My dear
friend Eleanor Y. Stewart—with whom I have authored several books—and I
believed we were lost while looking for the cemetery in Troy, Ohio, so we
stopped to ask directions from a man mowing a small graveyard near a church.
Happily, he told us we were only a short drive from our destination. He added,
“Find the blue ‘stones’ and knock on them.” We were mystified, but that is all
he would say. We easily found Riverside Cemetery and began to stroll around,
admiring the monuments. After a time, we noticed a large marker with a bluish
tint. We knocked, and, much to our surprise, we heard a ringing reverberation.
The marker was hollow and made of metal!
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| A Hollow Zinc Marker in Riverside Cemetery, Troy, Ohio |
According
to the website of the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute, “Beginning in
the 1870s, inexpensive monuments in American cemeteries began to be made of
zinc. … The Monumental Bronze Company in Bridgeport (CT) and subsidiaries in
the U.S. and Canada produced the most commonly found items using a unique
methodology that included a sandblasted finish to imitate the mat appearance of
stone. Marketed as superior to stone in terms of durability, their products
were referred to as ‘white bronze.’ They included thousands of markers …,
custom-made effigies of the dead, off-the-shelf statues of Faith, Hope, and Charity, and enormous Civil War
memorials crowned by statues of soldiers … .”
A website
at gombessa.tripod.com says, “The Monumental Bronze Company produced these
monuments for just forty years from 1874 to 1914. … Subsidiaries were
eventually opened in Detroit, Chicago, Des Moines, Philadelphia, St. Thomas, …
and perhaps New Orleans. The subsidiaries did final assembly work. Most, if not
all, of the original casting was done in Bridgeport, Connecticut.”
A blog (Click on “blog.”) entitled “A
Grave Interest” gives a detailed and informative description of the unusual
blue markers and features many illustrations, including a photo of a marker
identical to the one in Troy, except for the panels under the monument’s arches,
which could be customized. (I want to thank Joy, the blogger!) Apparently, the
blue tint is a product of aging. The marker in Riverside Cemetery is quite
blue!
Eleanor and
I agreed that zinc markers should make a comeback!
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