ashetlandpony | Aug. 25th, 2007

Aug. 25th, 2007

Almost as soon as I set foot in it, Ferndale Cemetery tugged at my heart, for everywhere were the tiny gravemarkers of children – scores upon scores of them, as far as the eye could see.

In general, we don't even think about infant mortality anymore, it's become so rare. But a century ago, especially in a remote village like this one, babies and young children died by the dozen every year.

Never before had I seen an old cemetery with so many little headstones. Reason being, generations of vandals and thieves elsewhere have stolen them. But here, quite remarkably, the place has been spared the ravages of men's ghoulish baseness, and these tiny memorials of stone and wood have remained largely untouched.

Look at this little wooden gravemarker. It's about 10 inches tall, made of "curly" ancient-growth redwood – eroded by decades of rain and windblown soil, its whitewashing almost erased. This little piece of wood is probably close to a century old, yet it has remained in place and unmolested all these long years.

Simply astonishing.

And witness these three tiny wooden markers lain side by side. Someone has maintained them with great care down through the decades, as evidenced by the fresh white paint and sparkling clean votive flowerholders.

I don't know the story, of course, but in my mind's eye I can see an 80+-year-old person still tending to the graves of 3 long-dead infant siblings, dearly loved and unforgotten to this very day...

Several dead babies in just this one stricken family alone. I can hardly imagine it...

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And little Christie, in a lone grave with no apparent family connection...

Lambs were a common motif on children's gravestones here...

"Our Darling Baby"

click image to enlarge

And the epitaph on this beautifully-carved stone just tears at my soul... No kisses drop upon the cheek/Those lips are sealed to me:/Dear Lord. how could I give/him up to any but to Thee.

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Compound these family tragedies by the hundreds, and it's simply too terrible to contemplate...

Almost as soon as I set foot in it, Ferndale Cemetery tugged at my heart, for everywhere were the tiny gravemarkers of children – scores upon scores of them, as far as the eye could see.

click image to enlarge

And little Christie, in a lone grave with no apparent family connection...

Lambs were a common motif on children's gravestones here...

"Our Darling Baby"

click image to enlarge

Compound these family tragedies by the hundreds, and it's simply too terrible to contemplate...

I've been fascinated by old cemeteries since my first trip to England as a youngster in 1967. There, I was astonished to find entire churchyards of stone monuments for people who had lived and died long before the U.S.A. was even a thought. Quite awe-inspiring, really. Hardly anything gives one a perspective on life and lives passed than a reflective stroll through an old burial ground.

So in light of my longtime interest, it's rather puzzling to me that I've lived in this area 25 years and been to Ferndale dozens of times, yet I've never visited the cemetery there. Now I wish I hadn't put it off for so long.

The first thing that impressed me was the cemetery's sheer size. There are more than twice as many people interred here than there are living residents of Ferndale.

click image to enlarge

( +7 smallish pics )

One thing that amazed me were the innumerable pieces of broken antique glass that were strewn almost everywhere over the grounds; likely from bottles and jars used over the years as flower containers. I love to scavenge bits of broken bottles and plates from old town dump sites, but I refused to remove any of the glass shards I saw on actual graves or plots. Finally I spied this purple shard adjacent to a footpath, and seeing it was embossed with the word "TRADE" (presumably for TRADE MARK), I knew I had acquired my treasured keepsake for the day I visited Ferndale Cemetery for the first time.

The first thing that impressed me was the cemetery's sheer size. There are more than twice as many people interred here than there are living residents of Ferndale.

When I have out-of-town visitors, I always enjoy taking them to the old Victorian dairy village of Ferndale, founded in 1852. In pioneer times, Ferndale was a stop on the coastal stagecoach route and was a center of local commerce, but when the automobile came to Humboldt County, the Redwood Highway was constructed some 5 miles to the east, completely bypassing the old town. Being off the beaten track, Ferndale was never really "modernized," and as a result, much of its Victorian architecture remained intact.

This is the Gingerbread Mansion, one of the premier B&Bs in California. It was built in 1899 by the Ring family, and for many years, the building served as the local hospital.