I had walked past that spot several times, but had never glanced to my right or left to see the headstone. If I had, I would’ve remembered it from two weeks ago.
Even then, it had sat there in a slight corner near the payout desk at one of my favorite auction houses. No one had wanted it, so the auction house had apparently left it there. I’m sure it weighed a ton, and no one was about to move it if it could eventually be sold.
The headstone appeared to be granite, no more than 3 feet tall, a vertical block of stone with one crude square piece stationed on top and another lying on the floor next to it. The grave marker was no wider than 8 to 10 inches. It had some dark spots on it, but it didn’t look dirty or grimy enough to have been stripped from an actual grave.
But where the heck did it come from? And who would buy it and why?
I suppose it was reusable, because the only inscription was the word “Mother,” and each of us has one of those. But who would want an anonymous headstone for their mother’s grave? You’d want her name, date of birth, date of death, spouse’s name and some tender verse to illustrate her goodness.
The plain word “Mother” didn’t cut it.
I didn’t notice the headstone this time until the auctioneer got around to it among the items being sold during its biweekly furniture sale. There were about 10-15 people following him as he went from spot to spot selling vintage Shaker-style chairs, a huge green metal bird cage (about 6 feet tall), a low child’s table and chair, and an old Singer sewing machine in a cabinet. Those items sold quite readily, and in some instances drew multiple bids.
But not the headstone. The crowd grew silent as the auctioneer tried to sell it, practically giving it way – just as he did when it came up two weeks ago.
“Can you imagine giving that to your mother?” the woman next to me said. No, I can’t. “The big question is: where did it come from?”
The auctioneer didn’t offer that detail; he was too busy trying to unload it. In cases like this, I always wondered why auctioneers accepted what I would consider unsaleable items from estates. Do they believe they’ll find a sucker to buy anything? In many cases, they’re right. I’ve seen people buy items at auction that made absolutely no sense, and made me wonder how they’d ever sell it or use it or get rid of it.
I’ve also found that if the price is right, auction-goers will buy anything.
In this case, the auctioneer dropped the bid to $2, and then a curious soul stepped forward, looked down at the headstone, apparently not sure whether he should or shouldn’t. “$1,” the auctioneer said, and the man took the bid. An assistant wrote his number on a yellow disc of paper, and placed it on the headstone. The auctioneer moved on, the crowd following like a wave behind him.
I wondered what the man was going to do with the headstone (What’s the price for a hunk of granite these days?). He’s a regular bidder, and buys box lots containing housewares and other items that he likely sells at flea markets. Maybe he’ll sell it to a poor family that can’t afford a headstone, but I don’t see him trucking that heavy thing to many flea markets.
Also, just because he bought it doesn’t mean he’ll take it. Sometimes, buyers change their minds; I’ve seen many “sold” items re-appear on the auction tables.
This headstone was one of the most unadorned ones I’d ever seen, with a Puritan sensibility that eschewed ornamentation. I’m assuming it was an advertising display at a headstones dealer and was not created for a real family (unless they bought it and changed their mind). Except for the granite material, it was right up there with the wooden crosses that we’ve all seen erected and stuck into the ground on graves in westerns on television.
Some of the earliest headstones – they’re also called memorial stones, grave markers, gravestones and tombstones – were made of wood and then slate, which did not survive the weather too well; and then marble, which wasn’t much better. By 1850, granite was the material of choice and has been ever since. It lasted like forever and kept the inscribed information about the loved one intact.
The headstone at the auction was also unusual because it lacked details about who mother was. Much genealogical history about the country, its wars and soldiers, our families and our towns (the most famous of them all is Boot Hill in Tombstone, AZ) have been pulled from headstones. Families can find relatives from generations past by combing their family cemeteries (and old Bibles if they’re still around).
The designs and illustrations on them can tell us a lot about how we viewed death and life – and the sentimentality we ascribed to both – during different periods in this country, as this site noted.
Headstones are a treasure-trove of all of our history, especially the history of black people in this country, whose contributions and lives were not regularly recorded in mainstream history books. But who we were and how we lived could be found in our cemeteries, which were largely connected to our churches.
While writing a history of my grandfather’s family some years ago, I recall trying to find a cemetery in an area where he and his family lived when he was a child. We found the church he may have attended, and checked the headstones in its cemetery, looking for names of his family members. Unfortunately, we found none.
For us it was a deadend, but I found on the web that for many other families, it’s how they filled in the pieces to their past.
