Article from 2006 originally published on Southern Graves site. Some newer images added. " An important historical vestige of the cultural landscape of the rural South is the Upland South folk cemetery. " - D. Gregory Jeane Some Southern cemetery traditions include wife-to-the-left burials, bordered family plots, and feet-to-the-east interments. These practices can be fairly common in today's Southern cemeteries, but there are other traditions that may not be. The southern folk cemetery is characterized by hilltop location, scraped ground, mounded graves, east-west grave orientation, creative grave markers and decorations using materials readily available (not commercially produced), certain species of vegetation, the use of grave shelters, and the obvious devotion to God and/or parents and family with the graveyard workdays and monument dedications. Some of these characteristics can certainly be found in other parts of the United States, even the world. It is the comp...
Telling the Tales of Tombstones