There’s something about cemeteries, particularly historic cemeteries, that really suits photography. Cemeteries are places of mourning and remembrance and celebration. They’re also places where art and architecture and personal taste — of the deceased and the loved ones left behind — mix.

Beech Grove Cemetery is the city-owned cemetery for Muncie, Indiana. Established in the mid-1800s, Beech Grove is home to some of the area’s oldest gravesites.

The city’s oldest and most established families have graves and mausoleums there, but it’s also the final resting place for some of the community’s poorest residents, with an entire section of graves of people buried at government expense.

Here are some iPhone photos of Beech Grove sites I saw today.

Above: A grave with a marker but also with a statue of Jesus — holding wind chimes and other items — and personal items important to the deceased or family members.

A grave marked only by a small wooden cross with magic-marker lettering.

Peeling paint on this wooden cross.

A row of mausoleums for some of Muncie’s captains of industry.

The approach to one of the Ball family mausoleums.

The ornate front door of a Petty family mausoleum.

The stained glass window in the rear of the Petty mausoleum.

A towering obelisk marks the grave of a Muncie physician.