As you all know, I am always looking for interesting tombstones from Southwestern Pennsylvania. I found some rather interesting stones in Westmoreland County over the weekend. In the Old Zion Lutheran Cemetery located in East Huntingdon County, are three stones in a row, erected for Colin Tarr, Alexander H. Tarr, and Sarah Tarr Myers, three adult children of Daniel and Mary Tarr, dating from 1824 - 1844. On the upper most portion of the stones, the stones have been intentionally damaged to remove part of the carvings. Upon closer inspection, I realize that the damaged carvings were in fact skull and crossbones icons. The stones can be view at http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/westmoreland/tsimages/oldzionluth-easthuntingdon.htm These three stones would be the only surviving examples of what is refered to as a memento mori (remember death) motif in Southwestern Pennsylvania that I am aware of. At some point the church must have considered the death heads to be inappropriate, and removed the carvings, a true loss to all of us taphophiles. Memento Mori carvings were commonly found in early colonial New England graveyards, and may be rarely found in a few cemeteries in Southeastern Pennsylvania. But our ancestors attitudes toward death memorials had changed and the memento mori was not at all in style by the time our ancestors began to move into Allegheny and Westmoreland County area. Ellis Michaels Coordinator, Clearfield County PAGenWeb Project CoCoordinator, PAGenWeb Tombstone Project File Manager, Allegheny County PAGenWeb Archives File Manager, Clearfield County PAGenWeb Archives Somerset County PAGenWeb Tombstone Project Manager ellisrn@earthlink.net "If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing" (Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac)