08/26/2026
FACING WEST
Punitive Burial in Historic Cemeteries
We suspect all of us here reading Clay Cemetery Preservation stops whenever possible at near every cemetery we pass in our journeys, large and small. Our fondness for these rich places of our past is undeniable and well known to our friends and family. Our friends remembered on the stones share much with us … and sometimes add unanswerable mystery to our visits.
One of those enigmas is the rare deviation from the practice of burials facing to the east. East facing rest is overwhelmingly common in our small historic cemeteries of the South, a great many similar cemeteries of the Midwest and Plains, and rigorously followed by some denominations such as the Amish and Mennonites. The practice is so defining that it is one parameter used to interpret our Clay Cemetery as an “Upland South Folk Cemetery”.
The practice of feet to the east burials can be traced to sun worship cults found in Europe before the birth of Christianity. The foundation of our much more recent interment practices lies in the expectation of facing the resurrection on judgement day through east facing burials. Very strong religious, spiritual, and cultural weight attends the practice. It is not unusual to see entire cemeteries, some surprisingly large, laid out with only east facing burials.
Why then the rare west facing burial? What are their origins? Some of us have seen them, wondered, and then moved to more explicable traditional resting places. The sad and painful truth is that west facing burials arise from spiritual and religious punishment. Those left behind witness the experience:
“After my father passed away the way he did, he was not only buried separately in the opposite corner from the others, but the church also faced him towards the west, while all the rest of the people buried in the Amish cemetery are laid to rest facing east. They condemned my father because of how he died. The elders of the church also read an excommunication letter over his grave to condemn him.”
Ely Yoder, Instagram, 2024
All of Clay Cemetery’s conventionally marked graves are burials facing to the east, with only a single west facing exception (see below). Unmarked graves are all east facing per ground penetrating radar. Unconventionally marked graves all appear east facing based on physical examination. As noted these findings are VERY consistent with cemeteries of similar history, size, and arrangement.
Clay Cemetery’s west facing grave is also it’s oldest conventionally marked burial dated “1860” with three lines of indecipherable lettering. Much is lost to water effects and primitive plant damage. The gravestone is a heavily eroded inferior quality sedimentary material, probably locally sourced and carved sandstone. Punitive gravestones are often substandard in material with amateur and/or incomplete carving. Unusual for a west facing grave ours is in close proximity to other markers. They are typically ostracized in death and located at a distance from east facing burials.
We welcome efforts at deciphering the lettering. Oddly the script appears laid out between carved lines as if a child's tablet. Technology exists that has the capability at recovering the lettered images Multi-spectral scanning is specialty equipment intensive and more often used for larger scale imagery and scanning.
