Book excerpt: In a small neighborhood cemetery in Jacksonville, Florida are found the graves of 240 people of 49 different surnames whose lives and those of their distant ancestors formed the nidus for this unique depiction of Florida history. The research of their daily lives including their interactions with their neighboring Native American Indians and African slaves, the Civil War battles in which they fought and died and the prisons of war camps of both sides in which they languished, their working of the land, the St Johns River, and the Atlantic ocean, their many other 19th century professions, their health, diseases and causes of death, plus descriptions of Florida's magnificent natural surroundings all combine to bring life back to those marked by the centuries-old tombstones.