do headstone rubbings

Did it once or twice with Gifted class, in the day, and then did some of my family headstones. There are a bunch of them(my family headstones) in our different family cemeteries, so it got real old really quick. Fun times, though. I still enjoy the art of cemeteries and the symbolism they hold. Worth doing. Definitely.

This is something I actually wanted to do since I was in elementary. I finally got my chance at the beginning of the 2006 year because my Humanities teacher suggested visiting a cemetery and writing about it. Well, I did some rubbings and it really helped me think of something to write about. I got the second highest grade in the class. I even got to go a second time with a friend who wanted to write about a cemetery for her paper too.
It may be weird, but visiting a cemetery with someone is fun. You end up talking about so much, and there are plenty of chances to spook eachother.

As part of my gifted class, we used to do some really cool things. One of them was a field trip that took us to a cemetary that had some Civil War graves in it. We made rubbings of different headstones, and then wrote papers about what life was like back in those days, integrating the people whose headstones we’d rubbed.

I’ve wanted to do tombstone rubbings since I started doing genealogy over 30 years ago. This was something I planned to do someday. I guess it’s about time that I declare it as a goal and plan to do it. I almost never hear of anyone else with this interest; so I’m delighted to see it as a goal on 43Things.

Here are some good articles on the topic for folks who see this goal and say, “What?!?”

How To Do Gravestone Rubbings (from Saving Graves)
http://www.savinggraves.org/education/bookshelf/rubbings.htm

Tombstone Rubbings, A Fun Way to Keep Records (from Genealogy Today)
http://www.genealogytoday.com/columns/everyday/030802.html

Tombstone rubbings – on-line course on tombstone rubbings
http://amberskyline.com/treasuremaps/t_stone.html

Gravestone Rubbings – Unique guide to making gravestone rubbings: what they are, what materials to use, and how to do them safely without causing damage to the stone.
http://members.aol.com/TombView/rubbings.html

Tombstone rubbings
http://www.mtsu.edu/~then/Cemetery/page6.html

How To Do Gravestone Rubbings
http://www.morbidoutlook.com/art/articles/1999_00_rubbings.html

Do a Tombstone Rubbing
http://genealogy.about.com/cs/cemetery/ht/rubbing.htm