May 21, 2006
Didn't you ever wonder about those tombstones shaped like trees?
Eddie Gilbert's grave, Oakwood Cemetery
I always assumed these were some kind of Victorian fad. You see these in older cemeteries: stone stumps, decorated with ivy, doves, and sometimes lambs if it's a child's grave. Tonight we took a closer look.
This evening, the sky was too pretty not to go take pictures, so we drove around the neighborhood and ended up at the Oakwood Cemetery. Your first impression through the gates is "Damn, but they must have had a special deal on obelisks!" Lots of obelisks among the smaller monuments. The Confederate Army section mostly has numbered marble cubes, rounded by the weather and looking like teeth pounded into the ground. Then I spotted the tree trunk, much taller than the usual run of these, and we had to stop.
Apart from the height, it must be six feet tall, the carving is really impressive: the dove, the ferns and ivy around the base, the surname spelled out with twigs, and the scroll. Especially the scroll, and how it's carved to appear like it's been hung on the stub of a tree branch. We noticed the "Erected by the W. of the W." on the scroll, noticed "W. of the W." on a couple other smaller monuments with the arboreal theme, and the Dum Tacet Clamat.
Ha! A clue. All I need is something to plug into Google.
W. of the W. is Woodmen of the World, a fraternal benefit society originally formed in 1890 for the purpose of unmarked grave avoidance and community service. They provided life insurance and tombstones to their members. They're still around today, and you can join and get the special tombstone, if you want.
The Phoenixmasonry Masonic Museum has a page on the Woodmen Group with pictures of their pins and emblems, old photographs of members in uniform and holding axes, and transcripts of rites and society songs. I really wonder if they're still doing the chanting and marching around with axes. And the twenty secret handshakes. Twenty.
Death benefits is serious stuff.
342 words | May 21, 2006 08:20 PM | ShutterbugBeing a modern day griot, and having seen many of these tree tombstones, the most unusual thus far in Pontiac Michigan, (it was a felled tree trunk, with the epitapth on the bottom) I'm finally glad to have information, these are truly works of art . I am saddened that the sdociety is discriminatory against people of color.
Posted by: Al Bostick at July 2, 2006 01:47 PMCan you provide some supporting information about Woodmen being discriminatory?
I've only been able to dig up a mention on FindLaw of a court case (Parr v. Woodmen of the World Life Ins. Co., 791 F.2d 888, 890 (11th Cir. 1986), "ruling that both Title VII and § 1981 prohibit hiring discrimination based on an individual's association with African- Americans, or based on interracial marriage"). I also found a book about the Klan, Behind the Mask of Chivalry, for which the Amazon Search Within turns up four references to individuals who were members of the Woodmen clubs (and the Elks and the Odd Fellows and so on), but nothing about the Woodmen society itself.
I even found a few mentions of Mexican-American membership in the Woodmen in the early twentieth century.
Posted by: 100wordminimum at July 2, 2006 04:31 PM