Travel out of my usual haunts gives new opportunities to hunt for Tree Shaped Tombstones. Sometimes what you see looks very familiar...but maybe isn't. Consider a cemetery we visited in Escanaba Michigan. Nice place, right on Lake Michigan.
On the way in I had seen a couple of the medium sized tree tombstones with the forked trunk. Now these are usually "official" Woodsmen stones, with the organization's logo just under the fork. As here:
So I naturally assumed that the other monument with a similar shape would also be "official".
Nope. Cross with IHS at the fork. And one of those odd blank name plates.
But here is the real oddity. Check out this complex.
To me it seems obvious that some elements of this are missing. The bigger monument behind appears to be a joint venture of two families, the Tosignants and the Ethiers. These names turn up in Escanaba histories, and oddly in this cemetery it was pretty common for monuments to be "back to back". But to which clan did "Mother" belong?
There should be a series of smaller markers but they just are not there.
Mom also was a member of the Woodman's Circle. The local chapter must have been an active one.
All those odd, knobby projections....
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