Footstones

Footstones

Footstones are not often thought of when picturing a cemetery, especially in modern day, but footstones used to be common practice. Footstones fell out of practice when those maintaining cemeteries needed the property to be easier to mow. Footstones have been removed from most cemeteries but some may keep the footstone if the  person no longer has a headstone.

When completing the Girl Scout Project/what turned into a personal project,  footstones found helped to place fallen headstones closer to the person's accurate burial spot and also helped in obtaining a more accurate number of individuals buried in The Old Baptist Cemetery. Several footstones have been found with initials not belonging to anyone on record to have been buried in the cemetery, therefore their initials are counted a person in the cemetery and the footstone is put on this website and on findagrave.com. Research is then done to try and figure out who the footstone might belong to; with only having initials the task is often unproductive, but other times, can help us in our research directing us toward a document inkling that someone previously unrecorded is buried on the property. Almost 50 footstones have been found at the Old Baptist Cemetery, some only have old photos to verify their existence and some have faded letters, but every piece of information and every stone is a symbol of remembrance.