Grave Yarns

This morning the girl and I attended "Grave Yarns: The Cemetery Revealed", a Dover Historical Society Heritage Walking Tour. Last year the group put on a "Factory Revealed" tour of the Cocheco Mill in downtown Dover. I regretted missing that and was determined to catch this year's production.
The tour took place in the Pine Hill Cemetery on Central Ave in Dover. A tour guide lead our group on a 90 minute walk through the cemetery with 20 scenes depicting notable and notorious figures in Dover's history. The entire cast did a great job and a few of the actors really stood out. I thought Darryl Cauchon playing the miserly Michael Reade, Jr. and Joyce Braungart as Christine Otis Baker were particularly engaging.
We learned about the history of the cemetery, from it's earliest beginnings as a 15th century Indian burial ground to the evolution of the cemetery park concept, and about the changes in gravestone design and art and how they reflected the beliefs of society in their own time. The day was gorgeous and highlighted the beauty of the spot. There were just enough fallen crimson leaves to remind you that even though the days are warm, fall has definitely arrived.
One point that came very clear to me was how easily death visited the people of those times. Nearly every character depicted had suffered the loss of a child, a spouse or both. I suppose that was just the way things were then, but it made me think graveyards were likely much more a part of daily life than they are now. The tour guide told us a story about one mausoleum in the cemetery where a widower, a school teacher, came and read to his deceased wife in the mausoleum he had built for her every day until his own death six years later. Another striking site is the graves of Henry Law and his former fiancee Cordelia Teatherly Griffin. Law was a successful business man who was very generous in his donations to the recreation facilities of the city, but he broke off an engagement with his fiancee, a young widow, when she refused to give up a puppy she had acquired. She died broken hearted several years later at her own hand and on top of her monument, located right next to Law's, is a statue of a weeping young woman with her back turned to her former fiance for eternity.
I am really looking forward to seeing what other tours the DHS develops and I'm even a little interested in maybe taking part in one in the future. It looked like a lot of fun and a great way to learn more about the history of the town.