Tombstone Tuesday - A Lesson in Patience & Persistence

Patience is not exactly my middle name, but photographing one ancestral headstone, in particular, taught me that it will pay off when paired with persistence.

In November of 2014, my mother and I set off for a few days at our cousin's farm in North Hatley, Quebec over American Thanksgiving weekend. I was armed with a list of four cemeteries that I wanted to visit and headstones to photograph. The night before we left, North Hatley and the surrounding area were blessed with six-inches of snow on bare ground. We did visit two cemeteries, but there were no good photos to be had, although I did give it a shot with North Hatley being an eight-hour drive from home.

Among the headstones that I wanted to photograph was the shiny, pink granite headstone of my 3rd great-grandmother, Elizabeth Louden, and my 2nd-great-grandparents, Elizabeth Nimmo and John Dean. This side, with the names and dates, faces east-ish. This was about the best shot of the day.

Legible? Mostly. Ideal? Certainly not. I also cannot tell you what time of day we were there, but if I had to guess, I would say late morning or early afternoon.

Last summer, in early August, we were back in North Hatley for a family reunion. Although we had planned for a day of visiting cemeteries, we decided to spend more time with family while we could. My instincts were telling me that this shiny and very reflective headstone would be best photographed at noon, but we could only get there in the mid- to late-afternoon. I thought it was still worth a try because the sun would be somewhat behind the stone, reducing glare. What I didn't count on was the easterly-facing side would be very dark.

I thought we might be able to get here about noon the next day, but we didn't make it back at all until just this week.

We started a day of cemetery visits just after 9 am and decided to make this cemetery our first stop, although I had a feeling morning would not work for this stone.

The morning light did not create the reflections I had anticipated, but the writing was still difficult to read. I decided we would head to other cemeteries and try to be back here at noon.

These were the results at just about 12 noon. Still not the most legible stone, but I do believe this is as good as it will ever get and I have been able to play with the contrast a bit in Photoshop without really changing the photo.

This stone really gave me fits, but I learned a lot along the way about the importance of good light for good headstone photos. We returned to the cemetery again in the late afternoon for photos of our west-facing headstones and saw improvement in those results, too. It was a hard day on my back but I was able to photograph all of the headstones I wanted and fulfill some requests for Find A Grave.

Reedsville Cemetery is large and the engraving on many of the older stones will soon be lost to time.

I hope that I can return soon to save the images of these stones before that happens. And if anyone in the area has stumbled on this post because of references to Reedsville or North Hatley, I beg you, please consider giving some time to the genealogical community and to history, grab your camera and get out to this or any old cemetery in your area to make lasting images of these stones and then share them wherever you prefer.