After posting the information on the Skowronski / Dymek / Danko gravestone in Notre Dame Cemetery, I received a message from George G. Morgan, well-known genealogy author and lecturer . Many people are familiar with George through the online classes he teaches, his “Along Those Lines…” column, and the Genealogy Guys Podcast he hosts with Drew Smith.
In his message, George provided some interesting information about cemetery medallions:
Thanks for the response on your blog about the medallion on the grave
in MA.I am really a cemetery addict — a taphophile of the first magnitude — and have photos of tens of thousands of cemetery markers from all over the world that I’ve taken or that have been taken for me by great friends.
I hadn’t seen that particular medallion in recent times. However, I did go back and found a couple of examples. I suspect that they, like the Confederate Cross of Honor stakes that the UDC placed on Confederates’ graves, have been stolen (or removed by cemetery workers ‘cleaning’ the graves).
BTW, in my hometown in NC, there was a terrible rash of cemetery vandalism about a decade ago in which the vandals pried DAR, SAR, Mayflower Descendants, Masonic, Eastern Star, and other bronze medallions from footstones and tried to sell them for scrap.
Fortunately, several scrap metal dealers contacted the police and more than a dozen people were arrested, tried, and convicted of felony destruction of property and grand theft.
Thanks, George! I have to admit, I really haven’t paid much attention to the medallions in cemeteries . I’ll have to correct that slight!
