I’ve had the pleasure of sharing my experiences at some amazing cemeteries over the last six months. And yes, it’s been that long since I started the blog! It’s hard to believe that this will be my 23rd blog post since Adventures in Cemetery Hopping began on January 18.

In light of that milestone, I’d like to share a story about what happens when a cemetery is no longer cared for and becomes a shadow of itself. That’s what has happened to Old Greencastle Cemetery in Dayton, Ohio.

This photo was taken by someone a few years ago after the grass had been cut.

My first and only visit to Old Greencastle came just last year when I was back in Dayton for a funeral (ironically so). Thanks to some research on Ancestry.com, I discovered that my paternal great-great-grandparents, Samuel and Margaret Coffman Grice, were buried there.

In 1849, Simon McClure donated three acres of land in West Dayton’s small Greencastle village to Henry Shoup to build a church and burial ground. A one-storey building (Miami Chapel United Brethren Church) was erected on that plot of land the same year. Greencastle Cemetery’s name comes from the “Greencastle Circuit” of the United Brethren churches (a sect from Germany that still exists today) to which the church belonged. The Greencastle plat itself predates 1826 and is one of the oldest in Dayton.

The original Miami Chapel United Brethren Church was torn down in 1912 and replaced with the current church building that remains there, abandoned and boarded up.

With nobody to care for it, Old Greencastle is sliding into a sorry state that I hope will change.

Old Greencastle Cemetery is probably the oldest in Dayton. The earliest dated tombstone found in the cemetery was inscribed in 1817, which leads many to believe that the land was used as a family graveyard at one time. Unfortunately, few of the cemetery’s records prior to 1913 exist as many of the cemetery’s records, graves, and gravestones were destroyed during the 1913 Dayton flood. That probably includes Samuel Grice’s grave since he died in 1912. Margaret died in 1919.

Old Greencastle was the original resting place of Otis and Ida Wright (they were twins), brother and sister of the famous Orville and Wilbur Wright. Those graves have since been moved to Woodland Cemetery where the other Wrights are buried, and where several members of my family are buried. Considering the state that Old Greencastle is in now, that was probably a wise decision.

Also within the cemetery are the graves of many Union soldiers who fought in the Civil War. An actual cannon is in the center of them, which was in the best shape among the other sections. One section was reserved for children from the Montgomery County Ohio Children’s Home, which was open from 1867-1928. I did see a few of them while I was hunting.

A Civil War-era cannon is situated among the veterans’ graves. Behind it you can see the abandoned Miami Chapel United Brethren Church building.

When I told my Aunt Jo what I had in mind, she chuckled and said, “Really? That’s in a pretty bad part of town now.” She and my mother (her twin) spent their early years living close to that neighborhood before I-75 was built through the middle of it. However, I checked with a fellow Find a Grave volunteer who said while the neighborhood was iffy, nobody bothered the cemetery and the gates were usually open.

Despite her doubts, Aunt Jo was too excited at the prospect of cemetery hopping to stay away. My Mom was also game so we set off no knowing quite what to expect and thinking maybe we should have brought mace.

This can give you an idea of how high the grass was and how tricky walking in it could be.

Old Greencastle is indeed in the ‘hood. But we were there on a Sunday and not much was going on. The few people that did walk or drive by were totally uninterested in us. I can’t help wondering if the residents know not to mess with the dead and give the place a wide bearth. There didn’t appear to be any signs of vandalism but that’s probably because walking the grounds is like going through an obstacle course. If you want to make a quick sprint across the lot, forget it.

This cemetery proved to be the most challenging in my short hopping career. The grass was waist high in some spots so watching where you stepped was a must. Not to mention the holes. I don’t know if they were gopher holes or what animals had created them but I didn’t want to find out. I blocked that out. Even now, I thank God that nobody broke an ankle and we didn’t have to call 911.

This little house stood out among the other graves. I wonder if the person who it was made for built homes.

Once most of the burials stopped there in the 1940s because it had no more room (I did see a few graves as recent as the 70s) and the church congregation moved on, Old Greencastle started going down hill. The church opened New Greencastle Cemetery a few streets over and it is still an active cemetery today. Any money set aside for perpetual care at the old place dried up. Nobody wanted to take responsibility for it, including the City of Dayton. The grass would be cut sporadically (a dangerous chore indeed) and American flags placed on veterans’ graves on Memorial Day. But that’s about it.

There are many cemeteries like Old Greencastle slowly sliding into decay and ruin that will never be saved. Sometimes one gets rescued if the community takes action and does something to preserve it. There are steps that can be taken to do that. But it takes time and money, two things most people do not have much of to spare.

At the time we visited, I didn’t know who was supposed to be taking care of Old Greencastle. I’ve since learned that the property does have a superintendent and he is trying to enlist support in getting it cleaned up. I hope he is successful because this one is definitely worth saving. There’s too much history there.

Despite spending quite a lot of time looking around, we never did find my great-grandparents’ graves. I did find some graves bearing Margaret’s mother’s maiden name (Olinger). This was one of the founding families of the church. They may be related to Margaret in some way. Maybe some day I will come back and try again. I want to see if improvements are being made. Maybe there’s a chance Old Greencastle will be one of the lucky ones.

I really hope it is.

Maybe this is one of my Olinger ancestors. The stone is too worn to get much information.

We’ve all heard Charlie Brown’s frequently expressed shout, “Good Grief!”. We may have said it ourselves in times of frustration.

Having been through it myself, there’s nothing good about grief. At least not when you’re flailing helplessly in the middle of it.

When my father died, I went through the same grieving phases everybody else does. But I think the hardest thing about it was having nobody to really talk to about it.

Oh, I had my new, wonderful husband. My friends. My family. They all loved me and were there for me. But they couldn’t understand what I was going through. None of them had lost their father. If I started talking about what I was feeling, even well-meaning friends looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language they didn’t understand. I felt very alone.

Even my Mom, who was dealing with her own loss, was experiencing a different kind of grief than I was. There were things I was feeling and thinking she didn’t need to hear.

I pulled myself together somehow and got through the next few years, and things did get better. But I still felt like a cloud was hanging over me, that there were issues I had not worked through completely.

Grief warred with my faith in God. When I did push myself to go to church, I struggled. When it would come time to stand up and sing a praise song, I couldn’t do it. I had nothing to praise God for, in my mind. It was especially bad if it was a song I knew Dad liked. Many times, I just sat there, tears running down my face. Don’t even ask me about those first few Father’s Day Sundays.

It was around that time Mom heard about Griefshare, a grief support group with chapters all over the country. One was meeting at a church in Peachtree City and she was going weekly. And it was really helping her.

Seeing how much good it was doing her, I decided to find a Griefshare group near me and I did, at Dunwoody Baptist Church. And from the first night, I knew I had come to the right place.

The most important thing I got out of Griefshare was finding a group of people, even though they were strangers, who spoke my “grief language”. When I talked about what I was feeling and thinking, I didn’t draw blank stares or uncomfortable silences. I saw nods and looks of encouragement. They didn’t mind if I cried. Sometimes they even cried with me.

For the first time, somebody truly understood what I was saying.

We’d come there for different reasons but with the same pain. One had lost a son. Another had lost a spouse. One had lost a brother when he was murdered. You would think that would make a difference but it didn’t. Not really. Someone much loved in our life was gone and we were left stumbling in the dark, looking for answers. Looking for life to get back to some new kind of normal.

I think one of the best videos they showed was of a pastor talking about the loss of his wife. He shared how one night, in his anger and frustration, he threw his Bible against the wall and shouted at God. That someone considered so spiritually mature had done something very human had an impact one me. I realized it was okay to get mad, to be angry at God. He could take it.

My mother went on to help start a Griefshare group at her church and helps facilitate it every week. It’s given her a way to minister to others from her own experience. Eventually, my husband and I started going to Dunwoody Baptist, where my Griefshare group met (they still do) and became members.

Griefshare has a strong foundation in the Christian faith, so it may not be for everyone. But the program doesn’t proselytize or force anything on anyone. There were a few folks in our group who were not Christians who said they benefitted from it.

If you’ve experienced a loss and can’t seem to get out of the funk you’re in, reach out for help. Be it Griefshare, some type of counseling or a grief support group. Finding common ground with those who are walking down the same path can bring great comfort and peace of mind.

Now that is a good thing!

For more information on Griefshare, visit their Web site.

When one thinks of Sherlock Holmes, it’s not hard to dwell on the eccentricities embodied in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s brilliant fictional detective. He was a genius but his quirks left many readers scratching their heads.

The same could be said of another Holmes, but this one was very real. The story of how Dr. Thomas Holmes became known as the father of American embalming could have come straight out of a tabloid magazine itself.

The ancient Egyptians were adept at preserving the human body after death, but not for the same reasons it’s done today. Mummification was thought to preserve the body for the next life, so wealthy Egyptians wanted no expense spared on getting that done properly. The 1922 discovery King Tutankhamun’s amazing burial crypt is evidence of that.

King Tut’s burial mask, on display in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Egypt. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Centuries later, other motivating factors were involved. In the early 19th century, as progress in science took place in leaps and bounds, medical school enrollment in Europe and the U.S. went through the roof. Students needed cadavers to learn anatomy and practice their skills on, but a dead body decomposes quickly. So medical schools needed, ahem, fresh material regularly and paid good money for it. Thus, grave robbery became common. But that juicy topic deserves its own post.

Efforts were being made (especially in Europe) to try to preserve cadavers, but the use of certain potent chemicals such as mercury were harmful to the students making the dissections. That’s where Dr. Thomas Holmes comes in.

A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Thomas Holmes was frustrated by the ineffective means available to preserve bodies for dissection at medical schools.

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1817, Holmes was familiar with this dilemma. As a medical student at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, he eventually studied with a phrenologist. Phrenology was a pseudo-science that advocated that the size of certain areas of the brain indicated strengths and weaknesses. Most of this was based on outside brain measurements since studies of the inner neurological workings of the brain were barely begun. For instance, if you had a large forehead, you were supposed to be very intelligent. I must be a genius if that’s true, by the way.

A phrenology diagram from 1883. Phrenologists thought the human mind has a set of different mental faculties, with each particular one represented in a different area of the brain. Photo courtesy of People’s Cyclopedia of Universal Knowledge.

While studying the heads of Egyptian mummies, Holmes realized this ancient civilization had solved the problem of preservation without using deadly chemicals. In Europe, they were already practicing a form of arterial embalming by replacing a cadaver’s bodily fluids with alcohol as a preservative (which wasn’t working very well). So Holmes invented his own arsenic-based solution (the toxicity of arsenic was unknown at the time), along with a patented fluid pump, and started using it.

Holmes’ timing could not have been better. The Civil War loomed large and the number of casualties whose families were requesting to be shipped home for burial was staggering. You can imagine the dilemma this presented in terms of hygiene.

As a captain in the Union Army Medical Corps stationed in Washington, D.C., Holmes got his chance to show off his new technique after the death of Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth. A friend of President Abraham Lincoln, Ellsworth was also the first officer to be a military casualty of the Civil War. On May 24, 1861, he was shot while removing a Confederate flag from the roof of a hotel in Virginia. Holmes offered his embalming services for free. Ellsworth’s body was embalmed and displayed to the public at his funeral, and people were impressed with his “lifelike” look.

As a result, Lincoln commissioned Holmes to start training “embalming surgeons” to take to the battlefields so deceased Union soldiers killed in action could be safely preserved for delivery to their families for burial. The Confederate Army never adopted the practice.

Dr. Richard Burr, an embalming surgeon in Frederick, Va., is shown embalming a soldier recovered from the battlefield. Embalming tables were not usually available in the field, so he used a door placed over two large barrels. Photo courtesy of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine.

Some people actually wanted to jump on the embalming bandwagon to make a quick buck. According to Canadian psychologist Romeo Vitelli in his article “Abraham Lincoln and the Embalmer”:

The demand for embalming services became so great that some unscrupulous embalmers actually competed for corpses on the battlefield. The Union army offered an $80 fee for the embalmed body of an officer and $30 for a soldier. By 1865, the problem had become so bad that the War Department put out General Order 39 to ensure that only properly licensed embalmers would be allowed to offer services to the families of the war dead.

Holmes secured his place in history when Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd, personally asked him to embalm her husband after his assassination. In addition to Col. Ellsworth, Holmes performed the task for the Lincolns’ son, Willie, when he died of typhus in 1862. Embalming the President`s corpse for the long funeral train journey from Washington, D.C. to Springfield, Ill. was probably the best display for the new arterial embalming technique since thousands of mourners saw how effective it could be.

Postcard of Lincoln’s funeral train, the Old Nashville, that carried him across seven states and through over 400 communities.

Many Civil War embalming surgeons went on to become morticians. The next few decades saw a tremendous rise in the development of the funeral industry, including the use of open-casket funerals and “wakes” (as opposed to burying the body as quickly as possible). Holmes’ embalming fluid and his patented fluid pump were in high demand as more and more people began asking that their loved ones be embalmed prior to burial.

Despite Holmes desire to provide a safe process in which to preserve a corpse, there were still health risks involved. His embalming fluid contained dangerous levels of arsenic, which continued to be used for embalming corpses until well into the 20th century when formaldehyde was eventually adopted.

Formaldehyde has its own risks, now classified as a known human carcinogen (cancer-causing substance) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and as a probable human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As a result, funeral directors implemented more stringent safety controls when using it, such as providing better ventilation during embalming.

Less toxic alternatives to formaldehyde are now available, but many funeral directors are quite attached to it. They claim that nothing else gives human flesh the life-like appearance they strive to produce so families can hold open-casket funerals for their loved ones. At the same time, as a growing number of people pursue their desire for a more environmentally-friendly funeral, more funeral directors are working with families to meet their needs in this area.

Students at the University of Dundee in Scotland are studying a new method of embalming medical cadavers. Invented by Austrian Walther Thiel, it requires far less formaldehyde than traditional embalming.

So what happened to Dr. Holmes? He retired to Brooklyn after the Civil War, where he sold root beer and embalming supplies (a curious pairing). Holmes decorated his home with samples of his Civil War era handiwork. Embalmed bodies were stored in the closets, and preserved heads sat on tables in the parlor. A few years before he died, Holmes took out ads in mortuary trade journals with his latest invention, a canvas body bag that could also double as a sleeping bag. Not surprisingly, this last innovation never really caught on with the public.

Holmes reportedly went insane, spending his final years in and out of institutions. One can’t help but wonder if it was partially due to his exposure to arsenic over the years. The ultimate irony is that Holmes specifically requested that his body NOT be embalmed after his death, which occurred on January 10, 1900.

Why he did so is a mystery even the talented Sherlock Holmes couldn’t solve.