Ege Catholic Cemetery is Another Wonderful Piece of Northeast Indiana History

I transition here with one last photograph, the top one, of Notestine Cemetery and its classical old headstones. The second photo was taken by me in the still-used Ege Catholic Cemetery in LaOtto, Indiana - Noble County. Here is a lovely marble representation of the Virgin Mary as she looks over the peaceful, old, and new, graveyard.

I love how people have decorated this current cemetery with wind chimes, figurines, sun catchers, and solar decorative lights. Have you seen these little lights that people are putting in their yards and gardens? They absorb sunlight during the day, and then when it starts to get dark, they glow and change colorfully. It's so sweet to now see them near graves in cemeteries.

Websites have made wonderful records of those buried in many American graveyards. You can live states away or across the country, and find ancestors or long lost relatives far away. Often there are photos of the headstones and even old photos or portraits of people available to view. Many more modern gravestones even include contemporary color photos right on the headstones themselves.

I skimmed a website to see who was buried at Ege Cemetery. There are 560 grave sites recorded. The oldest "resident" I found was Valenty Ciesielska, born in 1782. I double-checked the website, which, surely enough, says that Valenty died in 1889, making him 107 years old! Could that really be true? I don't know, but if there's an error, it isn't mine. There is also a George Blaski, who was born in 1835 and lived to be 97. Impressive, considering the hardships of the time.

Impressive women can be found as well. Crescentia Hottinger was born in Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, and died in 1912 in Ege, Indiana. There is an old portrait of her on the website. She bore eight children who made it into adulthood. It's hard to say if there were more that didn't survive.

I was also fascinated by the grave of Franciszka Jarzebska, who was born in 1842 and died in 1916. She was born in Kowalewo-Pomorskie Poland and died in Indiana. She had ten siblings: Marianna, Paulina, Catarzyna, Elizbieta, Rozalia, Tekla, Ignancy, Melchoir, Jozef and Felicjan. She married, and had nine children of her own.

My interest in graveyards is new. I think what we like and care about sometimes changes over the course of our lives. As the world becomes more technical and computerized, I become more interested in the tactile, sensory, real things around me. I love my technical tools, but I also want to maintain my old physical connections to the world.