“Historic Resting Places of Alabama: Cemeteries and Graveyard Around the State” by Mollie Smith Waters

Part history lesson, part cultural anthropology, and part curiosity about mourning and burial customs of our collective past, Historic Resting Places of Alabama: Cemeteries and Graveyard Around the State by Mollie Smith Waters is a well-researched, documented, and authentic guidebook. Her theory is that cemeteries hold the keys for understanding place, an ideal quality of guidebooks intent on attracting visitors to the state and educating them about its distant and recent past.  And her methodology for choosing cemeteries based on their historical “eternal residents,” architectural features, folklore, and legends makes for an effective and intriguing narrative, painting Alabama in all her complexity. Whether you are moderately curious about cemeteries and burial rituals or a devotee of discovering overlooked and underappreciated cultural sites, this guide is a perfect place to begin.

The organization of the book is alphabetical by county, making it encyclopedic in its content. It is a straightforward and uncomplicated way to present the information, complemented by GPS coordinates in the appendix, along with additional resources for the serious researcher. While the organization is conventional and faithfully researched, the descriptions of each cemetery are detailed, narrative, and replete with curious facts. This reveals the author’s intention to both accurately document these burial sites and celebrate them as nuanced and layered pictures of people and places. Confederate soldiers, members of the Mosaic Templars of America and the Order of Odd Fellows, governors, famous authors (Nellie Harper Lee, for one), and civil rights activists are highlighted alongside less renowned, though not less worthy, members of Alabama society. Each cemetery, meticulous chosen, offers a compelling narrative of a particular place and time, but common threads weave through the guidebook.  Those threads leave the curious reader with fodder for further research. Symbols, grave typologies, and folklore are but a few of the facets embedded in the descriptions.

It is no surprise that symbols are pervasive from place to place. What is fascinating is how those symbols trend from period to period reflecting societal norms of the time. Symbols of the natural world abound: weeping willow (sorrow), fern fronds (sincerity), ivy (eternity), roses (love), bundle of wheat (longevity), and tree trunk (life cut short). Masonic symbols (square, ruler, compass) and Mosaic Templars symbols (two crossed shepherd staffs or the letter “V” with a 3) encode another layer of history and connection across sites.

Tomb types are also fascinating and overlay cultural traditions worthy of deeper attention. Cradle graves, found in Union Cemetery in Dale County, are composed of a headstone, footstone and low walls on either side that form a rectangular space. Thought to be for planting flowers, this tomb type was popular during the Victorian Era.

Bare-earth tombs can be found in New Hope Methodist Church Cemetery in Holly Springs in Blount County. These tombs with mounds of exposed earth were intentionally kept bare and were common across the South, particularly in African-American communities. This type seems directly related to ease of up-keep prior to modern tools and machinery, but may also have cultural traditions, since residential yards in African-American communities were also bare-earth and swept. Regardless, this is but one example of how cemeteries tell a more complete story of cultural traditions.

The most curious of types is the “baby-in-the-half-shell” or “shell babies” found in the Clanton Cemetery in Chilton County. These tombs were designed specifically for infants and were most common between the late 1800s and World War I, and according to the book they were popularized by Sears, Roebuck & Company catalog. Another fascinating piece of popular culture is the idea that one would order a shell baby tomb from a catalog rather than having a custom marker created. Most were crafted of white marble but all featured “a sleeping baby cradled in a scalloped shell.” The tombs were often customized with drapery or even carved to resemble the deceased infant, a chilling reminder of infant mortality (as well as maternal mortality) prior to modern medicine.

And this is why a guidebook like this remains significant in our contemporary world. When these cemeteries are documented and collected in a single book, they become more than simply a historical account. Of course, the documentation is important, but the author’s dedication to her research extends beyond that of solely a historian. With each cemetery selected, with each tomb chosen and photographed, with each story highlighted, she is crafting a collective narrative of cultural traditions in the state, many of which are no longer practiced. What other contemporary history books tell such complete and diverse narratives of place and include so many voices? The Cherokee are remembered here, along with the four young victims of the 1963 KKK bombing of 16^th Street Baptist Church. At the Congregation B’Nai Jeshurun, a marker honors the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, while the Old Plateau Cemetery in Africatown contains the graves of the survivors of the Clotilda, the last slave ship to bring Africans to the United States through the port of Mobile. And where else would one learn where Callie Leach French Tomlinson, the first female to earn a riverboat pilot’s license, is interred?

Visit county by county, following GPS on back roads through rural communities. One is certain to discover more of Alabama’s scenic landscapes, cultural history, and traditions guided by its resting-in-peace residents than by any crowd-sourced social media. But do so delicately, respectfully. And mindful of the shared grief of its people.

Mollie Smith Waters

Known online as That Cemetery Lady, Mollie Smith Waters is a college instructor at Lurleen B. Wallace Community College in Greenville, Alabama, where she teaches American literature, composition, public speaking, theater, and humanities. When she is not teaching, writing, or presenting, Waters works with animal rescue. She is the proud pet mom of six dogs. She also enjoys hiking, biking, archery, ultra racing, and yoga. Waters is married and has a son, daughter, and granddaughter.