Ed Snyder began this blog in order to share his decade-long experience with all things cemeterial. As a photographer specializing in images of cemetery statuary, I've run into some interesting people, had some unexplainable experiences, and had a lot of fun.
Being buried at Palmer is not as easy as "poking a metal rod into the earth". Not anymore. The cemetery is full now, with very few burials happening these days. Occasionally, we will be able to bury a casket in a family grave if the depth is at least 4 feet.
There are spots throughout the cemetery without grave markers, but this doesn't mean that the ground is "vacant". Several excavations over the last few years have found that the open space holds the remnants of very old burials.
The oldest graves in the cemetery will most likely have no markers. Vandalism and natural weathering has done a job on many of the stones in the cemetery. The metal markers lining the Montgomery Avenue fence were once marking graves throughout the cemetery.
A thief uprooted these markers and tried to scrap them for cash. The scrap yard held the markers until they could be returned to the right cemetery. The record keeping didn't always give exact location of a certain grave, so returning these markers to the right spot in the cemetery is impossible. The cemetery holds the history of our great neighborhood.
