I've featured this gravestone before on my Church Grounds blog, but it's so delightfully macabre that I had to use it for Halloween as well.
It's one of the oldest stones I've encountered at the Albany Rural Cemetery and one of the distinctive. It features a winged skull - a popular image of mortality in old New England and some downstate burial grounds, but not so common here in the Albany area. The center tablet is framed with a wonderful carved border of vines and flowers.
It's also one of a few stones featuring a Dutch inscription and marked the grave of Elsie Gansevoort Winne, wife of Frans Winne. The grave was originally located in the churchyard of the Reformed Dutch Church at the intersection of State Street and Broadway, but was moved several times over the years (including to the Washington Park) before ultimately being laid in the Church Grounds lot at the Rural Cemetery.
I can see why it fits this time of year!
ReplyDeleteMy parents came from the Netherlands, so of course Dutch was their first language. If I tried reading that gravestone out loud, it would end up sounding German.