Rathbone Uncovered

[Linda Anderson]

Thanks, Rich, I emailed Jim earlier and he responded.

My husband and I were looking for her grave last March which is in the same section as Mary Surratt's. We missed the turn but that was lucky because when I looked around for the section numbers I saw the Coleman monument on a little grass island in the middle of the crossroads. We would still be looking in the Mary Surratt section if I hadn't seen it.

Maybe you or Jim can tell me why she is buried at the crossroads. I remembered from "Supernatural" that that's where the brothers went to meet the demons so I looked it up on Wikipedia.

"Burial at cross-roads

"Historically, burial at cross-roads was the method of disposing of executed criminals and persons who have committed suicide. Cross-roads form a crude cross shape and this may have given rise to the belief that these spots were selected as the next best burying-places to consecrated ground. Another possible explanation is that the ancient Teutonic (Germanic) ethnic groups often built their altars at the cross-roads, and since human sacrifices, especially of criminals, formed part of the ritual, these spots came to be regarded as execution grounds. Hence after the introduction of Christianity, criminals and suicides were buried at the cross-roads during the night, in order to assimilate as far as possible their funeral to that of the pagans.[citation needed] An example of a cross-road execution-ground was the famous Tyburn in London, which stood on the spot where the Roman road to Edgware and beyond met the Roman road heading west out of London."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial