Rensselaer Day 4

St. Joseph's Chapel - life

Today was gorgeous weather! I went back down to St. Joseph's College and took a proper shoot of the Chapel and grounds. The Welcome Center/Admissions Office gave me advice and a map, and the Dean's Office was very helpful and friendly. I also captured images of the old Drexel Hall, now it's been renovated and repurposed for the Rensselaer Adult Learning Center. I suppose there goes all the claims that it's haunted and priests become "furious" if you mention the chapel within the hall.

On the way back, I stopped at the Jasper County Airport and got a few shots of the field.

Wanting to know if there were any zinc headstones in the local cemeteries without having to walk them for hours on end, I stopped by Rensselaer Monument, just down the road from my hotel. If anyone should know what I'm talking about, it will be the people who work in the industry. Rensselaer Monument has been owned and operated by the Woolley family since 1976. They were an incredible family who operated a very friendly and professional shop. Ross Woolley cited knowing of a zinc headstone in a nearby town. His son thought that there might be one in Weston Cemetery, which is near downtown, so I headed off to Weston Cemetery right away. Sure enough, I found it.

Weston Cemetery - Zinc gravemarker - Julia King

What worried me was that the groundskeeper didn't know what a zinc headstone was and outright said, "I wouldn't know one if I saw one." How can you properly clean one if you don't know what you've got? Well, that aside, it's a beautiful cemetery. Both the new and old sections are well-kept. The old section has platts that are erratically scattered, which is typical, but the shade provided by the towering fir trees made a beautiful landscape on the hill. The zinc headstone is marking the grave of two people: a Julia M. King and her infant son, Charles F. King.

I returned to my room after that to start organising photos and make phone calls. I have an appointment with Assistant Chief Kenny Haun of the Rensselaer Volunteer Fire Department at 9:30 tomorrow morning to photograph the vehicles. It shouldn't take too long.

Here are more images from Day 4: