Bayside Cemetery

Bayside Cemetery is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a fine example of rural cemetery landscape and architecture. It is an active burial ground open during daylight hours. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, tombstones tended to threaten or moralize, while in the nineteenth century, especially in the Victorian era, they emphasized rebirth, salvation, eternal life, and connection to living mourners. Examples in Bayside Cemetery from the early 19th century to the present include weeping, watching, or praying angels for being tended in heaven; a finger pointing up for a loved one in heaven; a broken column for a life cut down in its prime; a wheat sheaf for gathering the deceased as a harvest to the next world; a mourning female for sorrow and grief personified; an obelisk for passage from earth to rebirth in heaven; a cherub for the company of angels; a damaged urn or column for immortality joined with mourning; a weeping willow for sorrow on earth; a lamb for innocence, usually of a child; clasped hands for goodbye at death; and a book or Bible for a deceased teacher or minister or for looking there for the answer.

Potsdam, New York · United States