Take a look to your right. Click on a link to a country of your choice and immerse yourself in some of the most wonderful photographs of monuments from the living to the dead you will ever see. Or, lose yourself in the words of monumental inscriptions telling of heartache, humour and, dare I say it, contempt too. Come, join us in a walk to see beauty carved in stone and revel in the best sepulchral poetry to die for.

MILLVILLE — When exploring farmland they bought south of Millville in 1995, Dr. Gene Hunder and his wife, Ingeborg, happened to look into a bramble of brush and saw two tombstones.

What they found was an old cemetery, mostly forgotten.

What the Rochester couple also found was a mystery. Who are those people, and where did they come from?

"It looked like somebody's family gravesite," Gene said.

That's not unusual, said Helen Myers, who lives nearby and is former president of the Wabasha County Historical Society. The county probably has dozens of such small family plots. Many are forgotten because families move on.

"The land changes hands, and who knows where these people are?" she said.

Today, it's illegal to have such small family plots.

The Hunders' story goes back to the mid-1990s when they bought 380 acres of farmland an insurance company had repossessed. It was a chance to invest some money in land for a tree farm. It's worked out well, he said.

The story of the land, however, dates 125 years earlier. When Gene checked the property's abstract, he discovered Johann Christian Giem had homesteaded it on Oct. 4, 1860. A name on one of the tombstones is J.C. Giem, who died in 1872.

But why did Giem homestead there? Most early settlers went for the river bottomlands because the land was more fertile and near water. The cemetery is on highlands away from water. Did the Giems come later, when the best land was claimed, or did they like the higher ground that was probably more open prairie in 1860?...more here

We intend to form a Friends organisation dedicated to tidying, stabilising and promoting this endangered historic site, Edinburgh’s first Victorian garden cemetery. Our dream is to bring Warriston back to a state where it can once again become a source of history and culture, and be a safe place for public leisure, whilst also encouraging urban wildlife. The City of Edinburgh Council has endorsed the project and will offer its co-operation.

Please join us to rescue this wonderful historic cemetery. Our first Public Meeting will form the Friends group, gather general support and membership, plus recruit volunteers willing to be in work-parties.

Inaugural Meeting: 7.30pm, Thursday 4th July 2013 St Serf’s Church Hall, 1a Clark Road EH5 3BD (just off Ferry Road) Annual membership: £6

For more information,see...more here