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Welcome to ElderwiseIn-person, online, and hybrid classes Fall Term 2025 Registration Coming in August... > History

A History of Cemeteries and Graveyards: America, Michigan, and Washtenaw County   

Amidst our cities and suburbs and countrysides, generous stretches of land are devoted to burying and memorializing the dead. A cemetery, however, is much more than a burial ground. It is an open-air reference library, a statuary park, a gallery of architectural styles, a carefully constructed model landscape, a repository of community memory, and a complex cultural artifact. Cemeteries may change or even be uprooted, but they are usually much more stable than their surroundings, and can serve as a window on the past. Many of our local examples (Forest Hill, Highland, Bethlehem, and several others) have been in place since the 19th century. Larry Kestenbaum will share the story of how practical problems, religious traditions, and intellectual currents shaped the development of burial grounds, both nationally and locally.

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