Gravestoned: Take only memories

The sign posted at the head of the narrow, unpaved lane leading to Mound Cemetery reads:

Mound Cemetery sits on land that is privately owned. If you choose to visit the cemetery you do so at your own risk. Poison ivy, nettles, ticks, mosquitoes, sticker bushes and thorn trees makes their homes on our land. Animals make holes in the land, springs make it muddy, and other hazards are yet to be discovered. In many respects the land is being allowed to remain natural.

If you walk back to the cemetery, follow the grass lane. Enjoy the walk and the cemetery, then return by way of the lane.

As a point of interest, Mound Cemetery is not an Indian mound but a glacial kame left when the great ice sheet melted. The kame was used as a burial ground during the 1800s and early 1900s.

Leave only footprints and take only memories.

Katie and I grabbed a few cemetery tools—whisk broom, grass clippers, aluminum foil—and, each with a bottle of water, set off into the woods to find the graves of our ancestors: Timothy Aldrich (b. abt 1762,d. 1837) and Lucina Aldrich (b. abt 1766, d. 1836).

It was a pleasant walk down the narrow, grassy lane. We walked comfortably, almost strolling but watching our steps. Soon we came to the end of the lane at the base of the small mound. We could see the tops of gravestones in front of us.

After the short climb to the top, we saw the gravestone for Timothy Aldrich immediately, just to the left. Lucina’s gravestone, the perfect mate to Timothy’s, stood a few empty spaces to the left.

Eventually we left with photos and, as the property owner suggested, memories: Memories of the afternoon that a mother and daughter took a walk in the woods and “discovered” the graves of their first (known) ancestors to settle in Ohio.