Do You Know My Name ?
2011
Like most people who love family history, I love to visit cemeteries. No where else can you stand in one place and have so many stories swirl around you. I am drawn to the very old grave markers and the rows and rows of people who all died in the same year . . . usually from a spreading illness. I love the little family plots, surrounded by iron fences. I love the old sandstone and soapstone markers except when their words have been worn away.
This little cemetery is just outside of Copperton, Utah. Copperton was at one time a mining town, with rows and rows of little cottages. It is still a very charming place. As we passed the cemetery one day, after a drive to look for deer and elk, owls and eagles, we decided to stop, again. It had been some time since we had done so. This time there was a new marker which told us that a little, tiny cemetery had been moved to this, a larger cemetery. Beside the marker, stretched out for a block were many new markers which simply said unknown. One said “unknown male”. I am not sure that the “male” part is of much help when nothing else is known.
I assume that the records of the first cemetery are long gone. I wonder if there are descendants of those “unknown” souls who wonder where they are? Wonder how and when they died and where. Where they were buried. Buried with them are hopes for their life stories and contributions. Their hardships. Why they died where they did and how it happened. If they were men or women or children.
Since their bodies and their spirits are only briefly separated and will be re-united, one day their names will be spoken and written on the records somewhere. In that day they can tell their stories and be reunited with those who lost them and wondered about them. Each one represents a brick wall in someone’s quest to find their ancestors.
There were flowers on some of the “unknown” graves the day we came. I must have a kindred spirit who thinks about them, too.