Mapping the LD Dameron Plot

LOGAN D. . Logan D. Dameron of S Louis died yesterday at Lexlnton, Mo., of heart disease. Last Fall he went to Santa Barbara, CaL, where he stopped until this Sprin, when he went to Lexlnocon, )Ao. For several years he had been suffering wih an affection of the heart, and hoped to renew his by travel }Jr. Dameron was widely known throughout Missouri and : tates, having for twenty years been publisher of the St, Louis CA'tstia Adeocle, the organ of the l[ Episcopal Church south of the St. Louis and conferences. He was an old Bt, Louis settler, and was connected with the Ltndell family by marriage. During his residence in S LoIs his toward the conferences of his Church was marked, and at his death his holdings in the Adcate became t-he ;7 of the S Louis and patronizing conferences. The news of his death was received with much sorrow by his friends, as it -as not known ha he was dangerously ill. A son and daughter Him when he died. 1. Dameron was in his sixty-fourth year.

For reading the cemetery monument, I looked at the family plot of L.D. Dameron, who lived from 1827 to 1891. I was first interested in the strange marble statue in the center of the plot, containing a highly degraded statue of a female figure, who has lost most of her face and hands. At first I thought this was the only headstone in the plot, but I quickly realized that there were quite a few more headstones, to the left, right and behind the plot. Each of the other headstones was exactly the same size, made of the same granite material, and facing forwards.

I decided to focus on the mapping and placement of the stones in the plot. To the left is an image showing the stones in relation to each other in terms of type. Red is young children, yellow is wives, green is miscellaneous things of unknown nature, purple is other family members and blue is Logan D. What is particularly interesting about this plot is that the small headstones seem to be replacements for previous stones, which makes sense since the marble stone to the right of the plot is so highly decayed it's hard to tell what it says. These stones are all so precisely uniform, but are actually produced over the period from roughly 1850 to 1919, so keeping exactly the same style seems unlikely. Another change is that Logan, Edward and Edward's wife all have slightly different notation on their headstones, stating the date of birth and of death, which leads me to conclude that all the stones were remade at some point in the granite material, and there was a transition later in history where the format of the stones was changed.

The orientation of the plot is roughly grouped into family lines by wife. Elizabeth, Logan's second wife, is located to the left of the center monument, while Mary, his first wife, is to the right. Cornelia, his third and final wife, was buried right next to him. Mary & Elizabeth's children are buried beside them, except Edward, the surviving son, who is buried behind Mary and next to Logan. It is unclear the relationship of Mary Dameron, countess, who is buried slightly off to the side. She would be most likely to be Elizabeth's daughter, but if she had become a countess, then it is not clear why she wasn't buried with her husbands family. Edward and Mary are likely the son and daughter that survived him after he died...unless he had another daughter who survived that married and is hence buried elsewhere.


If Logan were giving a tour of this plot, I imagine it would be very strange. He would have to say something like, this is the monument I had built to my wives...but I got the impression the monument was actually built to Mary, since one of her sons was inscribed on one side. Probably Logan realized shortly afterwards that he wouldn't be able to engrave all of his dead children on a four-sided monument, so he switched to burying them around. It was convenient that he only married three women, so they would all fit on the remaining sides monument. I imagine that he had Elizabeth's carved in after her death, and maybe Cornelia insisted her name join the other two on the central monument. He would probably go straight to Mary's branch of the tree, as his first wife, where she is buried with their deceased child. Then, he would likely visit Elizabeth and their many children...as he didn't have any children with Cornelia, I wonder if she would be given as much preference. He would probably explain the random object next to Mary's headstone as a piece of the earlier headstones that were replaced. He may also point out some close family members in the nearby vicinity and give an idea to what it was like to come here to visit all of his dead children...a truly sad and tragic visit for a man with so few surviving family members at the time of his death.