Bonus, Not!

I didn't expect to get out today, but surprise!
My husband wanted to work from home today so he could watch the Glenn Beck special. He had a conference call at 10 am, and I saw great excuse to "get the baby out of the house" so he could have some peace and quite while on the phone. I didn't have any info ready to go, so I quickly wrote down the names of the 5 requests in Blendon Cemetery. I was so excited because these requests just showed up last night. Due to the limited time I had to get ready, not to mention that the printer isn't hooked up to my computer right now, I only wrote down names and birth and death dates. I found it strange that all of the requests were by the same person, but none of the people seemed to be related. Even more strange was the fact that they all died between 9-4 and 10-30 of 2010.
Since I already have a map of the cemetery, I just needed to go to the office to get the plot information on each name. After I got the information I needed, I mentioned that I had been there last week to look in the old section for Catherine Noble. The caretaker told me that several of the Noble headstone were down to get repairs done. I commented that I noticed the large empty area near the other Noble headstones and thought that maybe she was there without a headstone. The caretaker told me that there are areas of the older section that have several unknown burials. Apparently long ago it was common practice for families that didn't have enough money to pay for a burial to do it themselves in the middle of the night. As a result there are areas with no markers to indicate who was buried nor where exactly they are.
The caretaker also asked if I had noticed how uneven the ground in the old section is compared to the rest of the cemetery. She told me to be careful and watch where I step in that area. In the early days of the cemetery, there were no requirements for bodies to be in vaults of any kind. When the bodies decomposed the earth above them would sink. I love visiting her office! She has been there a long time and is a wealth of information.
We found all of the names I was looking for in the cemetery office database, but when we went out to look for the headstones, none of them had been erected yet. So I have no pictures to post on FindAGrave. I will save the plot information in my notebook and keep checking back. Luckily I live right around the corner and drive by often.
Since I didn't take any pictures to post today, I'll explain the picture that is above the "Blog Archive" section. This is a family marker in Blendon Cemetery. A couple bought the entire section (about 240 plots) at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars. They did not want anyone buried near them, including their children. You can't really tell from the picture, but this marker stands out in the middle of a huge open area, surrounded on 3 sides by headstones. It is the tallest marker in the whole cemetery and can be seen clearly from both roads that border the cemetery. Truly remarkable.