Jeannie Faris Norris takes readers on a tour of graveyards in Beaufort, Cedar Island and New Bern. Speaking from the Grave Sometimes folks are outlived by the tales of their lives. Meet some of the more colorful characters interred at the Old Burying Ground, a Cedar Island family graveyard, Cedar Grove and Christ Episcopal Church cemeteries. Without even reading epitaphs, you can learn something about the people they memorialize by studying the tombstones. The designs and materials used since the mid-1700s can tell you when people died, how wealthy they were and how old they were.
Tombstones also reveal something about peoples' attitudes toward death in centuries past.
Jeannie Faris Norris explains some basic tombstone symbols and designs. Lots of baby critters. Along North Carolina's coastal shores, these are among the signals that the cycle of life renews itself. Free-lance writer Odile Fredericks reminds readers what spring is all about in coastal estuaries and wetlands.