As I write this, Washington, D.C. is officially entrenched in winter. Temperatures have plummeted and winds are gusting. It’s unpleasant, to say the least. However, in researching this article, I’m immensely grateful for my warm winter coat, my mostly-desk job, and the space heater I employ if I’m a tad uncomfortable. Any mild discomforts are [...]
Death is making a comeback. Granted, it never left, but awareness and acceptance of death, mourning, and cemeteries is certainly on the rise. Congressional Cemetery staff are generally more aware of this since we’re in the “business” (said in an ominous voice), but all you have to do is attend one of our programs to [...]
This week, four stories will be shared, all of which focus on people who, sadly, committed suicide. There were a wide range of known reasons why these people each committed suicide, including mental illness, heartbreak, work, and illness. We now have far more resources available for people struggling with suicidal thoughts and mental illness. If [...]
This week’s blog post focuses on murder-suicides. The story of a murder victim in a murder-suicide, and the stories of murderers in two failed murder-suicide attempts will be shared. Love, or infatuation, and jealousy seems to play a role in several of the stories that have been shared. In several instances, the victim has been a [...]
For the past two weeks, the stories that have been shared focused almost exclusively on murder victims. However, Congressional Cemetery is also the resting place to murderers. Since the line between murderers and murder-suicides isn't clearly defined, partially because many murderers end up committing suicide, murderers and murder-suicides have been grouped together. Please remember: [...]
This blog series, Tragic Tales at Congressional Cemetery, recollects the tragic deaths of several people buried at Congressional Cemetery. The underlying themes are: murder victims, murder-suicides, murderers, suicides, and peculiar deaths.
When you come across a name such as Marguerite’s, you might expect a certain type of person: blue-blooded, wealthy, and perhaps a little haughty as a result. And to a certain extent, Marguerite Lamott DuPont Lee was very much a product of her prestigious name. Born to the wealthy DuPont family from Delaware and married [...]
The staff here often refer to cemeteries as outdoor museums. Our “collection” on the grounds consists of over 14,000 headstones, each one in need of proper care and conservation, and each one has a written story to tell. Some stories are more detailed than others, but every headstone is a historical record that memorializes the [...]
When President Abraham Lincoln told his bodyguard about whom he feared potentially assassinating him the most, it wasn’t the disgruntled, Confederate-sympathizing actor John Wilkes Booth. Rather, it was a somewhat bizarre Polish man who had renounced his old citizenship, became a spokesman for tsarist autocracy in Russia, and ultimately moved to the United States and [...]
At a recent Tombs and Tomes book club meeting, the group discussed Mary Roach’s Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, an apropos selection for a cemetery book club. Roach is a well-known science writer who has delved into a variety of subjects, from dead bodies (Stiff) to the physiology of sex (Bonk), and everything in between. [...]
