Rochester’s Mt. Hope Cemetery, dating back to 1838, is the oldest municipal Victorian cemetery in the country. Today I took a walking tour of part of the cemetery. With 370,000 graves and almost 200 acres, it’s impossible to cover the whole cemetery in one day. And walking in Mt. Hope can be a challenge. There are lots of hills, drumlins left over from the glaciers, and lots of trees with roots sticking out all over. In fact, the cemetery is a beautiful park.

I’ve been to Mt. Hope lots of times before. I can remember going every year around Memorial with my mother and my uncle to plant geraniums on the family plot. I’ve also visited some of the famous graves: Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, Buffalo Bill Cody’s kids. But I’d never been to the military part of the cemetery. Today’s tour took us by the Civil War monument and graves. In true military fashion, the graves are lined up in straight rows. I learned that out of a total population of 100,000, Rochester sent 10,000 men to fight in the Civil War. You can’t see the writing on the bottom of the monument, but it has the notes to Taps inscribed on it.

Mt. Hope is very egalitarian. Directly across from the grave of the rich and locally famous, Henry Strong, as in Strong Memorial Hospital, are the graves of the poor children who were victims of the Rochester Orphan Asylum fire in 1901. This one, just labeled My Baby, tugged at my heartstrings.

Two other monuments caught my attention. You might be able to guess from the picture of the Show Boat that this is the grave of William Warfield. I knew that Warfield was an Eastman School of Music grad. What I didn’t know was that he was a veteran of World War II.

And lastly, here’s the monument to newspaper publisher Frank Gannett. The figure on the vertical monument is an old newsboy, and the design on the horizontal monument is a symbol of eternity. Do you think there are newspapers in Heaven?

Day 197: 7,025 Steps  YTD: 1,783,497 Steps Goal: 1,859,000 Steps