Joke: Tombstones

[Eric Thelin <eric@generation-i.com>]

Here are some funny epitaphs from real tombstones:

On the grave of Ezekial Aikle in East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia:
          Here lies
          Ezekial Aikle
          Age 102
          The Good
          Die Young.

In a London, England cemetery:
          Ann Mann
          Here lies Ann Mann,
          Who lived an old maid
          But died an old Mann.
          Dec. 8, 1767

In a Ribbesford, England, cemetery:
          Anna Wallace
          The children of Israel wanted bread
          And the Lord sent them manna,
          Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife,
          And the Devil sent him Anna.

Playing with names in a Ruidoso, New Mexico, cemetery:
          Here lies
          Johnny Yeast
          Pardon me
          For not rising.

Memory of an accident in a Uniontown, Pennsylvania cemetery:
          Here lies the body
          of Jonathan Blake
          Stepped on the gas
          Instead of the brake.

In a Silver City, Nevada, cemetery:
          Here lays Butch,
          We planted him raw.
          He was quick on the trigger,
          But slow on the draw.

A widow wrote this epitaph in a Vermont cemetery:
          Sacred to the memory of
          my husband John Barnes
          who died January 3, 1803
          His comely young widow, aged 23, has
          many qualifications of a good wife, and
          yearns to be comforted.

A lawyer's epitaph in England:
          Sir John Strange
          Here lies an honest lawyer,
          And that is Strange.

Someone determined to be anonymous in Stowe, Vermont:
          I was somebody.
          Who, is no business
          Of yours.

Lester Moore was a Wells, Fargo Co. station agent for Naco, Arizona in the
cowboy days of the 1880's.  He's buried in the Boot Hill Cemetery in
Tombstone, Arizona:
          Here lies Lester Moore
          Four slugs from a .44
          No Les No More.

In a Georgia cemetery:
          "I told you I was sick!"

John Penny's epitaph in the Wimborne, England, cemetery:
          Reader if cash thou art
          In want of any
          Dig 4 feet deep
          And thou wilt find a Penny.

On Margaret Daniels grave at Hollywood Cemetery Richmond, Virginia:
          She always said her feet were killing her
          but nobody believed her.

In a cemetery in Hartscombe, England:
          On the 22nd of June
          - Jonathan Fiddle -
           Went out of tune.

Anna Hopewell's grave in Enosburg Falls, Vermont has an epitaph that sounds
like something from a Three Stooges movie:
          Here lies the body of our Anna
          Done to death by a banana
          It wasn't the fruit that laid her low
          But the skin of the thing that made her go.

More fun with names with Owen Moore in Battersea, London, England:
          Gone away
          Owin' more
          Than he could pay.

Someone in Winslow, Maine didn't like Mr. Wood:
          In Memory of Beza Wood
          Departed this life
          Nov. 2, 1837
          Aged 45 yrs.
          Here lies one Wood
          Enclosed in wood
          One Wood
          Within another.
          The outer wood
          Is very good:
          We cannot praise
          The other.

On a grave from the 1880's in Nantucket, Massachusetts:
          Under the sod and under the trees
          Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.
          He is not here, there's only the pod:
          Pease shelled out and went to God.

The grave of Ellen Shannon in Girard, Pennsylvania is almost a consumer tip:
          Who was fatally burned
          March 21, 1870
          by the explosion of a lamp
          filled with "R.E. Danforth's
          Non-Explosive Burning Fluid"

Oops! Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York:
          Born 1903--Died 1942
          Looked up the elevator shaft to see if
          the car was on the way down. It was.

In a Thurmont, Maryland, cemetery:
          Here lies an Atheist
          All dressed up
          And no place to go.

But does he make house calls? Dr. Fred Roberts, Brookland, Arkansas:
          Office upstairs