Tombstone Tuesday--Lilly Cemetery

Lilley Cemetery is located in, strangely enough, Lilley Township, in the northern tier and is almost in the exact center of the township.
My first impression in looking at the pictures of this cemetery is that it is very flat. Unusual, because much of the northern area of our county is hilly but not here. The second impression I have, after looking through the pictures we have of this cemetery, is that it is a fairly new cemetery. I looked through our transcript and found only three graves that date back to the 1920's--the earliest 1924. There are about a half dozen with no death dates and about 15 to 20 from the 30's. Most of the graves are 1960 and newer.
As you can see above and below the cement borders for plots exist here. Most plots seem fairly empty, or at least unmarked.
These graves have not only the granite stone and also the bronze military plaque but also a couple crosses. I am not sure if the smaller one is wooden or not but the larger is obviously wood. Possibly created from fence posts or such that have been treated to help slow decay.
You know how I love a home-made stone. This stone for the Murrow family uses a regular stone that some family member may have pulled from the field. A place was smoothed and the name engraved. I had often thought that would make for great marker. It would be hard though to preserve the natural rustic appearance of the stone and still be able to smooth off enough to record all the pertinent data. Here just the one name is all they added.
This view gives a typical glimpse of the cemetery. While some areas are not as full, you can see the mostly new granite stones, as well as the military plaque next to the stone urn. While there are many of the stone baskets in this northern region, I have never seen one with a pedestal like this one.
Another of the homemade stones so near and dear to my heart. This one for Oradon Ramsey, who died in 1958 unfortunately already shows signs of cracking. You can see the moss growing along a couple cracks on the top.
This pair of stones I found unusual. At first glance, they appear to be two separate stones sharing a common base. But for both the Weathers and the Whites (in the background) the stone when I looked closer I could see that there was no break in the stone where the surname is engraved. So while it appears Sherman (1880 - 1938) and Mittie (1865-1943) Weathers are on separate stones, they were one in death, as in life.
And a side note on the stone for Ella (1889-1948) and James (1884-1985) White. According to our transcription they share the lot with Clara (1898-1974) I do not see a stone for her, even in the non-cropped version of the picture. I suspect that James may have remarried, but still kept his shared stone with Ella.
One last interesting item about Lilley Cemetery. While we have some cemeteries where we do not even have an up to date listing (or in some cases, even an out of date listing!) we not only have a transcript that has burials as recent as 2001, for Lilley, we even have a copy of the 1995 price list and the cemetery ordinance, from the same year.
Very interesting reading.