It’s divided up into several smaller units – St. Joseph’s Catholic, Masonic, IOOF, and Veterans’ burial grounds. Two of the burial grounds are dedicated to fraternal societies. If you’re a fellow weirdo, you’ve definitely seen the Independent Order of Odd Fellows at old graveyards. This is because the IOOF was started as a benevolent society. Before the New Deal in America, there were few social programs to help widows and orphans. That meant that if the breadwinner died, many went into poverty. Mutual aid societies like the IOOF functioned like an insurer: members’ wives and children would be assisted when they died, and the society would provide burial services.
Masonic Burial Ground
The Freemasons are also a fraternal society, but they are more of a social group than a benevolent society. The Masons began as a builders’ guild for cathedrals in Europe, but when their membership slowed, they began to admit “honorary” members. The current iteration of the Freemasons doesn’t really have anything to do with the building trade. Masons are the world’s largest society, and they have spawned newer versions like the Shriners. Are they the secret controllers of the universe??? IDK, but they also have a reputation for excluding basically anyone who wasn’t a white Protestant and having tons of founding father types among their ranks.
I wasn’t in the mood to go down the rabbit hole of Masonic conspiracy theories, but their section of the cemetery was pretty well cared for and houses a lot of prominent locals, which checks out with their reputation.
While I was here I noticed a tombstone convention that I hadn’t seen before – Older stones that are in disrepair have been cast into concrete slabs and laid flat on the ground.
Roeder’s Baby Cemetery
It’s called the “Roeder’s Baby Cemetery” which is ughhhhhhh. I’d never seen one of these before, but it makes sense – until fairly recently, infant mortality rate was high. My sister took me straight to this section because her husband’s grandmother is buried here. She lost her last child in childbirth, and she wanted to be buried with her rather than with her husband in another cemetery. I’m in full waterworks just THINKING about it, but it’s also beautiful and comforting to think of them reunited in death.
I did a little bit of research and it turns out that infant areas, sometimes called Baby Gardens or Babylands, aren’t that uncommon in North America. Infant mortality was much higher in the past, and the baby areas could hold a lot of tiny caskets.
In some cases, babies that died were whisked away from their mothers and buried with little or no ceremony, sometimes in unmarked plots and mass graves. It was thought that parents – especially mothers – needed to forget the loss and get pregnant as soon as possible to move on. In recent years, projects have started to restore the dignity to the little lost lives. Google “Babyland Texas” and “Mountain View Cemetery Infant Graves Area” to learn about efforts in Texas and Vancouver to honor them and help surviving parents heal.
