Mapping the ancestors
I've written before about the Old Burial Ground which I pass through daily on my way back and forth from work.Well, the city recently completed an installation that quite surprised me - a map of the Burial Ground, numbering each and every grave in the yard.
Next to the map are two more signboards listing - amazingly - every occupant of those numbered graves and their year of interment. I had no idea so many people were buried in this place, nor that all the records of their burials had been so meticulously kept. Now any geneaology buff can find an ancestor buried in this place with ease.
The display is the focal point of a new rest area with benches and flowers just outside the north gates of the burial ground. Fredericton has its challenges, but public green spaces is something it does very well, and kudos to them for combining a new one with a really interesting historical display.ronnie
Labels: Fredericton
posted by ronnie at
2:39 p.m.
6 Comments:
very cool! any of your ancestors in there?
This is wonderful, ronnie, and whoever is responsible for doing this deserves all kinds of accolades.
I've occasionally mentioned in my blog Oakland's Mountain View Cemetery, designed by the architect of New York's Central Park. It is a famous and revered cemetery... but it (until very recently) has sadly neglected the graves of its lesser subterraneans.
It is so good to see that some gardeners of the still are recognizing their charges' relevance to the quick.
As often as I've wandered around cemeteries looking for a specific grave -- often of someone famous for an article, but sometimes of an ancestor -- this is a wonderful thing to have. It ought to be standard, but I haven't seen it before.
I visited the Congressional Cemetery here in DC yesterday with Squeak, who belongs to the cemetery's K-9 Corps, which means he gets to run loose through its many acres. (Yes, there are rules, but they apply largely to the K-9 Corps' owners! Hefty fees, too, supplying 1/3 of the annual budget for the cemetery.) It's a moving, fascinating place. Over the years, it has been neglected or vandalized, but people have been signing up to take responsibility, and it is blossoming, literally and figuratively. Sherwood is right: congratulations to the creators of Fredericton's splendid Old Burial Ground display.
ME - possibly but not probably - I'm originally from Newfoundland. (Which I'll be visiting again soon, I'm happy to say.)
you're a Newfie!! as i recall, the sign for Newfie is a lot like the (Canadian) sign for Fargo, where i grew up.
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