Tree Shaped Tombstones - Louisiana Variants!

We tend to think of burial practices as being pretty standard across the country.  But this is not actually the case.  Major urban areas trend towards cremation as open space is at a premium.  Alaska has permafrost.  And then there is Louisiana.  

Louisiana is more than its chief city New Orleans.  But N.O. tends to dominate our images of the state.  And in New Orleans most burials are above ground.  Hey, go figure, build a city below water level, a city that is kept from becoming a big frog pond only be elaborate levees, and you'll have difficulty digging an honest six foot deep grave.

Recently Jay, a frequent correspondent, sent me several pictures from Houma Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans.  Thanks Jay!

The "Two Fork" style of tombstone is fairly common here up north, but this one is odd in that it is both on the chubby side and has the inscription flat almost at ground level.  Up this way you'd sometimes not see it if the caretaker would not mow the lawn on schedule.  Note the hard gravel surface in this cemetery.  Note also the nifty brass inscription plate which is seriously leaching metal salts into the surrounding stone due the the wet environment.

Close up of the plate, I've seen a few like this in the Midwest.

Perhaps because the burial process is complicated by the water table cemeteries in the New Orleans area tend to be really crowded....and mostly with above ground crypts.  Here a tree shaped tombstone seems to be screened by a later above ground tomb.  I bet the family was not pleased with this development.  Barely enough room to squeeze a bouquet of flowers in there.

Here's a really nice plaque, seemingly a "stand alone" in front of a conventional grave.  Quality work, I wonder what kind of metal it is?  The pressed zinc signs you see up our way would not be this color.  And it sure does not have metal salts and oxides leaking off it so likely not bronze.  Sore sort of electroplating?  That would have been unusual in the era of Woodman funerary markers.

Another tree shaped tombstone jammed in among the crypts.  This has the softer white stone you sometimes see in earlier examples but on magnification actually has a rather late - 1916 - date.  It is already showing quite a bit of weathering and discoloration.

So there's your quick tour around one Southern cemetery.  Trees generally, and Woodman examples specifically seem to be fairly common down that way.  With the popularity of this style among Civil War soldiers it is no surprise that various Confederate Cemeteries are particularly good hunting.  Perhaps for another day.