeze-thaw cycle of northern locations would no longer collapse the container and leave depressions in the grassy cover.

One result of the U.S. Civil War was rail transport of bodies drained of blood and filled with preservative. One result of the cement vault rules or customs was to shield the bodies from normal decay by oxygen and microbes. Together these two trends for the majority of bodies results in long, long preservation. Criminal or other investigations involving opening graves to examine the remains may well present flesh and bone only slightly decomposed.

According to some religious traditions or a person's own last wishes, there are still burials today and from previous generations that dismiss the embalming fluids; in some cases specifying "natural" burial (no cement vault, cloth shroud instead of coffin) in addition to non-embalming reduces the person's body to skeleton or even fragments, depending on the effects of soil microbes, moisture, and weather conditions.

Since Mt. Rest dug their first grave in 1857, all of the historical changes should be reflected within its boundaries: headstone styles from big upright to small and ground-level (easy lawn mowing), pre-burial vault soil subsidence to current practices, pre-embalming to standard/customary embalming, and in the past generation a notable increase in proportion of people cremated with ashes scattered in water or on land or air (or ensconced in a columbarium).

Enthusiasts and professionals who know headstone artistry and verbal patterns can also study the many burials on view. Surnames often point to ethnicity, dates of birth indicate the historical setting (likely technologies of medicine, communication, governance, events enmeshed), and first-names hearken to current ones still in circulation (or ones rarely encountered at present).

All together, there is much to observe in cemetery arrangement and the cumulative exhibition of scores and scores of lived reaching their final resting place. Each instance of burial (or cremation) had different circumstances, but in the end they all rest side by side, no matter how they may have interrelated in the days they walked the Earth.

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Taken on: October 10, 2023
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