The past is full of forgotten artistic and symbolic traditions, but one TikToker is bringing them back to the public eye through her thoughtful insight. TikToker Darby Valentine (@darbyvalentines) is showing viewers how to read symbols on tombstones in Texas.
Most tombstone artwork is Victorian mourning artwork, and illustrations of a woman and a willow tree together are part of that. The first tombstone she touched on featured a woman under a willow tree.
When you see a woman weeping under a willow tree on someone’s tombstone, this signifies that they left behind someone who loves them, particularly a woman who is mourning their loss.
The second tombstone was carved with two hands holding each other. In this case, the husband and wife were buried right next to each other.
The husband was buried almost right after his wife. With all this available information, it’s a little easier for Darby to decipher this symbol.
“Sometimes, this means conjoining or meeting someone in the afterlife, particularly since she died before her husband,” Darby said.
“I’m going to assume this is just the final meeting, the final handshake, the final greeting or meeting with God.”
In many older cemeteries, especially American ones, a symbol of a finger pointing up is very common. It represents Jesus being the king of kings and indicates that the person is going to heaven.
Next, there was a tombstone with a shrouded urn, a fully formed rose, and a hand holding an open book upright. Shrouded urns were highly popular symbols during the Victorian era, and there are several different interpretations of them.
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Shrouded urns can symbolize protection even in death, or they could represent how thin the veil is between life and death.
“Roses on their own mean varying things, depending on what stage of a rose it is,” Darby explained. “If it’s not a bloomed rose, it’s a child, usually someone who didn’t get to live life. If it’s a partially bloomed one, it usually refers to a teenager. A fully bloomed one usually refers to an adult.”
Books on a tombstone could be depicting the book of life or the Bible. They could stand for all the good things someone did in their life, or they could represent a scholar, someone who had read a lot of books during their life. Most of the time, open books indicate that someone has been taken too soon.
The back of the tombstone showed that this person was 60 years old when they died in 1860. The fully bloomed rose illustrated that they were an adult when they passed away. The open book and the open hand indicate that they were a religious individual.
After that, Darby came across the final burial, an aboveground cast-iron grave, which is rare to see in America. It is definitely characteristic of Victorian burials. Aboveground cast-iron graves were done for various reasons.
“Firstly, they could be for spiritual meaning,” she stated. “Secondly, they could be for a status symbol, showing someone had wealth.”
“More particularly, which I don’t think this is the case with this woman’s tomb, it would stop grave robbers because people were digging people up so often to sell them to medical students for studies that they had to start putting grates and cast-iron to stop robbers.”
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
