Cemeteries are intensely personal for some people, representing connections to family and friends. Cemeteries also serve as reminders of our own mortality. Part of the attraction is the gravestones, often looked upon as works of art, from their design detail to the haunting or humbling epitaphs. Most important, gravestones serve as a reminder of a person’s life, offering clues as to who they were: husband, father, friend.

You can tell a lot about a time and place by the way people treated their dead, and the Eastern Shore is no exception. This story encompasses a sampling of Eastern Shore burial traditions, ranging from church cemeteries to family burial plots to unmarked graves along the side of the road. Each cemetery, each gravestone has a story to tell. Here are six.

Wise Cemetery
South Chesconessex, Accomack County, Va.

If you had to pick one family that exemplifies the “who’s who” of Virginia social life, the Wise family would be an easy choice.

The Wise Cemetery rests on the original land near where the family plantation house once stood. Surrounded by a five-foot-high brick wall, the cemetery contains approximately two dozen markers, with additional marble stones set into the west wall.

These stones date back to the late 1600s and list the accomplishments of the various family members: colonial leader, speaker of the House of Delegates, member of the House of Burgesses, U.S. Congressman, governor, lawyer, author, professor, doctor, diplomat, military veteran (of both the Union and Confederate armies), and holder of the Distinguished Service Cross. A stone marker memorializes one of the most prominent of the Wise clan, Henry A. Wise (1806-1876), who served in the U.S. Congress, was a minister to Brazil, and was governor of Virginia at the time of John Brown’s hanging.

Broad Creek Cemetery at Christ Church Parish
Stevensville, Queen Anne’s County, Md.

The oldest continuous church congregation in Maryland, Christ Church Parish, located in the south end of Kent Island, dates from 1632 and was organized by the Rev. Richard James at Kent Fort. Around 1650, the church moved to Broad Creek and was rebuilt in 1712 and again in 1826. The congregation moved to its current site in Stevensville in 1880, abandoning Broad Creek and its graveyard.

What’s left of the cemetery sits off Route 8 tucked behind a shopping complex and neighbored by a small industrial park and airport. In 1999, members of the Stevensville church embarked on an archaeological project to restore the condition of the graveyard and determine the location of its burial plots. “We have an ethical obligation to the people buried there,” says church member Richard Ervin, who is also an archaeologist with the Maryland State Highway Administration.

Many of the earliest grave markers were likely wood, says Ervin, because there was little native stone in the area. In the approximately 1.5-acre burial ground, only a dozen markers from 1746 to 1903 remain, all clustered in the northwest corner of the cemetery.

To date, the archaeological committee has located and marked off the original foundation stones of the church building. The parishioners are seeking grant money to fund the use of high-tech equipment, such as ground-penetrating radar, to learn what lies beneath the rest of the land. “There could be a hundred-maybe even a couple hundred-people buried there,” says Ervin, “but we really have no idea.”

Cemetery, Hoopers Island
Middle Hoopers Island, Dorchester County, Md.

Water is the way of life on Hoopers Island. It’s also the way of the afterlife. Because of an elevated water table, many cemetery vaults are either waterproof or contain concrete slabs or are lined with lead to ensure that the caskets don’t float away when flooding occurs. But sometimes even those precautions fail.

According to local historian, folklorist, and Dorchester County Commissioner Tom Flowers, when the Storm of ‘33 hit, widower Captain Elleck Travers’ wife’s casket washed up to his door. “When the building crumbled, he used the casket to float away from the building,” says Flowers. “There are people still living that will attest to the fact that in death, she saved his life.”

Mechanics Cemetery
Chincoteague, Accomack County, Va.

Despite its isolation on a Virginia barrier island, this graveyard, named after a fraternal organization that donated land in the 1800s, reflects trends that were occurring across the country. As the art nouveau movement gained popularity in the United States, its reach even extended into Chincoteague. For instance, the grand tombstone of John E. Lewis, who died in 1917, is possibly the earliest example of art nouveau on the Eastern Shore. The stone is a massive hunk of marble carved into a tree trunk with ivy. It was probably brought by train, transferred to a ship, then unloaded to a cart before being moved to Mechanics, says local historian Gary Turnquist. “It was no small feat to have been brought over here,” he says. And its design was right on the cutting edge for its times. “People on Chincoteague were isolated, but they didn’t feel that way. They felt part of the greater America.”

St. John’s United Methodist Church Graveyard
Deal Island, Somerset County, Md.

Perhaps the most famous of the inhabitants of St. John’s graveyard is Brother Joshua Thomas (1776-1853). Thomas, a one-time waterman, earned a reputation by paddling his nearly thirty-foot dugout canoe Methodist around area islands to spread the gospel.

During the War of 1812, when the British made nearby Tangier Island one of their bases of operation, British Gen. Robert Ross gave him the nickname “Parson of the Islands” and summoned him to preach to 12,000 soldiers as they stood ready to attack Baltimore. Even though the British had won easy victories thus far and burned Washington, D.C., Thomas warned them that the attack would fail. In the end, his words proved true.

Toward the end of his life, islanders built a Greek Revival frame church in the graveyard and dedicated it in his honor. He is buried near the southwest corner of the structure. His epitaph reads: Come all my friends, as you pass by, Behold the place where I do lie. As you are now, so once was I, Remember, you are born to die.

Sturgis Plot
Franktown, Northampton County, Va.

Like a miniature Stonehenge, five tombstones belonging to the Sturgis family-William, Elizabeth, and their three children-sit in the middle of a barren field just south of Franktown. The Sturgises lived in a house nearby, and when William died in 1903, like many of the area’s deceased, he was buried outside the house.

“There’s a strong tradition of burying people on family land on Virginia’s Eastern Shore,” says Wayne Stith, a Richmond resident with strong family ties to the area. Stith runs a Web site, the GHOTES Virtual Cemetery at ghotes.org, which is dedicated to identifying every one of the estimated 50,000 tombstones that dot the lower portion of the Delmarva peninsula. (GHOTES is an acronym for Genealogy and History of the Eastern Shore.) Since the summer of 2000, more than fifty volunteers have helped him gather photographs of more than 15,000 gravestones, and they’re all posted on the Web site.

Stith says it’s a challenge to catalog all the tombstones; many have weathered away or been disturbed by vandals. The Sturgis plot is in relatively good shape since it’s comparatively new. (The youngest child was buried there in 1961.) However, the Sturgis’s property transferred hands years ago and the house was razed. These five tombstones in a barren field by the side of the road are all that remain.

Timothy C. Greenleaf has had a lifelong fascination with cemeteries. He lives outside of Washington, D.C.