Actual Epitaphs
Thanks to David Stevenson website

Pioneer Cementery, Bardstown, KY
Photo by Patti Starr

On the grave of Ezekial Aikle in East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia:

Here lies
Ezekial Aikle
Age 102
The Good
Die Young.

In a London cemetery:

Here lies Ann Mann,
Who lived an old maid
But died an old Mann.
Dec. 8, 1767



In a Ribbesford, England, cemetery:

The children of Israel wanted bread
And the Lord sent them manna,
Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife,
And the Devil sent him Anna.



In a Ruidoso, New Mexico, cemetery:

Here lies
Johnny Yeast
Pardon me
For not rising.



Memory of an accident in a Uniontown, Pennsylvania cemetery:

Here lies the body
of Jonathan Blake
Stepped on the gas
Instead of the brake.



In a Silver City, Nevada, cemetery:

Here lays Butch,
We planted him raw.
He was quick on the trigger,
But slow on the draw.



A widow wrote this epitaph in a Vermont cemetery:

Sacred to the memory of
my husband John Barnes
who died January 3, 1803
His comely young widow, aged 23, has
many qualifications of a good wife, and
yearns to be comforted.



A lawyer's epitaph in England:

Sir John Strange
Here lies an honest lawyer,
And that is Strange.



Someone determined to be anonymous in Stowe, Vermont:

I was somebody.
Who, is no business
Of yours.



Lester Moore was a Wells, Fargo Co. station agent for Naco, Arizona in the cowboy days of the 1880's. He's buried in the Boot Hill Cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona:

Here lies Lester Moore
Four slugs from a .44
No Les No More.



In a Georgia cemetery
"I told you I was sick!"



John Penny's epitaph in the Wimborne, England, cemetery:

Reader if cash thou art
In want of any
Dig 4 feet deep
And thou wilt find a Penny.



On Margaret Daniels grave at Hollywood Cemetery Richmond, Virginia:

She always said her feet were killing her
but nobody believed her.

In a cemetery in Hartscombe, England:

On the 22nd of June
Jonathan Fiddle -
Went out of tune.

Anna Hopewell's grave in Enosburg Falls, Vermont:

Here lies the body of our Anna
Done to death by a banana
It wasn't the fruit that laid her low
But the skin of the thing that made her go.



Owen Moore in Battersea, London, England:

Gone away
Owin' more
Than he could pay.



Someone in Winslow, Maine didn't like Mr. Wood:

In Memory of Beza Wood
Departed this life
Nov. 2, 1837
Aged 45 yrs.

Here lies one Wood
Enclosed in wood
One Wood
Within another.
The outer wood
Is very good:
We cannot praise
The other.



On a grave from the 1880's in Nantucket, Massachusetts:

Under the sod and under the trees
Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.
He is not here, there's only the pod:
Pease shelled out and went to God.



The grave of Ellen Shannon in Girard, Pennsylvania:

Who was fatally burned
March 21, 1870
by the explosion of a lamp
filled with "R.E. Danforth's
Non-Explosive Burning Fluid"

Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York
Looked up the elevator shaft to see if
the car was on the way down. It was.



In a Thurmont, Maryland, cemetery:

Here lies an Atheist
All dressed up
And no place to go.



Dr. Fred Roberts, Brookland, Arkansas
Office upstairs

In Newbury, England [1742]

Tom Smith is dead, and here he lies,
Nobody laughs and nobody cries;
Where his soul's gone, or how it fares,
Nobody knows, and nobody cares.



In a Leeds graveyard [1861]

Here lies my wife,
Here lies she;
Hallelujah!
Hallelujee!



John Dryden (1631-1700) on his wife:

Here lies my wife: here let her lie!
Now she's at rest, and so am I.



The Tired Woman's Epitaph:

Here lies a poor woman who was always tired;
She lived ina house where help was not hired.
Her last words on earth were: "Dear friends, I am going
Where washing ain't done, nor sweeping, no sewing:
But everything there is exact to my wishes;
For where they don't eat there's no washing of dishes...
Don't mourn for me now; don't mourn for me never -
I'm going to do nothing for evere and ever.



To the Memory of Abraham Beaulieu:

Born 15 September 1822
Accidentally shot
4th April 1844As a mark of affection
from his brother



Hillaire Belloc (1870-1953):

Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The Politician's corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged,
I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.



On an inkeeper 1875:

Beneath this stone, in hopes of Zion,
Doth lie the landlord of the Lion;
His son keeps on the business still,
Resigned unto the heavenly will.



In a Welland, Ontario cemetery:

Here lies all that remains of Charlotte,
Born a virgin, died a harlot.
For sixteen years she kept her virginity,
A marvellous thing for this vicinity.

Stories in Stone


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