Mount St. Mary’s Cemetery

Home movies are treasured time capsules documenting birthdays, weddings and other cherished memories. Reader Barbara Walsh acknowledges her fortune in having a collection of 8mm films of her family from the 1930s through the 1950s. One particular film in her collection sparked her curiosity — a one minute and eight second clip titled:CEMETERY DAY ST. MARY’S OCT. 8 / 38. The footage shows a long procession of clergy making its way past onlookers dressed in church attire. After a cut-away, the camera pans across the cemetery to show a crowd of people standing among ornate headstones and monuments watching the proceedings from afar. Ancestors on both sides of Walsh’s family tree are buried at Mount St. Mary’s. Visiting the cemetery and placing wreaths on the gravesites of loved ones was an annual tradition of her maternal grandparents, Arthur and Marguerite Nester, and their children. It was her grandfather, an avid photographer, who filmed the 1938 Cemetery Day event.