Mount Desert Street Cemetery, located between the Congregational and Episcopal Churches in Bar Harbor, was a very pleasant surprise. All cemeteries are unique, and I haven't been to one yet that didn't have something interesting to find in it, but this one was really special. What struck me first of all was the color of the stones. They are unusually white - milky and luminous. Are they made of a different material than the stones I'm accustomed to seeing at the Episcopal Cemetery, or are they just cleaner?
Cleaner isn't necessarily better. If a stone has been cleaned too rigorously, its details can take on a slightly fuzzy appearance. I'm not an expert on gravestone preservation, so I can't tell if the fuzziness of some of the engravings in this cemetery is the result of over-restoration or natural deterioration (I'm thinking specifically of the Captain Stephen Higgins stone, below).
In this cemetery I saw several stone shapes, motifs, and even names that I had never seen before. You could spend a lifetime tracing the typological sequence of gravestones in different places and eras. What I'm interested in is what that typology reflects about the character of the community.
