Photographing old headstones is a hobby of mine. Some of them are almost works of art. One of the most interesting headstones I ever photographed was in a small cemetery about 10 miles from where I grew up. I had passed this particular cemetery hundreds of times but decided to stop and look around one day. It had many very old headstones some from revolutionary war veterans, war of 1812 veterans and many others one that caught my attention was from the Civil War era.
The stone stated " Came to his death by a ball to the head fired by a rebel guerrilla in the town of Eckmiansville on July 15 , 1863 Since there were no battles of the civil war fought in Ohio , I just figured he was killed somewhere else and sent home to be buried.
When I got home I started to search his name , the town of Eckmiansville , and the dates on the internet. What I found out was the man was killed just a mile or two from where he was buried. The town of Eckmansville didn't even exist any more. What happened is when Confederate Gen. Morgan ( Morgan's Raiders ) went on there foray into Indiana. & Ohio robbing and pillaging farms and towns along the way word spread ahead of them. So the people of Eckmansville got together and tried to defend there homes and property . They were waiting on Morgan and his men when they arrived in town. A gun battle broke out and this man was killed in the engagement. As far as I have been able to determine he was the only killed in the confrontation.
Kind of interesting that one headstone had a whole historical story behind it less than 10 miles from where I grew up and no one knew about it.
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@Kwek00 I enjoy checking out any old headstones. Those are all really cool. One thing that strikes me when I visit cemeteries is the number of preteen kids that died before around 1910. By looking at dates you can see many of them were probably due to pandemic like illnesses .
@goodlil666 I got some from Bonaventura cemetery too... but there are no readable headstones on those. But that's a pretty big and fascinating cemetery to visit.
