Old Danish Cemetary
St. Thomas
March 21, 2012
Just a few blocks up the hill, the noise of crowds disgorged from cruise ships drops off and you can hear the birds and bugs in the trees. I walked up a road towards the cemetaries that I'd spotted on the map to see what history I could find there. The gate for the old cemetary was closed, but not locked, so I let myself in.
Though the map called it the Danish cemetary, the headstones belonged to people from all over Europe: Germany, England, Sweden, Denmark. They had come out to the Caribbean for their own life's adventure, and were remembered here for the contributions they had made, building businesses, starting schools, or just piloting boats.
Some plots were lined with conch shells, embedded in concrete mortar and still standing clean and mostly unbroken, almost a century after they were set there.
