Headstones Hand Carved Or No Names

Copyright © 2005-2006 by Jean Leeper

All rights reserved

Thomas Saint, died 1868, Aged 78 Y

Notice the backwards S

Sarah E. Hocket, D of T u S Hocket

Maybe a TH joined

Edward Hockett 1841

Oldest known burial in Cedar Creek

Some years ago placed flat in cement and someday dates will eventually totally disappear, due to freezing and thawing and wear.

Margaret Hockett, 1843

Some years ago, were placed flat in cement

This one we dug up in 2005 and tried to place in cement and plant into the ground upright

initials J H.

Just dug up M E H

Same stone in cement.

Just dug out of ground and below set into the ground.

Looks like a TH joined or JH joined.

In cement in ground and information worn off.

Jemima Jay

Another one on the ground in cement. Picture below of when it was dug up.

This is the stone that is shown buried in the picture before.

I am so sad someone in the past choose to lay them flat in cement.

Sent to me by Christy Jay of Adel, Iowa. They found the stone in the early 1990s

If chalked back them I believe her date of death would have shown. I can see 18 ? and then I think another 8 above.

May be a foot stone not sure but just has R L on it.

Many of the stones we dug up had no writing on them or sometimes just an initial. But they were spaced about three to four feet apart so we believed they were used as headstones or else laid on top of the grave to mark the site.

Many early Quakers in North Carolina did not use headstones to mark their graves so I feel this idea may have come to Iowa with them. In Penn. they still require all headstones to be the same size. They believed that we are not superior to another person in life nor in death.

"Funerals and burying grounds of the Friends were taken care of by a special committee. For a long time Quakers were generally opposed to any marker on a grave. Many of the older burying grounds in Indiana were merely field stones and some are unmarked. The burying grounds were usually kept fenced." from http://www.centertownship.org/quaker.html

Then you take the lack of money or availablity of someone to make the headstones, thus they did what they were able to do to mark the graves.

The above stone was dug out of ground in 2005. This and other stones dug up appear to be hand cut or out of a river. They were found in rows about three to four feet apart. Thus we believe that they some how marked a grave site. We did not know what to do with them so decided to try to mount in cement and place upright as we feared if mounted in cement poured in the ground the mower would soon break them. Some are not very thick. You will see one thin one has decided to fall off. Will need to try epoxy to see if it will stay on. I used an acrylic additive in the cement to make it less porous. More follow on the next page.

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