So - I stole the name for this post from Zeppelin - it just fits.
This is actually the first of two posts and both of them deal with West Virginia history from the late 19th century through the early 20th century.
I had the unexpected pleasure of visiting Kayford Mountain today and some areas of historical significance scattered throughout the hollows at it’s base. If it gives you any indication - I took 133 photos today. Expect a post soon on the Stop MTR blog entitled Into The Headwaters. You won’t believe the photos I have to show you.
At any rate this post is about just another cemetery.
It is obvious a lot of the people buried here are immigrant miners. Some of the markers, I have never seen the likes of before. The area these graves are in is the same area as the mine wars in the early 1900’s. The proof of that is in the photos for tomorrows post.
Unfortunately my walk through the cemetery created a ton of questions and yielded few answers. For instance - the photo above shows about 3 to 4 graves surrounded by fences, one of those wrought iron. There are from 30 to 50 graves on this hillside so naturally I wonder why these 3 or 4 warrant the fences. Makes me think there is something extra significant with those few graves.
I was curious of a few markers - the two above being at the top of the list. Never have I seen markers such as these. They are made of a very heavy steel and appear to have been formed in molds. This I can tell you - they didn’t originate in the state of West Virginia and if I were a betting man - I’d bet they didn’t originate in this country. It was also significant to note these miners died on the same day in 1906.
Although I was brimming with curiosity my entire visit to this hillside a number of things made me more so than others and I strained to hear the story all of these stones were trying to tell. In the last two photos - those stones with the pointed tops were also intriguing. The one against the tree has the miners details and under that it has a tree carved into the sandrock. The last photo with the same shape has a few straight lines carved into the stone around the name almost as if to make the drawing resemble a house. Another thing, at the very bottom of the stone there is an engraving that states 18 Days. I would love to know what that represents.
The oldest legible marker was from 1866 - the most recent, 1977. The majority legible 1890 - 1930. This doesn’t give a real strong indication of the span of time covered because there were quite a few markers that were undecipherable or simply creek stones.
I can’t help but think about the sandstone headstones. I wonder if all those years ago the people were aware that sandstone deteriorates naturally over time. It is almost like they were guaranteeing their erasures from the pages of history by inscribing the names in sandstone. It is obvious why they did it because it is easy to carve into sandstone using handtools - but still…
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It is quite obvious I am still on a trip through history. All of the history on the hillside I visited today coincides with the same time in history as the Eccles mine disasters. I’m still in the early 1900’s - I’m just in a different part of the coalfields.
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I think someone could spend years studying the cemetery putting together the pages of a forgotten story. Do we really want to forget? Or worse yet - do we really want to destroy our history? Something I thought about today while in the cemetery - for most of the people buried there - the decision to forget them lies just as heavily with the countries they came here from - to mine coal. This particular cemetery tells of a story that lies just as much outside the state of West Virginia as it does in the coalfields. This was the end of their life. For most of them - life began far from here.
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Adding for detail full size photo cropped to the stone.
