Planning Ahead (stone)

Sometimes planning ahead doesn't pay. Just look around your house. If you're like me, you have some pile of stuff from a trip to the store where you reasoned that you'd need more later, so you bought plenty. Only "plenty" was way too much, and there it sits.

With that in mind, I wonder what John K Carson was thinking when he purchased eight spaces in the Hinton Cemetery on 3 April 1907? In addition to himself and his wife Rachel, he had five children (at least four of whom were still alive). He probably planned for his family to be buried together. But, it did not work out that way.

Rachel, his first wife, passed away almost exactly six months later. She was buried in grave site 1, the corner grave on the west side of the group.

After this, the ground sat idle for nearly twenty years. Then, when John passed away, his body was shipped from Colorado to Oklahoma, and he was laid to rest next to Rachel, in grave site 2.

The remaining six graves sit empty to this day.

Below is a map from the cemetery plat which shows the final resting places for Rachel and John. If you are ever in Hinton, Oklahoma and decide to visit their grave sites make sure you stop at the office and ask someone to guide you. Neither grave is marked with a headstone.

In case you were wondering, John paid ten dollars for these grave sites. I don't know how to compare that with the cost of grave sites in Hinton, Oklahoma today. If you simply compare the purchasing value of today's dollar versus the 1907 dollar, these graves cost John the equivalent of about two-hundred dollars.