Winchester Cemetery

On a balmy but windy day last week, my wife Clare and I went for our week­ly “long walk.”  Since spring has sprung ear­ly this year, we decid­ed to check out the scene at the Winchester Cemetery.  We went for the exer­cise and stayed sev­er­al hours, but we stopped so fre­quent­ly that it wasn’t much of a work­out. There was just too much to look at! 

This year the flow­ers seem to be out at least a month before nor­mal.  In most parts of town, jon­quils began bloom­ing in February.  On the late March day we went for our walk, the tulips at the front entrance daz­zled as always.  Then we found the spring beau­ties putting on a gor­geous dis­play.  These tiny pink wild­flow­ers, Claytonia vir­gini­ca — nat­u­ral­ized across the ceme­tery — turned the land­scape into a sea of col­or.  Many of the flow­er­ing trees had already come out and — sur­pris­ing­ly — peonies, nor­mal­ly May bloomers, had already bro­ken ground.

The old sec­tion of the ceme­tery has so many hand­some, one-of-a-kind mon­u­ments that we found our­selves zigzag­ging from one to the next, read­ing dates and inscrip­tions.  One stop was Abram Renick’s tow­er­ing mon­u­ment near Lexington Avenue.  It bears a like­ness of Renick him­self as well as a pair of his famous short­horn cat­tle.  We were unable to find a mark­er for his long-time mis­tress, Julia Fry, who — accord­ing to the ceme­tery ledger — is buried in Renick’s plot.

Near Renick’s grave is the unusu­al mon­u­ment of John B. Huston, a not­ed 19^th-cen­tu­ry attor­ney.  During the Civil War, Gen. Stephen Burbridge, the “Butcher of Kentucky,” had Huston arrest­ed for not sup­port­ing Abraham Lincoln’s re-elec­tion.  Lincoln per­son­al­ly ordered his release.  Huston’s cast zinc (“white bronze”) mon­u­ment is one of two in the ceme­tery.  It was erect­ed by his friends at the Lexington and Winchester bar.

The cel­e­brat­ed sculp­tor, Clark County native Joel Tanner Hart, carved a num­ber of grave­stones in Winchester Cemetery.  The most promi­nent of these is known as the “angel vase,” a large mar­ble vase with a fine­ly sculpt­ed angel face on its side.  We saw two of his large hor­i­zon­tal tablets, and there are prob­a­bly oth­er pieces that have gone unrec­og­nized, since Hart was not well known at the time he took these commissions.

We also came upon two small mark­ers for Robert Brooking, born 1782, and his wife Mariam, born 1797.  They are among Winchester Cemetery’s 135 pio­neer buri­als (those men and women who were born before 1800).  A list of their names can be viewed in this pdf doc­u­ment.

It would be easy to go on for pages and pages in this vein.  But bet­ter that you should put on your walk­ing shoes and get out to the ceme­tery for a spring hike of your own.  Before you go, log onto the Winchester Cemetery web­site and check out their “Walking Tour” brochure.  It lists some of the famous per­sons buried there and oth­er inter­est­ing fea­tures worth see­ing.  The brochure even includes a list of “ceme­tery sym­bols.”  You will find expla­na­tions of the “hid­den mes­sages” found on grave­stones, items such as angels, anchors, lambs, lilies, and many more.

Zach Wills and his staff real­ly do an out­stand­ing job main­tain­ing the ceme­tery grounds.  You should go have a look — real soon.