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Participants in the CRPT class in Key West were taken to the Key West Cemetery to learn how to properly clean headstones. Established in 1847, it is one of the most popular cemeteries in the country, with about 50,000 people a year walking 19 acres where Cuban cigar makers, Spanish-American War veterans, Bahamian mariners, millionaires and paupers alike are buried.
“One of our logos is ‘Herein lies our history,’ ” said Russell Brittain, the cemetery’s sexton.
Longtime resident Ray Blazevic said he has found 21 other burial sites in Key West. “I’ve been here 55 years and I’ve counted them,” he said during a break in the class. “There are even graves in the floor of the Methodist Church.”
Miller hopes information like this — as well as lists compiled by local historical societies and libraries — will one day be documented on the Master Site File.
Birdsong said his small department relies on the public for submissions. “You don’t have to be a professional, and it’s only a two-page form,” he said. “It would make a great project for a graduate student.”
Added Miller: “You would help make sure a cemetery is still here in 100 years.”
Pet cemeteries also can be put on the Master Site File because they are part of a cultural tradition, Miller said.
In Key West, there’s a popular cat cemetery at the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum that is the final resting spot of more than 35 felines. At the Dolphin Research Institute and Center on Grassy Key, there’s a grave for Mitzi the Dolphin, TV’s original “Flipper.”
“Oh, yeah, that could be listed,” Miller said. “It shows what the community thought of the animal.”
In Tavernier, Alice Allen, a member of the Monroe County Historic Preservation Commission, researched who was buried at the abandoned Ballast Trail Cemetery.
She learned from his daughter that the remains of Edward Morris Williams, who died in the Labor Day hurricane of 1935, had been relocated to Miami.
The other graves are believed to belong to relatives of Amos Lowe, the patriarch of Tavernier’s founding family. In 2005, a distant relative photographed the two remaining headstones. One was inscribed for Annie Laurie Lowe, Amos’ daughter, who lived from 1873 to 1897. The name on the other headstone was illegible, with just a date of 1873.
Since then, Murphy said, one of the heavy headstones has disappeared.
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