"Here lies John
"Dead as Ever"
The above is a humorous inscription or Epitaph from an unknown Headstone and I ask your help in finding more like it.
The word Epitaph is derived from from the Greek words, epi (upon) and taphos (tomb) Webster defines them as: "an inscription on a tomb or grave in memory of the one buried there". It also can mean a composition in honor of or epitomizing a deceased person or something from the past not intended for for display.
They began being placed on Tombs in Egypt, later appearing in England in the 16th century. This all spread to America in the 1700's and thus, "Pete's Tombstone Page" has evolved....to Cyber Space.
 
I ask your help genealogists? Let's think humor! Email me a few you have come across.
Regardless, Please Enjoy!
 
Here are some more:
On the grave in East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia:

           Here lies:

      Ezekiel Aikle

      Age 102

     The Good

     Die Young.

 
In a London, England cemetery:
      

 Here lies Ann Mann,

Who lived an old maid

But died an old Mann. 

  

 
In a Ribbesford, England, cemetery:

           Anna Wallace

The children of Israel wanted bread

And the Lord sent them manna,

Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife,

And the Devil sent him Anna.

 
Playing with names in a Ruidoso, New Mexico, cemetery:          

Here lies

Johnny Yeast

Pardon me

For not rising.

 
Memory of an accident in a Uniontown, Pennsylvania cemetery:

Here lies the body

of Jonathan Blake

Stepped on the gas

Instead of the brake.

 
In a Silver City, Nevada, cemetery:

           Here lays Butch,

We planted him raw.

He was quick on the trigger,

But slow on the draw.

 

A widow wrote this epitaph in a Vermont cemetery:

Sacred to the memory of my husband

John Barnes who died

January 3, 1803

His comely young widow, aged 23,

has many qualifications of a good wife,

and yearns to be comforted.

 
A lawyer's epitaph in England:           

Sir John Strange          

Here lies an honest lawyer,

And that is Strange.

Someone determined to be anonymous in Stowe, Vermont:

           I was somebody.

    Who, is no business

        Of yours.

Lester Moore was a Wells, Fargo Co. station agent for Naco, Arizona in the cowboy days of the 1880's.  He's buried in the Boot Hill Cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona:

  Here lies Lester Moore

Four slugs from a .44

 No Les No More.

 

A Lady Doctor in a Key West, FL cemetery:

  I told you

I was sick!

John Penny's epitaph in the Wimborne, England, cemetery:          

Reader if cash thou art

   In want of any

    Dig 4 feet deep

And thou wilt find a Penny.

 

On Margaret Daniel's grave at Hollywood Cemetery Richmond, Virginia:

      She always said her feet were killing her

           but nobody believed her.

 

In a cemetery in Hartscombe, England:

           On the 22nd of June

          Jonathan Fiddle

        Went out of tune.

 

Anna Hopewell's grave in Enosburg Falls, Vermont has an epitaph that sounds like something from a Three Stooges movie:

Here lies the body of our Anna

Done to death by a banana

It wasn't the fruit that laid her low

But the skin of the thing that made her go.

 

More fun with names in Battersea, London, England:   

Owen Moore

Gone away

Owin' more

Than he could pay.

Someone in Winslow, Maine didn't like Mr. Wood:

           In Memory of Beza Wood

           Departed this life

           Nov. 2, 1837

           Aged 45 yrs.

          Here lies one Wood

           Enclosed in wood

           One Wood

           Within another.

      The outer wood

           Is very good:

           We cannot praise

           The other.

 

On a grave from the 1880's in Nantucket, Massachusetts:

           Under the sod and under the trees

           Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.

          He is not here, there's only the pod:

           Pease shelled out and went to God.

 

The grave of Ellen Shannon in Girard, Pennsylvania is almost a consumer tip:

Ellen Shannon

 Who was fatally burned

    March 21, 1870

by the explosion of a lamp

filled with "R. E. Danforth's

Non-Explosive Burning Fluid"

From Skaneateles, NY

Underneath this pile of stones,

Lies all that's left of Sally Jones,

Her name was Briggs,

It was not Jones,

But Jones was used to

Rhyme with stones.

From Lee County Mississippi:

Once I wasn't,

Then I was,

Now I ain't,

Again.

Lady buried at Chapel Cemetery-Chapel Hill, NC

I was Carolina Born
and Carolina Bred
now here I lay
Carolina Dead!

From Kent, England:

Fear God, keep His Commandments,

And don't attempt to climb a tree,

For that's what caused the death of me.

 

  Oops! Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York:

           Born 1903--Died 1942

   Looked up the elevator shaft to see if

      the car was on the way down.

 

In a Thurmont, Maryland, cemetery:

           Here lies an Atheist

           All dressed up

           And No Place to Go.

In a Welland, ON cemetery

Here lies all that remains of Charlotte,

Born a virgin, died a harlot.

For sixteen years she kept her virginity,

A marvelous thing for this vicinity.

 In  Cripple Creek, CO

Here lies Zeke,

The Second Fastest Draw

in Cripple Creek  

 

In a cemetery in England:

Remember man, as you walk by,

As you are now, so once was I,

As I am now, so shall you be,

Remember this and follow me.

(To which someone replied by writing on the tombstone:)

To follow you I'll not consent,

Until I know which way you went.

From a stone in Green Bay, WI:

Here Lies Joyce

She'd rather not died

But had no choice.

From Omaha, NE:

Here lies the bones of Private Jones

For whom War held no terrors

A private then, a private now,

No runs, No hits, just errors.

From Sutter County, CA:

He looked for Gold

But died of

Lead poisoning.

From Kent, England:

Grim death took me

without any warning

I was well at night,

and dead in the morning.

In Lee, MA in memory of my wife. Alpha White (who weighed 309 lb.)

Open wide Ye Heavenly Gates,

That leadeth to that heavenly shore,

Our father suffered in passing through,

And mother weighs much more.

In Kansas City KS:

Here lies a farmer who

has now properly assumed

all of his obligations.

In a Cemetery in Covington, VA

I made a lot of deals in my  lifetime

But I sure went  in the hole on this one.

Finally from a dentist's stone in Philadelphia, PA:

Stranger approach this spot

with gravity for John B. Cudd, DMD

is filling his last cavity.

The next  three were contributed by: Gabrielle:

For a child, aged three:

  If I am so quickly done for,

  What on earth was I begun for?

 

For a Nell Parker of  London:

  God took our flower,

 our little Nell,

  He thought He too would like a smell.

For a John Wells, a tailor from Oxford:

  He left his hose,

 his Hannah she his love,

  To sing hosannas in the world above.

The next four are from Derek Delavau by e-mail:

Tony Hawk died

from not enough Air.

Beneath this stone & not above it
lie the remains of Anna Lovett;
Be pleased good reader not to shove it,
least she should come again above it.
 
For twixt you and I no one does covet
To see again this Anna Lovett
Here lies sheriff Tim Mcgrew
Who said he would arrest Bill Hennessy or die
He was right.

 

Beneath this grassy mount now rests
Edgar Oscar Earl.
Who to another hunter looked exactly like a squirrel.

Tamara Howard sent this: A Quote from a headstone in Dublin Ireland:

'wherever you may be

let your wind blow free

for that was the cause

of killing me!'

Permission to use from Don H.:

Here lies my wife, here let her lie.

      Now she has peace, and so do I.
 

From Bill Kerrigan of South Carolina who saw this inscription while attending a funeral in Knoxville, TN

You can look up the Bible verses:

Jack Purcell has donated

his body to Medical Science

Rather then be buried next to his Ex-Wife

Who insisted on being buried

With his family

Where she was not wanted

 

Proverbs 25:24

Proverbs 27:15-16

From James Barrett two good ones:

Here lies an

                                UNKNOWN DUELIST
                   Shot in the back at
                  Nine and a half paces

                

Johnny studied chemistry

Sadly Johnny is no more

What he mistook for H20

was H2SO4

From Page visitor Phil Gerety who says, this one was his mothers favorite:

"The light of my life has gone out.

Time to strike another match."

Here lies James Dunn

He raced for the crossing

But the train won.

From page visitor:
Alan Davis
Northern Territory
Australia

More to Come.........

Email an inscription to me, please- petebennett@hotmail.com

..remember always...

Gloom, despair and agony on me (Wow)
deep, dark depression; excessive misery (Wow)
if it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all (Wow)
gloom, despair and agony on me.

Great Links to follow:

Read about spooky things that haunt famous places at: Haunted Hamilton, ON

Also some Spooky places in Pennsylvania at Haunted PA.

Visit this really great site called- Grave Addiction.

COPYRIGHT © 2006 Pete Bennett

All rights Reserved.

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