It is hard to realize that church and family cemeteries were the main way to go in earlier times. Nonsectarian graveyards came later on. Green Wood cemetery in Brooklyn was the third independent burial ground in New York. It did not become socially acceptable until former governor DeWitt Clinton was reburied there. It developed into a who's who of the famous artist George Catlin, glass craftsman Louis Comfort Tiffany, newspaperman Horace Greeley and the Jeromes, who were Churchill's American grandparents.
Most cities have old cemeteries with locally recognized names on headstones.
Some are familiar to nonlocalites. Cleveland's Lake View, Akron's Glendale, Cincinnati's Spring Grove and Louisville's Cave Hill are good examples. President James A. Garfield and businessman John D. Rockefeller Sr. are the most famous at Lake View. I learned to appreciate reading headstones from the late Leroy Weese, a Goodyear retiree who lived in Uniontown, and years earlier from Alice Ozmun of Peninsula. Both recorded information for historical groups.