The Grafton, Vt., the cemetery is one of my favorite photo sites, Maria, and I walk around for hours looking at the old tombstone inscriptions and carvings and wondering what they mean.
You can see how important these carvings were a couple of hundred years ago, they all have symbols and sayings and poems.
I stopped to take a photo of Louisa’s hand, she died in the early 1800s.
I especially love the hand pointing up, and only recently tracked down the symbols of the hands on the tombstones.
I read that these carvings are important symbols of lire, hands, and fingers carved into gravestones represent the deceased’s relationships with other human beings and with God.
I thought it suggested Louisa was heading up to Heaven.
These cemetery hands are found on Victorian tombstones of the 1800s and mid-1900s and are usually portrayed in one of four ways: blessing, clasping, pointing, or praying.
For some reason, these hands speak to me, voices from the cemetery
I think old cemetery’s are fascinating ! There is one out in the country outside my home town in WI, it has a very tall tombstone surrounded by 11 small tomb stones in a circle around it. The inscription on the tall stone tells the story of this family that all died from scarlet fever within a week back in 1863. There’s lots of history in those old cemeteries!