Fifteen years ago, Jane Hopkins began visiting cemeteries in the Northeast. From Rochester to New England, and down the East Coast, she figures she has strolled through over 300 graveyards in the past decade and a half.
One of her purposes was to research her family's history, which she said dates to the Mayflower. But her travels also became a photographic project that took her far beyond her own lineage.
Hopkins simply loves spending time in cemeteries.
"They're not scary places and they're not ghosty places," she said, "but they're comfortable places or people to be remembered."
Hopkins has published two books of photographs she has collected during her local cemetery explorations, "Cemetery Reflections," and "Buried Rochester New York Area: 200 Years of Cemetery History."
On a balmy, sunlit, mid-September morning, she walked through Lakeview Cemetery in Williamson, praising its historic significance as well as its vistas.
Beyond a gentle hill to the north is a stunning view of Lake Ontario. Birds scatter through an apple orchard to the west and the morning sun warms a peach orchard to the east.
"The first burial I found was in 1810, and the burials are now up to date, so we have the whole history of all the generations that have lived here," Hopkins said, pausing to look at several headstones.
She takes time to read the epitaphs and imagine the lives of the souls who are laid to rest there, including two brothers named Cornwall, a farming family whose former estate now borders the cemetery as a 77-acre nature preserve.
Pointing toward a massive oak tree, Hopkins moved toward an old section of the cemetery that is familiar to her.
"'This particular area is one of my favorites," she said, "because the trees have grown up to be monuments in themselves."
In the gravestone inscriptions, she finds clues about how death was perceived through the generations. The poetry of the 1600s and 1700s was warning people that death is to come. The Victorian era embraced angels and the afterlife.
But many modern epitaphs are a tribute to how the deceased lived and who they were.
"I think nowadays, particularly in the cemeteries that allow mementos, people can be comfortable coming to the cemetery saying their goodbyes, just sitting with their memories," Hopkins said. "I like that a lot."
