In Search of Gravestones Old and Curious

by W. T. Vincent

For brevity in excelsis the following, from the cemetery at Heidelberg, can hardly be eclipsed:

Michael Seiler
1805.—1887.

Sometimes the asterisk is used by the Germans to denote birth, and the dagger (or cross) for death, thus:

Hier Risht in Gott
Natalie Brethke
* 1850 † 1884

CHAPTER XIII.

VERY OLD GRAVESTONES.

Although, for reasons already explained or surmised, the gravestones in our burial-grounds seldom exceed an age of 200 years, there has probably been no time and no race of men in which such memorials were unknown. Professor Dr. John Stuart, the Scottish antiquary,[¹⁵] opines that "the erection of stones to the memory of the dead has been common to all the world from the earliest times," and there are many instances recorded in the Old Testament, as when Rachel died and Jacob "set a pillar upon her grave" (Genesis, chapter xxxv. verse 20); and another authority, Mr. R. R. Brash,[¹⁶] in a similar strain, comments on the sentiment which appears to have been common to human nature in all ages, and among all conditions of mankind, namely a desire to leave after him something to perpetuate his memory, something more durable than his frail humanity. This propensity doubtless led him in his earliest and rudest state to set on end in the earth the rough and unhewn pillar stone which he found lying prostrate on the surface, and these hoar memorials exist in almost every country.