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A special ceremony Wednesday celebrated the oldest, last-remaining wood grace marker in Berks County.

Ever wonder why there are so many empty spaces in old cemeteries? Michael Emery, who has spent two decades documenting historic cemeteries throughout southeastern and central Pennsylvania, has concluded that these seemingly empty spaces were once occupied by temporary wooden markers, most of which have rotted away long ago. While some of these were replaced by formal tombstones or markers of modest fieldstones, others were never replaced at all, leaving empty gaps among the oldest memorials in historic graveyards. Until recently, only one such wooden grave marker was still known to exist in i...