Many LDS Church members' headstones carry distinct features

SALT LAKE CITY — Stroll through the Salt Lake City Cemetery and you'll find the graves of 11 of the past presidents of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You'll also discover a wealth of resting places for numerous LDS Church members — representing a large variety in both epitaphs and monument styles.

What's the most popular image on headstones for church members?

"We put the Salt Lake Temple (image) on a lot of stones," Mike Ellerbeck of Salt Lake Monument, 186 "N" Street, said, as the most popular request.

Other temple images appear too, and it can be challenge for monument markers to keep up images of the newer temples, when needed.

And, while many church members favor images of temples on graves, Ellerbeck said LDS Church presidents don't follow that trend. They may have large stone monuments but not images on them. For example, he said that when the Kimball family was consulting with him for what President Spencer W. Kimball's monument would be, the family declined the idea of a temple image. Ellerbeck said that's because the family believed anyone who know President Kimball would already know how important temples were in his life.

Ellerbeck also said "Families are forever," "Together forever" and "For Time and Eternity" are among the three most popular epitaphs inscribed in members' headstones these days.

But he said perhaps the key LDS-oriented feature on headstones is the emphasis on genealogy. Listing children on a headstone is a practice widely done only by church members. While not a unique practice, far more LDS members do it than the general public.

Ellerbeck said you'd never know this if you haven't closely inspected cemeteries outside Utah or the Mountain West, but the headstone of church members routinely list the day and month of birth and death, instead of just the years.

"Again, it's an emphasis toward genealogy," Ellerbeck believes.

Now, he said, you will find the full dates or birth and death also listed on some of the headstones in the adjacent Catholic and Jewish cemeteries, but he feels that still is based much on the local LDS Church influence because outside the west, full dates on headstones are far less common.

Some headstones of church members even tell their conversion story. For example, Seth Taft (1796-1863) has a 13 line account of his conversion, beginning with "Joined the church ..." on his headstone.