We got to see authentic windmills and original Rembrandts and castles, cathedrals, and churches.
During late September, we got the opportunity to travel up the Rhine River from Amsterdam into Switzerland with a group of people from all over the country. Several of us were from Mississippi. You get in your daily steps on a tour of old European cities. Their streets were laid out prior to the Middle Ages and won’t accommodate modern buses. So, the tour buses park as close as they can, and you must walk the rest of the way. And watch out for bicycles. In Amsterdam, the cyclists outnumber the motorists about a thousand to one. And whereas the cars kind of watch out for you, when you hear a bicycle bell, it is not to warn you a rider is coming. It’s so you can brace yourself because you are about to be hit.
But we got to see authentic windmills and original Rembrandts and castles, cathedrals, and churches.
In Mississippi, we don’t have a lot of native stone for such things as grave markers. And back then there wasn’t much spare money for mail-order headstones. So, the pottery markers filled a need for an appropriate memorial at an affordable price.
We were in Heidelberg, Germany when Marciadeen Steele and Irene Ausborn from Fulton introduced themselves. Fulton being where I spent a lot of my childhood at grandmother’s house, we asked a lot of “do you know” and “whatever happened to” questions. Irene really caught my attention when she told me her granddad was a northeast Mississippi potter. And along with the jugs and churns and everything else he had turned, he also made earthenware grave markers.
I knew the ones she was talking about. I had seen them all my life in Oak Grove Cemetery at Ratliff where several generations of my family are buried including mom and dad. The markers are about an inch thick and maybe six inches across and a foot or so high. They have a gray glaze and cobalt blue lettering. I have done a story or two about them, but have never been able to interview someone with firsthand knowledge. But here on the streets of Germany, I whipped out my iPhone and talked to Irene about her grandad. She told me she and one of her first cousins spent a lot of time going all over northeast Mississippi and northwest Alabama finding grave markers her grandad made.
The Loyd potters in Tremont, Mississippi patented the earthenware grave markers in the late 1800s, and other potters used the designs under their patten including Irene’s grandad, W.D. Suggs at Smithville.
In Mississippi, we don’t have a lot of native stone for such things as grave markers. And back then there wasn’t much spare money for mail-order headstones. So, the pottery markers filled a need for an appropriate memorial at an affordable price.
I know it’s just a coincidence, but a refrigerator magnet souvenir I bought in The Netherlands is oddly reminiscent of those grave markers. After I put it on the fridge, I wondered if I was attracted to it because it reminded me so much of a shape and color I had been familiar with all my life.
