Wilmington's Riverview Cemetery

I have always enjoyed cemeteries. They are often quaint, peaceful, and evocative. There are so many stories in a cemetery that are long lost to memory.

On an extended business trip to a small town in western Pennsylvania years ago, I spent my weekends exploring old cemeteries where generations of Welsh coal miners and steel workers were interred with their families. Some years later, I photographed cemeteries in Philadelphia and New Jersey, studying the Victorian symbolisms on the tombstones. I wrote a lengthy article for the Sunday magazine of the old Philadelphia Bulletin.

Genealogical research on the families of my wife and I has taken us to the Civil War burial ground in Wilmington, North Carolina and to almost forgotten cemeteries in the Ozark Mountains of southeast Missouri. One was a simple farm burial plot in a pasture full of cows.

Therefore, I was pleased to see a book is available on Riverview Cemetery in Wilmington, Delaware, titled Riverview Cemetery: Reading the Stones - A Collection of Memories from the First State. The author has gone after the human stories as well as details of the site. Written by Dr. Lee Anderson, a psychologist in local practice for many years who often does grief counseling, it can be bought by going to the Web site www.timestonepress.com.