A Little Walk, Part Two

After walking around Riverfront Park, I got the grand idea to go explore the cemetery next to Bryce Hospital. I've heard it dubbed "Old Bryce Cemetery"; I'm not sure if that's its official name, but it seems to be an accepted name for it on campus. For some reason, I enjoy walking through old cemeteries. Maybe I'm really, really weird, but they're always peaceful and offers a chance for introspection.

Colby and I walked toward the Student Rec Center, and turned onto a dirt road with a road barrier. At the very least, they don't want vehicles entering the cemetery. Hopefully they wouldn't mind a couple of curious, though harmless, college kids exploring the premises. After walking for about a quarter of a mile, we came upon a large gate. It was locked. This posed no problem for us, however, as we easily squeezed between the bars of the gate.



This field of approximately one and a half acres actually held a few hundred graves. The majority of them were simply numbered, as shown.




We assume, from the positioning of the markers, and from common sense (what little we have), that the first grave was numbered one, and from the early to mid 1800s until today have buried over 2000 bodies. After some hunting, we did, in fact, find "lucky" #1. It was in a lot of overgrowth and surrounded by trees. It was obvious upkeep was a distant thought.

At first, I didn't think much of it, but then it hit me. About 95% of the graves were nameless. Even some of the newer ones (as in within the past five years) did not have names or dates. Are there really that many people without names in Bryce? Why do some people have names on their headstones, rather than others? In my "copious free time", I'm going to try to find out some answers...