Ancient Burying Ground, Hartford, CT

I am drawn to old graveyards and gravestones. When I was much younger, before I married, I worked in downtown Hartford in the insurance industry. The graveyard pictured below was closed in by a number of buidings.

Two of the minor buildings are now gone, which allows for much better viewing of the gravestones. You can access the cemetary directly from the street. When I would visit there in the past, I would have to go through one of the high-rise buildings to sit in the graveyard, which was totally wall-off to the outside except for the sky.

I love how the old gravestones are carved. I love the sentiments and warnings carved into such gravestones. The stones I took pictures of all have very interesting sentiments which can be seen if you click on each pic to make it bigger. For more information about this cemetary, which has been in Hartford since the 1600's, please click here:

http://www.theancientburyingground.org/history.htm

There was a wonderful teacher in the graveyard, Andrea Ader, with students who were being trained to care for the graveyard and to guide others through it. Visting with Andrea and her student interns was very special.

Public Policy and Musing About Harriet Beecher Stowe

I've always thought a lot about the Civil War and researched it. My fourth great grandfather, from CT, was captured at the Battle of Bermuda's Hundred during the Civil War and died from TB he contracted in a concentration camp called Andersonville that was run by the south.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Uncle Tom's cabin author, is also from my hometown in CT. I grew up touring her home and reading about her thoughts and work to help end slavery. You would be amazed at what Christian ministers from the South would say to justify slavery. It just blew me away to read it.

When I see how blind reasonable and educated people could be back then, so lacking in being able to interpret a very straightforward story in the Bible, I wonder if I could be holding on to an attitude that someone else might be appalled at in the future.

What will our descendents say about how we allow people to live in poverty in the inner city here or how we warehoused our eldery? How will our public policy, what we have done or not done, how will it be judged? Will people say in a hundred years, "You used to kill animals and EAT them?" How will the death penalty be judged as forensic science continues to advance and more people are cleared? Will we be heroines like Harriet Beecher Stowe, who significantly helped change US policy with her work, even though she could not vote?

Or will be be considered as unenlightened as some of the ministers I mentioned?As you know, I had one of my eye surgeries in CT. During my daily walk route three weeks ago, I walked through a public park along the river which has outdoor statues. One of them is a bronze of Mrs. Stowe and President Lincoln when they met at the White House. She was very short and when he met her he reportedly said, "So you're the little lady that started this big war."

Dum Tacet Clamat-The Forlorn Soldier

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My father has a soft spot for this aging brownstone of a Union soldier located in the South End of Hartford, CT. We went to visit him last night.

The inscription reads:

DUM TACET CLAMAT (Though Silent, He Speaks)

Rejected after the Civil War for a faulty foot position, this brownstone Union soldier was acquired in 1895 by Michael H. and John Kelly, stone cutters and placed at the Corner of Charter Oak Avenue and Union Street in Hartford where buffeted by flood and brushed by vandals, he stood until 1968 when J. Michael Kelly, a grandson, oved him to a fairer site, restoring his battered entity with the loving care he had solong been denied.

http://www.chs.org/ransom/044.htm