Close To Home

58/365

The other day some friends and I took a road-trip to a cemetery to do some photography.  My photos were a bust, and I haven't seen any of theirs yet, so I hope they were more successful than I was.

Today a different friend took me to a local cemetery, right in my proverbial "backyard".  It's one I have driven past hundreds of times. It doesn't look like much from the road, so I never gave much thought to it as being a viable photo destination.

My friend wanted to show me Benedict Arnold's grave.  Not the traitor Benedict Arnold, but someone named after him.  Sounds weird, right?  Naming someone after a traitor.  Well, a google search turned up the information that our local Arnold was named after the infamous Arnold just two weeks before he betrayed our country.  Remember that in those days information traveled at a snail's pace, so it was a long time later before the parents realized what had happened.  

However, our local boy:

 "was a successful merchant and owned large parcels of land. He became an officer, a philanthropist and dabbled in politics for a bit. Benedict A. Arnold served as a Major General in the second division of cavalry in the United States Army and later served as a member of the New York State Assembly (1816-1817). A few years later, he was elected to the Twenty-first United States Congress, serving a two-year term from 1829-1831. He did not seek re-election. Returning to activity in village politics and retiring from business, Benedict lived out the remainder of his days in Amsterdam."

This is not Arnold's headstone, but his son's.   My pic of the senior's headstone is another bust, but I like this one.

Just a couple of other scenes from Greenhill Cemetery.