{"id":52169,"date":"2019-08-19T09:34:40","date_gmt":"2019-08-19T13:34:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=52169"},"modified":"2019-08-19T09:35:11","modified_gmt":"2019-08-19T13:35:11","slug":"have-you-seen-the-back-of-my-tombstone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/have-you-seen-the-back-of-my-tombstone.html","title":{"rendered":"Have You Seen the Back of My Tombstone?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seymour and Clara Curtis are buried in Newaygo, Michigan. You can see photographs of the front of their gravestones on both Find-a-Grave<\/a> and FamilySearch<\/a>, but you can\u2019t see the other side of their tombstones.<\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>
Photo: tombstone for Clara Curtis, Newaygo Cemetery, Newaygo, Michigan. Credit: Avalon Elizabeth Boullt; FamilySearch.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Why would you want to see the back of their tombstones?
\nAren\u2019t they blank?
\nNot exactly. In fact, the back of Clara\u2019s tombstone attracts a lot of attention.<\/p>\n

According to this Kalamazoo Gazette<\/em> newspaper article:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026no one can visit Riverside cemetery without inquiring the reason for the odd and unusual tombstone that marks her grave.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why?
\nBecause Clara had embedded \u201cnearly a thousand\u201d<\/em> of the curious she had collected from \u201cthe ends of the earth\u201d<\/em> into the back of her tombstone.<\/p>\n

Items like \u201ca piece of the first Atlantic cable, a spike from the first railroad ever reaching Newaygo\u2026 a badge which her grandfather wore in the Revolution, skulls of birds\u2026 shells\u2026\u201d<\/em> etc.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Source: GenealogyBank, Kalamazoo Gazette (Kalamazoo, Michigan), 4 October 1911, page 6<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wow \u2013 I\u2019d like to see that.<\/p>\n

According to this newspaper article, no one has ever stolen any of these items \u2013 and added that:<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the shells are crumbling, but the firm cement holds them safe from the hands of would-be thieves.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[Note: the article\u2019s headline erroneously says \u201cHis,\u201d but it should read: \u201cPlaces Curios in Her Own Tombstone,\u201d as Clara \u201cbuilt her own tombstone, or at least a part of it. To preserve to posterity the choicest curios of her collection she embedded them in cement\u2026\u201d]<\/em><\/p>\n

We genealogists rely on the tombstone photos uploaded to the Internet. Without this newspaper article, we wouldn\u2019t know that there is more to this story.<\/p>\n

Do you live near Newaygo, Michigan?
\nIf so, can you take photos showing us the curios embedded in this \u201codd and unusual tombstone\u201d<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Genealogy Tip:<\/em><\/strong> Newspapers, such as those in GenealogyBank\u2019s Historical Newspaper Archives<\/a>, record the stories of every day of our ancestors\u2019 lives \u2013 even the stories of their tombstones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article by Thomas Jay Kemp about the back of the \u201codd and unusual tombstone\u201d belonging to Clara Curtis in Newaygo Cemetery, Newaygo, Michigan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12557],"tags":[2585,12,2020],"class_list":["post-52169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genealogy-stories","tag-cemeteries","tag-genealogy","tag-newspaper-archives"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/photo-0819-2019-featured-graphic-curtis-tombstone.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}