This download contains a curated collection of original pictures of 400+ grave markers including some famous people in history, movies and music. I developed this collection over several months of travel. Students will discover historically accurate trends from this data about survivorship for people born before 1900 and after 1900. I have carefully created the collection to provide interest for students and also good data for students to discover trends through inquiry. Use these pictures with your own version of the cemetery lab or use a free version on my website. Links are below.
In this download I have pictures from several cemeteries from across the United States.
- Yosemite National Park. Several settlers and park officials are buried here next to what is now Yosemite Village.
- Boston’s Granary Burial Ground. This is the historic cemetery along the Freedom Trail. I have tombstone pictures of Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, the victims of the Boston massacre and other markers. This cemetery shows how fragile life was with a high mortality of babies and children and women during this time.
- Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, CA. I have pictures of several celebrity graves including Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia), Debbie Reynolds, Bette Davis, Lou Rawls, Dio, Liberace, Andy Gibb and more. It has the most data from 1900+ since it was not founded until the early 1900s. This cemetery is the most ethnically diverse and I have several in this collection of pictures to provide diversity and inclusion.
- Gold Country California: Angels Camp and Columbia, CA Cemeteries. These are old mining towns from the California gold rush. You will see a higher number of males than females in the data and also males dying at an early age. We can infer this is because of the danger involved in gold mining. You will also see some interesting markers such as “murdered” or “drowned”. These cemeteries also have a lot of European immigrants who immigrated to work in the mines. The cemeteries also have modern graves and are still in use.
- Richmond, Kentucky. This cemetery was founded in the early 1800s, is still in use today and has the largest variety of tombstones found in this collection. Kentucky was a confederate state during the Civil War and there are a few pictures of graves reflecting this. You may wish to discuss these before using depending on your school community.
- New England. I have pictures of old cemeteries in Maine and New Hampshire with graves as early as the 1700s.
There are many versions of the cemetery lab for human population studies. The version I use is found for free on my website along with a description of how to do the lab:
Part 1: https://teachingapscience.com/cemeterylabpartone/
Part 2: https://teachingapscience.com/human-population-5e-lab-using-cemetery-data-part-ii/
In order to see the accurate trends, it is recommended that students take data from all of the pictures in all the documents. Suggestions on how to divide this task about groups or pairs is included.
