Remarkable Markers 5

In 1823, John Howard Payne, an American playwright and actor, penned the memorable lyrics to a song entitled “Home! Sweet Home!” The last line is “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.” The same sentiment concludes the classic 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz. The concept of home as a symbol of family, with all that the word family implies of love and security, is so compelling as to have figured prominently in literature over the ages. The symbolism of the house as a home is expressed in stone in Urbana, Ohio’s Oak Dale Cemetery.

Ramsey Family Marker in Oak Dale Cemetery

In Urbana, Ohio, and Author Eleanor Y. Stewart

Admiring the House with Its Intricate Details

Including the Outlines of the Bricks

There, a marker is carved to represent the Ramsey family’s house on College Street, not far from Urbana University. The architecture blends Classical, Romanesque, and Queen Anne details. Retired farmer and former landlord William R. Ramsey (1847–1926) and spouse Ella M. Ramsey (1863–1922) must have loved the house. Neither was from Urbana originally. William was born in Cadiz, Ohio, and Ella was from Belmont County, Ohio. The home on College Street must have represented the culmination of their aspirations.

Ramsey Home in Urbana, Ohio

William is named as having a shared interest in a patent for a vehicle wheel (U.S. Patent 782,001). Wheels were much on the minds of residents. Urbana hosted an enduring carriage builder, originally Warren & Gaumer and later E. B. Gaumer & Sons. After the death of William Warren in 1890, the firm passed to co-founder Edward B. Gaumer. Wheels symbolize movement, transitions, and change.

But a house symbolizes stability. The engraving on the Ramsey cemetery marker confirms that every brick remains in place, unchanged, resisting the vicissitudes of fleeting fortune.

The symbolic house is joyful in the midst of the more somber monuments. One of my first thoughts on seeing the marker was of the family happily conversing in the kitchen with aromatic bread in the oven. Other ideas of family rapidly crowded into my thinking: entertaining in the parlor, celebrating rites of passage such as graduations and weddings, and dreaming about bright futures for children and grandchildren.

The marker is unusual, but the wonder is that more families have not thought of the same way of commemorating their generational bonds. The stone is perfectly suited to its function.