He Sat Them Down in Rows

 Where will my resting place be?

“He sat them down in rows” describes those who were set down for life in their order before they were ordained. Then, when they were here, he sat them down on the hill to feed them and to teach, like an herb garden, a leek patch. Then, like rows of corn or wheat, they who came and were planted, were set  down in rows to wait. We find them as they wait. Tombstone lists are poetry, a community snapshot, but a poem too, cadence of the changes of name under text. Just because we can't read your name doesn’t mean you are denied. Many names, many meanings of lives are illegible. We prize them  more because they mark the struggle to hold. Names, families, births and deaths, those with no name or just a half-day of life are welcome with the illegible. 

Before they call I will answer.

We preserve without comment of any kind, whether in the written text or on the stones. This raises the question at difficulties as to whether it is typist's error or how to know the difference. The first compilers said every effort was made to be free of error; every effort is made here for accurate transcription where the original is preserved, except ditto marks in the typescript are replaced with complete spellings. Older and newer forms of spellings may be supposed true variations and not mistakes, but variances on tombstones also occur from wear which may make them illegible, or they may be simply errors, as seems possible in 1.33, Mengel/Mengal.

For they will be a people blessed by the LORD, they and their descendants with them.

Nothing of the text translated here is English. The dates abbreviated in the written inventory are assumed  abbreviated on the stones. If the past is a measure of the irony of living and dying, abbreviated in our present, then we know at least that when we go the grave our abbreviation will be our mother and father. That’s how we come and that’s how we go. Friends are not mentioned. Those who gave birth give meaning in death.

He who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere youth.

In those days Anthony KLEINSMITH, of Kraussdale, Lehigh county, died of blood poisoning after “early in April a horse kicked his heel and two months later the slight scratch caused the foot to swell which extended to the stomach causing intense agony.” In those days you called the pastor, family and friends when the doctor was done. But while we are working on a cure for old age, day old deaths are as important as the Seventy.  What are the poets talking about when they tell us what they think of life? Your mother and father! They are there when you're born and on the stone when you die.What lasts is this grave and this, ask me I know them.

To his servants he will give another name.

They say no atheists in foxholes, but what about graves? Rimbaud, Buñuel, Borges and Stevens could not resist the faith came to their mortal. What principles of these hypocrites! No atheists in graves? Live by doubt, die by faith? Taunted at the Judgment for their cremation, evolutionists hasten the “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Natural selection hastens their decay in the ground. Question the time. It’s all on the stones with the suddenness of life. 

For the past troubles will be forgotten.

II.

 

To keep accounts in this yard made simple, the symbolism is here retained. The names are not John but Johannes, hymn titles German (5.21-23), if that is not too simpleminded to say. Henry Mack, one collator, rightly observed that 25 percent of these names reached full maturity, meaning three score and ten. We expand the  inquiry to seek reasons. We ask of the death of children, read between the lines.

Row 1

There are some surprises. Compare 1.8 and 1.9, two children born apparently of the same parents, Anna and Henrich Bechtel, both who would die in childhood, but 33 years apart! David dies in 1810 at 14 days and Henrich at 3 years in 1846!

Henry and Cathrina Stauffer, (1.3-4) died at 1 and 6, but others are anonymous, known only as "a daughter" 1.6), "a son" (1.10) as though the pain of naming them now were so great it overwhelmed the loss. That is why we have poets, to speak this unspeakable as our brother William has done:

I have no name
I am but two days old.
What shall I call thee?
I happy am-
Joy is my name.

Of twelve born in the 18th century, eleven children, age six or less,

if Row 1 signifies the founding of the cemetery then 8 children at its start might suggest them been buried elsewhere and then moved here when the graveyard was begun. The dates are not quite right for that however, so even more it is a terrible run. No matter if they lived six days (1.11) or sixty years, their lives are counted down to the day. The implication is that each life, each day is precious, each hour is precious, more so in the case of Henry, son of William and Anna Mack, whose life is tabulated down to the half day. who "died Sept. 30th, 1846. Age, 1 yr. 9 mos. 2 1/2 days" (2.9).

There are 40 burials in Row 1. Twelve born 18th century, Oberholtzers, Gehmans. Eleven children die, six or less.

Spellings may vary, for names were not always coded for information bases, compare Clemmer 1.12 and Klemmer, 1.16 or Klemer, 2.18. Sometimes different spellings occur in the same line, Oberholtser and Oberholser (1.39), or differ from a previous, as Oberholtzer of 1.18-23.
We read the old spellings with joy, of Cathrina, (1.4), or Salharena, (1.32), or Therusah 3.1.

Say it again! Eight of the thirteen names on the stones tabled on page one are children. We can’t compare it to war, these people fled the study of war, so our only recourse is to compare it to life: Carry your sorrow, bear your grief to one pierced breast of love, the Lord's, and there we lie. In convention, the way the spaces fall, an "accident" at the end of the first page provides them with a shepherd "At Rest," the Rev. John M. Ehst, who "served this congregation 37 yrs."

Row 2

There are 35 burials in Row 2, eight children, seven born in the 18th century. As if in a delirium it seems like we keep saying this and the numbers change each time.  If you speak a word frequently it becomes nonsense the more you say it. Consider how this happens with the word “died.” Who died? What death? Whose death is this, this one and this?  It is an odd word that in the context of things means something entirely opposite, for all these deaths are lives. Which one of the stones reads, “the dead shall live, the earth shall cast out her dead."

"Klemer 2.18 is yet another spelling.
(No name) as if it were a name, supplied by the inventory 2.18.
Folk 2.21, Thomas, 2.22 English names.

Sahra Hunsbergerin 2.30. "less 11 days" 2.31
Maybe it is more revealing to see when they were born than when they die. Early years outweigh the rest. By this measure, while 18 died in the 18th cent, how many were born then? I can’t say.

I was 3 at the celebration of Henry Mack's ninetieth birthday, nearly the youngest in the family where he was the oldest. It is a great privilege to take up this work.

On Row 3:

Numbers changing again: 18 born 18th cent.7  children.

Old names and forms: Funkin, 2.10,  Salharena 1.32, Sahra Hunsbergerin 2.30, Bechtelin 3.33, Meyern 3.10, Kindig 3.13 Therusah 3.1, Septimus 3.19. Bennevell, 4.10.

Oddities: Weiz'n 4.13. Latchaw, 4.14.

There is a change of typist Row 4.6. “Mos. yrs.” no longer abbreviate, some more obvious mistakes, Weiz'n? 4.13, Latschar/Latscher 4.21,22, matrimon[e]y misspelled, "Nearly" capitalized, 4.21. Probably the first style of typing was Henry Mack for its punctiliousness. Then it changes back at 4.30 and continues in the first manner.

Perhaps the stones are like the paper programs handed out today with text and hymn numbers 4.15.

Preachers- John M. Ehst, 1.13 Samuel C. Clemmer, 2.19, John Gehman, 1.35, Heinrich Funk 3.31, John C. Bechtel 3.29, Deacon Philip Hoch, 3.32, John B. Bechtel 4.26, Abraham Bechtel 4.47

Notable age: Elizabeth Mengel, b.1741, 1.33, Hoch, b. 1755, 3.32, his wife Anna, b. 1762, 3.33, Abraham Gehman, b. 1766 1.37, Killion Weiss, b. 1751 4.32, wife Catharine, b. 1764, 4.31, Abraham Bechtel. b. 1749 4.47 

Make a list of people born before the Revolution.

Row 4: 9 children

Row 5 notes:

 9 children, Isaac Bauman, 5.30, "Age, 32 hours."

5.28 Maria Bauman, 9 sons, age 40.

5.44 Heinrich Stauffer, m. three times, in succession, but his wives are buried in reverse order from his grave, the first farthest away, 5.47

What pantywaists women and men today. Anna Bauman had 9 sons! What about companionship, friends? Unless you see their lives as prisons. Who lived better?

Row 6 notes:  Bachtly 6.17

Almost all 19th century births. Of 22 names in Row 6, nine are children. 5 child graves in a row, 6.5-9. Then an 82 year old. We like to see them interspersed. The children are fully equal in their humanity and its record with the old.

Clara, 6.9, was loved beyond telling but not beyond recall. We feel her loss even now.

There are people now weeping beside these stones at the early deaths. No death is too late to bear, only today, then they died before their time. At the grave of Lydia Stauffer Row 6.21 her daughter of three, 6.20, husband and father John has inscribed the lines written there. "Thou art gone to thy rest while thy ties were the dearest, With smiles on thy lip, and delight in thine eye; While love was the brightest, and friendship sincerest; Desirous to live thou were ready to die."

His care is shown in it and a poet's heart too, but more the loss, the loss of his love.

How to visit a graveyard. How is the pie? It’s good, but I have been to the graves. It is unlike anything else. When you go in person you cannot feel it as well, too many sense impressions. But at leisure, contemplating the fact of the life, the sorrows…

Tombstone politics in 5.20. two children Irwen and Nelson, died two days apart.