Yes. For last week’s adventure, we went to a cemetery.
And yeah, this isn’t even the first PA graveyard we’ve hit up. What can I say? We’re deathly serious about having fun.
Truth be told, it was a packed weekend, with a visit from one of Ben’s school chums/groomswomen and also the wedding of one of his current colleagues. But, fun as those were, they didn’t count as exploring something new in the Lancaster area, so we squeezed in a quick side-trip to one of the city’s noted historical spots, Woodward Hill Cemetery.
A lot of PA notables we hadn’t heard of are buried here, but the most famous, um, interred resident gets his own special signage…
That’s right, James Buchanan, the U.S. President from Lancaster, who I’m sure we’ll be discussing more in this space (especially when we visit Wheatland, the museum of his former home).
Naturally, him having been a President and all, Buchanan’s tomb was the prettiest, having a sort of fancy courtyard around it (including plaques with Masonic symbols!).
Once we’d checked off this notable monument, though, we settled in to what I consider the main entertainment of an old graveyard:
- Finding the best names
- Admiring the strangely shaped monuments
- Trying to decipher the death poetry
The place overall isn’t it too good repair, so the latter activity was especially difficult, but we did come across at least one partly readable one:
Read this and weep but not for me
Lament thy longer misery
A cheerful attitude toward this mortal coil! But I was impressed to find that such memorable sayings did not entirely die out in the last 100+ years, with what I would call the boring-efying of grave stones. This woman’s relatives commemorated her with a quote that the internet claims is also Mark Twain’s epitaph, but I can’t find any solid evidence of this (and it doesn’t seem to be something he wrote).
Still, a nice sentiment, right?
I won’t post photos of all the cool monuments, but I will share these two (below), the first for the utter creepiness factor, and the second for the ominous hole underneath!
Oh, and the inscription on this one…
FOR WHAT, GRAVE? FOR WHAT? 
As for memorable names, these folks won the top prize:
- Martha Fickes Winey
- Graybill Diller
- Ida Slaymaker
Yes, really. That last one is really real. And… that was about all that happened in Woodward Hill Cemetery. A brief and grim but no less edifying escapade!
Well, that is until Ben, against all my pleas for caution, insisted on passing between the chilling guardians of this private plot… and was never heard from again.
So I guess that’s it for our adventures.
The New Lancastrians 