On my very first trip to Nashville, TN you know I had to stop at a cemetery – no ifs, ands or buts. Luckily my friends love cemeteries too and were more than willing to let me wander around for a good long while to snap some photos…
The angels on this double sided monument are definitely showing their wear via ‘sugaring’ but I found them uniquely charming nonetheless.
Some more stones with a bit of age but still detailed enough to see the stories they tell.
A coffin shaped false crypt sits on a largely empty plot. Makes it quite the standout!
The ‘Rock’, also called Suicide Rock and Ivy Rock, has marked a grave that was fraught with spooky legends and mistaken identity. It’s only been a little over a decade since the true story emerged!
Ok, let me back up a bit. The legend of this rock started with tales of a young woman’s untimely death, and her lover moving heaven and literal earth to leave a stone to mark her grave. For decades folks believed that a quarrel led to a suicide, and that the rock and lantern (removed by the cemetery a few years ago for safe keeping) would lead the soul back to where it belonged. Other stories included a women’s accidental drowning or a carriage accident where the bride died on the way to the chapel. None of these stories were true.
And neither was the name attributed to The Rock – one Anne Rawlings Sanders. Anne is actually buried near the rock in a box tomb (you can see it to the right in the photos) but records became a bit muddied over time. It didn’t help that the rock was covered in ivy which obscured the name carved into the stone. Hence the ‘Ivy Rock’ title in some stories.
In 2013 it was officially announced that the person buried under the rock was Lucy Rawlings Steele, possible sister to Anne, and a small stone bearing her information was placed nearby. Lucy died of consumption, and her husband Edward had the stone and lantern placed there shortly after.
𝕃𝕦𝕔𝕪 ℝ𝕒𝕨𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕤 𝕊𝕥𝕖𝕖𝕝𝕖
𝔻𝕚𝕖𝕕 𝕄𝕒𝕪, 4 1847
ℝ𝕆ℂ𝕂 ℙ𝕃𝔸ℂ𝔼𝔻 𝕆𝕍𝔼ℝ ℍ𝔼ℝ 𝔾ℝ𝔸𝕍𝔼 𝔹𝕐 ℍ𝔼ℝ ℍ𝕌𝕊𝔹𝔸ℕ𝔻 𝔼𝔻𝕎𝔸ℝ𝔻 𝔾. 𝕊𝕋𝔼𝔼𝕃𝔼
Lucy’s husband moved from Nashville a few years after her death so that could account for how her name was lost for so long…
In a town where country music reigns supreme, Harlan Howard is/was a standout in the field of songwriting. He penned over 4,000 tunes including some performed by Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Buck Owens, Brenda Lee, Charlie Pride and Reba McEntire. At one point he had 15 hits on the Country Top 40. AT THE SAME TIME! And he had over 100 Top 10 hits.
The bottom of his stone reads: 𝕎𝕙𝕚𝕝𝕖 𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕖, 𝕙𝕖 𝕝𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕕 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕨𝕒𝕤 𝕝𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕕.
And with that simple but lovely epitaph, I’ll bow out of this post…
