Best of Gravestone Humor

By Louis S. Schafer

While doing research for a family tree, author Lou Schafer surveyed thousands of headstones across the United States and overseas and amassed a unique collection of - often unintentionally - humorous epitaphs. Along with gravestone inscriptions, this book also includes historical information to give the epitaphs more context. Each chapter highli

• Language: English
• Publisher: Littleberry Press LLC
• Release date: Aug 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781940750712

Book preview

•  CHAPTER 1  • head-chap1.jpg

Chance and Circumstance

On any given day of any given week, you can pick up a daily newspaper and read about tragic deaths by drowning, fire, traffic accidents, and poisoning, to name just a few. Considering that there are so many potential lethal hazards surrounding us throughout our lifetimes, the real miracle is that so many of us survive for such a lengthy period.

The most serious challenges to reaching old age were wars–declared and undeclared–plagues, and other health hazards. Eventually, however, other generations were born to enjoy the riches left by their forefathers. This newest generation, just a few years removed, sometimes escaped many of the past dangers–but not all.

Scores of people have reached their untimely demise through floods, plane crashes, forest fires, tornadoes, train derailments, shootings, industrial accidents, and other unexpected occurrences. Interestingly enough, family members and friends left behind often wrote haunting memories of tragedy upon the victims’ tombstones, rather than remembering them with upbeat words describing their often happy, long, and illustrious lives. So how did they die?

Dynamite was often a major problem to homesteaders in early America, due to the fact that it was not always stored properly. Often, it would be allowed to freeze during the cold winter months, causing the nitro-glycerin inside to settle toward the bottom, where it would become extremely volatile and quite dangerous to handle. So, from time to time, unexpected explosions were destined to occur.

Death by gunshot, either intentionally or unintentionally, was often inflicted by farmers, as well as by city folks out on their annual hunting excursions. During the late 1800s, it was said that a man, who traveled about looking for wild game in thickets and brush, would purposely put his shoes on backwards. In this way, if a stray bullet were to fatally injure a trespasser, the shooter could hide in time and avoid being caught. Early settlers, as well as Indians, often used this same trick in pioneer days, and numerous shootings were listed as accidental.

Cyclones and tornadoes have also been known to cause sudden deaths. A country newspaper article written on a series of twisters that hit the Midwest on May 29, 1879, told of forty-two dead and 185 injured. Furthermore, the eyewitness account spoke of horses that had been swept up in the wind and deposited, frightened and skittish, in strange pastures; of chickens being stripped clean of their feathers; and of extremely fragile personal belongings ending up tens of miles away from their point of origin.

In 1896, 30,000 spectators gathered along a lonely stretch of railroad track in Texas to see what had been advertised as the most sensational train crash in history. No one will likely ever completely understand what inspired William G. Crush, an adventurous executive of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway–commonly called the Katy–to attempt one of the craziest stunts in history. But, this conservative man and solid citizen decided to sponsor an event that would bring two railroad engines together in a head-on collision at sixty miles-per-hour.

The organizers expected between 20,000 and 25,000 people, and even constructed a special railway station at the site for the arriving spectators. A sign placed there strategically named the place Crush, Texas. On the day of the event, September 15, 1896, people started arriving early in droves. The special trains taking people to witness the spectacle were so full that some brave souls even risked riding on the roofs of the train cars. The crowd swelled to between 30,000 and 40,000 people and Crush–for a few hours, at least–became the second largest town in