Wooldridge Monuments, Historical grave monuments in Maplewood Cemetery, Mayfield, United States.
The Wooldridge Monuments are a group of eighteen marble and limestone figures set within Maplewood Cemetery in Mayfield, Kentucky. The statues are arranged in a procession and depict family members, pets, and wildlife that were part of Colonel Henry Wooldridge's life.
Colonel Henry Wooldridge commissioned the statues between 1892 and 1899 as he lost family members one by one over those years. He is the only person actually buried at the site, as the other figures are purely symbolic representations of those depicted.
The statues show people dressed in everyday 19th-century clothing alongside pets that Wooldridge clearly cared about deeply. Walking around the group gives a sense of how personal and unconventional this kind of memorial was at the time.
The cemetery is open to the public and can be visited at any time. Daylight hours are the best time to go, as natural light brings out the details in the stone figures.
Wooldridge had himself depicted as a statue and placed his own life-size figure at the front of the whole group while he was still alive. He literally stands watch over the memorial he commissioned, a detail that often surprises first-time visitors.
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