An Epitaph should always include the name of the deceased along with their life span years. Epitaphs are very personal with a biblical verse or even a poem. They can be endearing and/or with a bit of humor.
A lone grave in a New England forest:
Here underneath this little stone
Lies Robert Earl of Huntington
No archer were as he so good
and people called him Robin Hood
A skillful man, above all men
this world will never see again
Anna Hopewell's grave, 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.
The Stone Of Anna Wallace in a Ribbesford, England,
The children of Israel wanted bread
And the Lord sent them manna.
Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife,
And the Devil sent him Anna.
Mary "Molly" Fowler's grave, Milford Cemetery, Connecticut:
Molly though pleasant in her day
Was suddenly seized and sent away
How soon she's ripe, how soon she's rott'n
Sent to her grave and soon forgott'n
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.
It seems these folks buried at Sargentville, Maine took their marital diificulties to the grave:
Beneath these stones do lie,
Back to back my wife and I!
When the last trumpet the air shall fill
If she gets up, I'll just lie still.
Evidence of poetic license on a tombstone in Skaneateles, New York:
Underneath this pile of stones
Lies all that's left of Sally Jones.
Her name was Lord, it was not jones,
But Jones was used to rhyme with stones.
A lawyer's epitaph in England:
Sir John Strange
Here lies an honest lawyer,
And that is Strange.
It's no business
Of yours.
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
has an epitaph that sounds like something from a Three Stooges movie:
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.
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 is almost a consumer tip:
Who was fatally burned
March 21, 1870
by the explosion of a lamp
filled with "R.E. Danforth's
Non-Explosive Burning Fluid."
Oops! Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York:
Born 1903--Died 1942
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.
A lone grave in a New England forest:
Here underneath this little stone
Lies Robert Earl of Huntington
No archer were as he so good
and people called him Robin Hood
A skillful man, above all men
this world will never see again
Anna Hopewell's grave, 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.
The Stone Of Anna Wallace in a Ribbesford, England,
The children of Israel wanted bread
And the Lord sent them manna.
Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife,
And the Devil sent him Anna.
Mary "Molly" Fowler's grave, Milford Cemetery, Connecticut:
Molly though pleasant in her day
Was suddenly seized and sent away
How soon she's ripe, how soon she's rott'n
Sent to her grave and soon forgott'n
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.
It seems these folks buried at Sargentville, Maine took their marital diificulties to the grave:
Beneath these stones do lie,
Back to back my wife and I!
When the last trumpet the air shall fill
If she gets up, I'll just lie still.
Evidence of poetic license on a tombstone in Skaneateles, New York:
Underneath this pile of stones
Lies all that's left of Sally Jones.
Her name was Lord, it was not jones,
But Jones was used to rhyme with stones.
A lawyer's epitaph in England:
Sir John Strange
Here lies an honest lawyer,
And that is Strange.
It's no business
Of yours.
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
has an epitaph that sounds like something from a Three Stooges movie:
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.
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 is almost a consumer tip:
Who was fatally burned
March 21, 1870
by the explosion of a lamp
filled with "R.E. Danforth's
Non-Explosive Burning Fluid."
Oops! Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York:
Born 1903--Died 1942
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.
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