What Else Do You Collect?

What happened to the one in the middle?
My grandmother "collected" gravestone images of our ancestors all over the northeast and midwest. I wish I knew what happened to them; my aunt may have donated them to the local library or possibly the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution).

I was wondering if someone would notice that

Back then, graves had a headstone and a footstone. The footstone was small relative to the headstone, and usually only had the person's initials. That small stone in the middle you noticed was the footstone for the grave on the right. For almost every grave in this cemetery, the footstones were moved to abut the back of the headstone. I think this may have been done when mechanical lawn mowers became the norm, but I'm not sure.
Anyhow, because we knew that was not the original location of the small stone in the middle, it was installed behind the large one, to be consistent with the recent practice in the graveyard. That makes it invisible in the photo, but it's there.

A similar issue to be dealt with next year is broken gravestones that have been moved off to the side here:

For a few of these where there was a clean break, we can repair it and potentially re-install in its original location because the grave location is known from old photos, historic records, or both. But that will add more obstacles for the lawn mowers. So, we'll see how that plays out (historic preservation versus maintenance efficiency, round 1)

What else do I collect?
- Statistical information on individual coin price histories.

I am most motivated to do this sort of price history research before making major coin buying decisions.

Started out at 7 collecting stamps, soon followed by pennies in a Whitman folder. Baseball cards, wristwatches, but by far the most profitable has been.....Pokemon cards. I was an elementary school teacher in 1999 and I noticed my students hiding things in their desk and they showed me their Pokemon cards. I started out buying them on ebay so I could impress my students. I never spent more than $50 on a single card and acquired 6 first edition Charizard cards. Sold them all at Heritage auctions and my profit was 6 figures. Who'd have thunk? Not me.

Newest addition. Little Mary Marshall who died at 2 in 1855, and whose gravestone was probably knocked over and broken sometime in the 1980s.
Reassembled, hopefully to last for another 100 years or so...

Does Bourbon count and worth mentioning?

Now that my local store is retailing licensed "White Lighting" I'm thinking of spreading out.

I also collect German nutcrackers, my woodcarvings and sometimes those done by others that I particularly like nitzkes (spelling) Japanese bone carvings, t-shirts, old hand tools, and assorted stray dogs, and old radios. At one time I was up to 4 dogs, 1 cat, assorted fishes, and other hanger ons that were ultimately taken in out of the night or storm. It was really almost like a private zoo.

My wife thinks it's getting out of hand. Ya think.?

Thanks tdziemia for showing pics and your interest in preserving markers. There are neglected small cemeteries, some have been improved and kept up by locals.

When I was young my father was part owner of a monument business. I recall watching him sandblast letters in the stones and going with him to install the markers on the graves.

Over the years I've downloaded photos of graves in a folder, ancient tombs, elaborate modern mausoleums, famous people's graves, graves with statues, interesting markers that fit the personality of the deceased like granite carved into shape of a car, pool table, even a beer keg.

Some markers are humorous, like these.....

Thanks, @living.
The churchyard of which my wife and I are the current "custodians" is the most historic one in central Ohio, and well-integrated into the town's history, so expectations from many groups in town (especially the local historical society and DAR) keep us motivated.

Those gravestones are a hoot! I'd heard about the cookie recipe, but not the others.

Our 19th century epitaphs are more somber, like this one on the stone below (he died young in 1824 two years after his wife died in childbirth and the baby died two weeks later):
When you have read these lines
Can you forgetful be
That you must soon lie down
And mingle dust with me



Frontier communities (and probably Americans in general) were well aware of their mortality back then.