Oakland Cemetery Memorial Park, Sandusky OH

Yay!  I'm finally getting around to posting my visit to the Oakland Cemetery Memorial Park, located in Sandusky OH.  

The first time I drove by this place was last summer when we went to Cedar Point - of course the family didn't want to stop, since they don't share my interest & fascination with cemeteries (booo!)  But this year, Miss Angela's dance team competed at a Nationals competition (go HERE if you want to read more about that) and it happened to be at Kalahari Resorts in Sandusky!   We were there from Tuesday and left Sunday so I had a couple chances while she was doing dance stuff to explore until my heart's content. 

My first thoughts were similar to a kid in a candy store - OMG! OMG! OMG! Where do I start? Look at that!  What's over there?  Then it turned to - holy crap, this place is huge, where should I start?!  I finally decided to drive to the back corner and kind of methodically work my way toward the front.

According to Find A Grave, there are 9653 graves and only 53% photographed!  And there is room for a lot more burials.  There are 4 famous people buried there - all US Congressmen. 

Some of the stones and monuments were HUGE!  Others were very unique and some touching.  I'm just posting a few of my favorites here and will include a link at the end to my Photobucket album - 234 photos in their unedited glory!

 I'd never seen iron stones before and there were several here.  

All were in German, also.

 The cement plaque in front reads "Santa Clara Camp II, USWV"  I thought this was the veterans section, but it was just for Spanish American War vets. 

Sort of unusual that they were separate and not even near each other.

 J. Roman Widner

1868-1921

 Faith Darla Miller - she's beautiful!!

April 6, 1902 - August 27, 1934

Each of the sawed off stumps was carved with "Father", "Mother, "Son", 

"Daughter-in-Law", etc.

This stone was enormous for such a tiny baby - he was obviously loved a lot. 

 I didn't see any rhyme nor reason behind the pink balls (heehee!)

They didn't seem to be placed at the 4 corners of a plot.

 Johnson's Island is "Ohio's Most Significant Civil War Site"

It's mostly residential now, but the Confederate Cemetery 

there is open to the public.

(and I missed it!!)

 This is just beautiful!

 You can see this from the road, on top of a hill - 

one of the things that caught my attention last summer!

 This set of books was probably 15 feet tall and 10 feet wide - 

the inside was carved with verses for the girls.

This is the main veteran's section.

The center was a lovely garden with benches 

and the stones formed 3 circles around it.

For some reason, this little guy stood out to me.

Maybe because he was only 6 years old and his stone 

was on a corner of a section, 

with no family around him.

 This was a family plot - for 4 babies, none of whom made it to 1 year old.  The last name (Feick) was carved on the base and the stone (with a tiny tree stump carved on top) had each baby's name and # of months old he or she was, but no dates.

Photobucket Album