Religious Customs

The Merriam Webster definition of a museum is “an institution devoted to the procurement, care, study, and display of objects of lasting interest or value; also: a place where objects are exhibited." To find an artifact, the first thing I thought of was going to a museum because it seemed the most obvious place to find a piece of history. As I searched through four museums and hallowed in the artifacts set aside there, I found nothing that peaked my personal interest of the study of humanities. Alas, it hit me; a cemetery would be perfect for my interest in customs of my personal religious beliefs. I had passed this particular cemetery countless times as a child that I had never truly thought of at all. What better place to find an object of permanent value than a cemetery? At the corner of Cypresswood and I-45, I began to sift into a cemetery that I had no true interest in, or so I thought. The cemetery was home to about twenty burial plots, each one a little different in its own way, but one particularly interested me. The headstone read Friedrich August Wunsche, Geb July 20, 1837, Gest May 3, 1897. I decided on this tombstone because of its architecture and time period of the person it commemorated; it is the sole surviving memory of this man. Etched into the bottom of the tombstone were the last words of his family to the world, faded and eroded by the winds of time they were left in German and incomprehensible to most modern Americans. The words had a meaning seeming to say, In Thee O Lord have I put my trust, which was repeated on the other tombstones in modern English. This is a shrine of sorts to his life; this man lived in the union, probably fought for the confederacy and then died when the United States was once again u...

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...reater understanding of what I believe that I have a relatively good understanding of what I believe, this project has given me a greater understanding than I could have achieved without it. It made me reflect not only on the religious aspect of life, but the customs of human in general. The Christians were not the first to have buried their dead as my studies in humanities have shown, enlightening me to new and different ideas of the afterlife as explained through the eyes of past humanity.

Works Cited

"Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online." Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2010. .

Wolf, George. "Wunsche Family Cemetery - Harris County, Texas." Cemetery Records Online. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2010. .