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On my recent roadtrip to Bozeman, Montana; my cousin took me to the local cemetery and we were able to wander around for quite some time. It's a really beautiful place with a lot of well maintained Victorian and Edwardian Era graves.
(Side note: I have a Momento Mori print collection with several grave illustrations if you are a morbidly minded person such as myself!)
It was the perfect moody day for a stroll through the monuments.
This was one of the few that was actively broken, my guess is that the top fell off recently and will soon be fixed or placed in a way that looks neat and orderly. The cemetery as a whole was extremely well taken care of.
There were many graves of children- the late 1800's was not a kind time for the young. There were many family plots that showed that they had lost several children in a single family.
I think we often forget what a blessing modern medicine is. It's so easy to take for granted simple things like antibiotics- when just a hundred years ago a minor injury could lead to a fatal infection.
This little one (Willie M) died in Bozeman Montana in the Spring of 1900. It’s that little lamb at the top of the headstones of children that always gets me. I did the illustration below to honor this wee one. Of course I had to add a cat. I like to believe it’s holding space and keeping Willie company.
Also indicative of the conditions of the time (as well as those throughout much of human history) is the number of markers for graves of women in their twenties and thirties. In addition to any number of illnesses that are well treated now, the age of these women points to childbirth as a possible cause.
There were quite a few out-of-the-ordinary graves in Sunset Hills, the most unusual being this pyramid.
Apparently, this was the grave that led to the founding of the cemetery itself. Mary Blackford was traveling with her husband, Lord William Blackmore, a wealthy railroad investor, to visit the newly designated Yellowstone National Park. Mary unfortunately fell ill on the journey from Helena to Bozeman, so she stayed behind with friends and didn't continue on to the park.
A recovery was not to be, and Mary passed away in Bozeman. When her husband returned from Yellowstone, he buried her on a hill overlooking the town and ended up buying the land around it to designate as a public cemetery.
The Bozeman City website has the full story.
One thing I found particularly interesting was the lantern, candles, and rocks that were placed around the grave at the time we visited. They looked fresh, so I wondered if there is a remembering of Mary or something else that regularly takes place around the grave. If anyone knows please let me know!
Also unusual, were a number of monuments that look like tree trunks. My cousin and I spent a bit of time trying to guess what they were before looking it up. They all have a tree shape as a base, but are all slightly different when you look closely.
Turns out they are often associated with The Woodsmen of the World, an organization founded around the turn of the 19th century. It's pretty fascinating- this article gives a pretty in-depth look at this type of grave marker.
Some additional photos I took during our visit to Sunset Hills:
We found a flower lying in the grass that had probably been blown by the wind, so I chose a child's grave on which to place it.
Some classy marble columns:
The paths and trees in this cemetery are really quite lovely! I could have stayed a lot longer, but we had a limited time. I'll have to go back and explore more next time I'm there. I'm lucky to have family that loves cemeteries as much as I do!
If you'd like to delve deeper into this historic cemetery, this article in Bozeman Magazine and this blog on the Montana's Historical Landscapes website have some additional information that I found interesting.
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If you are, like me, a lover of cemeteries and all things Momento Mori, you may enjoy more of my grave centered illustrations.
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Photos and pen and ink sketches from my roadtrip to visit family in Montana.
Some sketches and photos from my walks this week. It's been really sunny and warm here in Seattle- so everyone is out enjoying it before the rain sets back in!
Happy New Year! I hope you didn’t make any resolutions. Well, I hope you didn’t make any of the usual suspects of resolutions (you know the ones). Here’s what I hope instead:
