Gravestone images and symbols

Joe Beine has started another blog just for Cemeteries and Cemetery Symbols at http;//cemeteries.wordpress.com. His first two weeks of posts about different gravestone art and symbols are intriguing.

I know there are other web sites (such as this one), and periodical articles and books about Gravestone Studies, but I like Joe's!

On my New England trip, I visited a number of cemeteries and photographed quite a few stones. The one that caught my eye at Chelmsford's "Old Forefather's Burying Ground" was that of Jonas Clark (1684-1770) (and his wife Elizabeth Clark (1692-1767)) shown below:



Jonas' stone has two angels (one with a trumpet, the other with a book) over a death head) and Elizabeth's has one angel (with a trumpet or horn, over a shell). There are decorations around the top and sides of the stones also - I'm sure they have some meaning.

By the way, these are not my ancestors, but the stone caught my eye and I snapped it.