Newly Added! – Reading the Stones: What Cemeteries Can Teach Us About Public Health – October 21 at 7pm via Zoom
Cemeteries are full of stories, but those stories are not always found in names and dates alone. Explore how gravestones, cemetery landscapes, and even the absence of markers can reveal important pieces of public health history. Learn the basics of “reading” a gravestone, including common symbols, inscriptions, materials, and other clues that can help us better understand the person being memorialized and the time in which they lived. Then look more closely at the ways cemeteries preserve evidence of disease, epidemics, institutions, poverty, and changing approaches to death and burial. Led by Ashlynn Rickord Werner, a cemetery historian, speaker, and the founder of A Grave Affair, an educational and consulting practice focused on cemetery tourism, storytelling, and community engagement.