CEMETERY SUNDAY 
Photographs on Gravestones

Several graves at Sunnysude Cemetery have photo memorials embedded in their granite markers.

 

photos: QHGS

This is the resting place of Martin Christensen, his wife Marie Christensen, and their daughter Julia Marie Christensen Beck. From information recorded on their death certificates, we learn that Martin and his wife were born in Denmark and that they followed naming patterns common in Scandinavian countries: Martin’s father was Chris[ten] Mortensen; so, Martin’s surname became Christensen (Christen’s son) not “Mortensen.” The couple came to Long Beach in the early 1920s from Iowa, and both died in 1933, at the age of 81, Martin on January 17th and Marie on March 12th. Martin was a retired blacksmith, and he and Marie had lived at 370 Wisconsin Avenue in Long Beach for 13 years. Digitized images of their death certificates can be found at “California, County Birth and Death Records, 1800-1994,” database with images, FamilySearch: Los Angeles, Long Beach > Death certificates 1933 no 1-1559 > images 96 and 406 of 1677.

More information about photographs on gravestones can be found at the following websites:

“Photo-Ceramic Memorial Tombstone Portaits: A Window into Our Past,” by Blond Blythe,

updated on April 14, 2015, at http://blondeblythe.hubpages.com/hub/ceramic-tombstone-portraits-a-window-into-our-past,

and

“photodetective,” a blog written by Maureen A. Taylor, on her post for Monday, February 13, 2012, at http://blog.familytreemagazine.com/photodetectiveblog/2012/02/13/PhotographsOnWhoDoYouThinkYouAre.aspx.

RESEARCH TIP: Photographs, Daguerreotypes, and ceramic memorial pictures and plaques attached to stone grave markers are relatively rare because they do not stand up well to the elements. Vandals often destroy them, and, sadly, even some family historians have been known to pry memorial photos off gravestones, rationalizing this activity by saying, “But it’s the ONLY picture I’ll ever have of my great-grandmother.” When you visit a cemetery, please leave all gravestones as you found them. You can keep the information they contain by taking pictures of them. If you see a particularly beautiful marker with a photo embedded in it, take a picture of it to preserve it for the future, even if it isn’t anyone in your family. Then do a Random Act of Genealogical Kindness and post it on Find A Grave or on another cemetery site, so that relatives may find it there.