PARK AND CEMETERY, 
185 
CEMETERY NOTES 
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Mr. Warren J. Wilder has bequeathed to the town of Guil- 
ford centre, Vt., $2,000, the interest to be used to improve or 
care for the cemeteries in the town. 
* * * 
The Moosup, Conn. , Cemetery Association has decided to 
build a Receiving Vault in the Union cemetery. It will be a 
side hill vault with granite front, the body covered with a brick 
arch. Its dimensions will be length 17 feet, width 10 feet and 
height 8 feet. It will have a capacity of 20 bodies. 
* * * 
A legal question on the rights of parents in the bodies of 
buried children has been determined by an entry recently made 
in the Circuit Court from the Ohio Supreme Court, which com- 
pels the directors of St. Mary’s Cemetery Association of Cincin- 
nati, to deliver to A. Sonnentag, the dead bodies of his two chil- 
dren. This case seems to establish a precedent. Sonnentag's 
children were raised and died in the Catholic faith. They were 
buried in St. Mary’s cemetery. Sonnentag was said to haye ex- 
perienced a change of religion. He desired to remove the 
corpses to Protestant ground. His request was refused by the 
cemetery directors on the ground that he had no right to take 
the bodies from ground which was consecrated to their inter- 
ment. 
* * * 
From trust fund for perpetual care of lots, $6,407.80. The total 
expenditures were $115,641.43, which include: Labor and ma- 
terial $31,543.24; Interments and foundations $7,729.64; Fuel 
and feed $1,630.34: Repair and supplies, $1,862,573. There 
were 108 lots and 12 fractions sold of an area of 65,487 square, 
feet, and 61 vault and 1363 burial permits were issued. There 
are 12,121 single graves occupied and the total number of inter- 
ments to date amounts to 62,400; 581 grave marks and 69 monu- 
ments were set during the year. The number of lot holders has 
reached 9,917. 
* * * 
Superintendent C. S. Bell of the Lexington cemetery, Lex- 
ington, Ky., spent considerable time recently in digging around 
the monument of S. D. McCullough, as the result of the publi- 
cation of a story in Cincinnati detailing how an unknown con- 
vict in the Kentucky penitentiary had told how he had secured 
$5,000 worth of diamonds by robbery, and had buried them in a 
graveyard near Lexington and by the side of a monument on 
which was the inscription, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in 
the wilderness.” No monument in Kentucky contains this pe- 
culiar inscription save that of McCullough, and the officials fear- 
ing someone, tempted by the prospect of securing a large num- 
ber of diamonds, would injure the monument, held a meeting 
and ordered Mr. Bell to make a careful examination around the 
monument for the gems. He kept a force of hands at work sev- 
eral hours, and they dug the ground for a radius of eight feet 
around the monument, but found no diamonds . — Kansas City 
Star. 
* * -si- 
One of the institutions of Italy which always strikes the 
traveler as a quaint bit from the middle ages is the Misericordia 
society which cares for the sick and buries the dead gratuitously. 
The members are not monks but citizens usually from the higher 
ranks and for 400 years the people of Tuscany have seen these 
processions of ten or twelve men in black calico dominoes, black 
wide-awakes and black masks carrying a coffin on a litter. When 
the procession occurs at night the silence of the men, the weird 
flare of the torches and the crucifix borne before make a scene 
never forgotten. It is a work of charity but there is always a 
long waiting list of applicants for membership. The stroke of a 
bell calls the members to the place where gowns and litters are 
kept, signifying their help is needed, and they respond with the 
alacrity of firemen in a country town in this land. 
* * * 
A step in the right direction has been taken in Brockton ) 
Mass., by the council passing an amendmeut to the city ordi- 
nances relative to Melrose cemetery. The amendment pro- 
vided that the committee on burial grounds should, with the ap- 
proval of the city council, make such rules as were deemed de- 
sirable for the governing of the cemetery; that it should appoint 
a superintendent annually, fixing the salary to be paid him, and 
that no monuments or headstones should be erected without a 
suitable foundation, and subject to the approval of the superin- 
tendent. As a matter of fact all of these conditions are provided 
for in a set of rules prepared and published by the committee on 
burial grounds in 1891, but in the absence of any ordinance 
bearing upon the subjects, none of them can be enforced. It was 
the idea of the committee on ordinances to have the rules em- 
bodied in the ordinances where they would have some standing- 
* * * 
The annual report to the Directors of the Cemetery of 
Spring Grove, Cincinnati, O., for the fiscal year ending Sep- 
tember 30, 189S, has been submitted. The total receipts in- 
cluding balance of $2,900.76 from last year were $140,487.06 
Among these receipts are: Sales of lots, $73,838.30; Interments, 
oundations, single graves, $22,504.35; Improving lots, $9,163.85; 
The Rev. Dr. J. H. Townsend, Tunbridge Wells, England, 
in a letter to The Undertakers Journal, strongly advises of the 
danger of leaving the remains of relatives or friends in Swiss 
cemeteries. His own experience, which appears to be that of 
others, has been very bitter. Thirty-four years ago, he lost a 
brother by a fall from an Alpine precipice, who was buried in 
Territet. His father purchased the grave and erected thereon 
a beautiful memorial, and the family and friends periodically 
visited the endeared spot. A few years ago a gentleman friend 
visiting the cemetery reported to Dr. Townsend that the munici- 
pal authorities needing another cemetery, and not desiring to 
purchase more property, had levekd and destroyed the monu- 
ments and tombstones and had covered the place with earth of 
sufficient depth to permit of new burials over the old cemetery. 
Neither lawyers nor the British government could change mat- 
ter either by way of remedy or recompense, the Swiss govern- 
ment claiming to be unable to influence the local authorities. 
Similar cases are reported elsewhere and it is clear that the con- 
science of the much lauded Swiss people is not very tender on 
the question of inviolability of the grave. 
* * * 
The War Tax on Cemetery Deeds. 
Considerable enquiry has been made concerning a proper 
understanding of the stamp duties appertaining to cemetery 
deeds. Many of the printed statements coming to our notice 
have been not only misleading but contradictory, and in order 
to make the matter clear, an explanation was requested from 
the authorities at Washington. The following reply has been 
received through the collector of International Revenue in 
Chicago: 
“ Where deeds to cemetery lots are so worded as to grant, 
assign or convey to the grantee, the title in fee simple to said lots 
they require stamps, provided the value or consideration exceeds 
one hundred dollars. If, however, the deed does not grant, assign 
or convey to the purchasers any lands, tenements or other realty, 
but only the right of burial in the lot named, to,erect monu- 
ments thereon, etc., it requires no stamps.” 
