Death and Burial, Traditions and Tombstones: Lecture by Abby Burnett

Peel Compton Foundation

Samuel and Mary Peel, sitting on their home’s second story balcony, had a direct view of the Bentonville Cemetery, across what is now Walton Boulevard. There they could see the large burial plot they had picked out for their own graves, already housing infant twins who died at birth in 1872. The Peels’ proximity to loss was not unusual in the 19th century, a time when people were intimately familiar with death.