Besides it's most famous resident, Westminster is home to a few other prominent Baltimoreans and curiosities I didn't have room to post yesterday.  The first Mayor of Baltimore, Francis Scott Key's son, and James McHenry of Fort McHenry fame are all neighbors of Edgar Allan Poe in perpetuity.

McHenry family plot

Westminster also has several of these bent marble headstones. I guess two hundred years of time affects even the strongest substance.


This one has been reinforced with metal slats underneath to make sure it is preserved.  There's a plaque next to it that says it was featured in Ripley's Believe it of Not, but I wasn't able to find the article or program or whatever the feature was in.  I did, however, find this.  And I'm thinking that I'm gonna have to bookmark this so that the next time I'm having a rough day at work, I can pull this up and get through 'til quitting time.  

Here's another gravity-defying headstone:


Some of the stones are so old the inscriptions aren't even legible anymore.  I think this one has 1791 as the death date, but it was hard to tell without getting down and doing a rubbing.


I'm also quite fond of the rain gutters that run through the grounds.

 

Westminster Hall no longer functions as a church and hasn't since 1977.  Instead, it's become an historic site that you can rent out for weddings and other events there.  It's quite gorgeous inside.  The cemetery precedes the church, however.  It was originally only the Westminster Burying Grounds.  The church was built sixty years later on brick piers over the cemetery, so when you walk around to the back, you can basically walk under the building.  It's a little like a fresh air catacombs - without the rows and rows of human bones stacked in symmetrically pleasing formations.

Though I've been to the cemetery a score of times, I only just now realized that you can have a tour of the building for a small fee.  I'm gonna have to make at least one more trip.