Tag: Elmwood Cemetery

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Where Is This Cemetery??

Mystery Cemetery

  • Mystery Cemetery

I certainly have my hands full these days answering questions from readers. And yes, I know that is my job, but with my hands (literally) full, how am I supposed to flop in my La-Z-Boy, sip my Kentucky Nip, munch on bags of Circus Peanuts, AND work the tv remote control?

It’s almost more than I can handle, which is probably (though doctors can’t say for certain) why I spend my nights crying myself to sleep, in my little cot in the basement of the Mansion.

Anyway, now that I’ve got THAT off my chest, I thought I’d share with you just what I’m talking about. Somebody (oh, I won’t name names) picked up this nice old photograph at an estate sale, taken (as you can see by the name in the lower righthand corner) by the noted Memphis photographer, C.H. Poland. It shows a cemetery with what appears to be a freshly covered grave, considering the piles of flowers.

And the question is: Just where, exactly, is this cemetery?

We really don’t have many clues. There’s no date on the photo (front or back) and no obvious landmarks in the picture. I can’t even make out any names on the tombstones. It’s clearly a rather large graveyard, and it looks a bit hilly, but that doesn’t really narrow it down much, since Elmwood, Forest Hill, and Calvary all have hills and dales.There are a few distinctive gravestones in the background, including several topped with a cross, and there’s some unusual stonework in the foreground.

It also seems a bit cluttery and unkempt, doesn’t it? The tombstones don’t stand completely straight, and the grass looks high.

But I’m stumped. I suppose I could drive around all the cemeteries in the area — assuming that, since this is a Poland photo, this is even a Memphis graveyard — looking to see if I could spot an area that resembles this. And in fact, that may be what I’ll end up doing.

First, though, I thought I’d see if anybody else recognizes the place. Before I go to all that trouble, you see.

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Elizabeth Messick and Messick High School

MessickDemolition.jpg

This is a depressing scene, isn’t it, showing the demolition of once-proud Messick High School. I wonder what happened to that big block of stone? It would have looked very fine in the Lauderdale Mansion courtyard, even all chipped up.

One of the oldest — if not the oldest — schools built in Shelby County (the folks at Central and Tech will argue forever about that honor), Messick first held classes back in 1909. Over the years, the mighty Panthers trounced teams throughout the city, and kids came to regard the old red-brick building at the corner of Spottswood and Greer as a home away from home. But the buildings decayed, the school district changed, and in the early 1980s the condemned buildings fell to the bulldozer. Although some of the campus sites remain, it’s not a typical high school anymore. These days the city school system calls it the Memphis Adult Education Center, and you can enroll for vo-tech courses and also earn a GED, among other things.

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“Veiled Remarks” Book-Signing at Elmwood

VeiledRemarks.jpg

Most people go to graveyards to pay their respects to the dead, study the tombstones, research their family trees, admire the landscaping, and — oh, there are all sorts of reasons.

But this Thursday evening, September 24th, you can — and should — go to Elmwood Cemetery to attend the book-signing for Veiled Remarks, a really fine book produced by my friend Melissa Anderson Sweazy, a super-talented writer and photographer.

Subtitled “A Curious Compendium for the Nuptially Inclined,” the book is a nice collection (hence the word “compendium” you see) of all sorts of historical tidbits and oddities relating to marriage, such as: an Old English rhyme for predicting the best day to marry, Charles Darwin’s pro and con list concerning marriage, etiquette expert Emily Post on how to handle broken engagements, notable figures in history who suffered cold feet on their wedding day, and — my personal favorite — “a brief history of the syphilis test required by most states in the early twentieth century for a marriage license.”

Not that those test results had anything to do with the Lauderdales’ many broken engagements, I assure you. What ARE you thinking?

Now why would Melissa hold this event at Elmwood? Well, she’ll tell you all about that when you arrive. At least I hope she will.

The book signing begins at 5 p.m. in the Elmwood Chapel (just inside the main entrance) and will last until the hundreds of thousands of people who read this blog have gone home. I myself may make a rare public appearance, which is reason enough for you to attend.

For more information about the book, go here.

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The Mysterious Death of Granville Garth

5937/1247846997-garthmonument1small.jpg Elmwood Cemetery has many fascinating and beautiful monuments, but few are as intriguing as the stunning granite obelisk dedicated to former Memphian Granville Garth. “Born in Memphis” it says, and then “Lost at Sea,” and anyone who reads that inscription has to wonder what happened.

Since we’re really not that close to the sea, you understand.

The carving at the base of the monument tells cemetery visitors that Granville was the son of Horace and Alice Garth. He was born in Memphis on August 11, 1863, and he met his fate 40 years later on Christmas Day, 1903.

So what happened to this poor fellow?

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A Strange Death in Court Square

a2d8/1242008564-court-square-fountain-1912.jpg Of all of our city’s parks, downtown’s Court Square probably seems the unlikeliest place for anybody to die by drowning. After all, it’s blocks away from the Mississippi River, and the square’s historic fountain is too shallow to be a hazard. Besides, there’s a cast-iron fence around the entire basin.

But when the massive fountain was unveiled back in 1876, topped with the statue of Hebe, that octagonal basin was actually a concrete moat more than six feet deep, often stocked with catfish, turtles, and — if you can believe some accounts — a couple of alligators. And there was no fence around it. If anybody thought the showpiece of Court Square was a hazard, they never worried about it until the afternoon of August 26, 1884.

That day, 10-year-old Claude Pugh, described as “a newsboy and small for his age,” was sitting on the stone rim of the fountain, playing with a toy boat in the water. He leaned too far over and tumbled in, and since the bottom of the fountain was sloped, and slippery from algae, he couldn’t regain his footing.