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Dead men tell no tales, but their tombstones can be pretty eloquent. The history of a place is chiseled into the plinths and weathered monuments of its boneyards, and this place that we live in is no exception.

There are markers at Low's Lutheran church in Liberty, for example, that are inscribed in German, a reminder of the "Carolina Dutch" pioneers who settled here in Colonial times. The cemetery at Buffalo Presbyterian Church is the final resting place for Revolutionary War soldiers, and a miniature Greek temple in a private graveyard nearby says something about the power and pretensions of Greensboro's early industrialists.

Sometimes the words in the stones leave me wanting to know more of the story. I've been thinking lately about two markers in the Union Cemetery on South Elm Street, the oldest African American burying ground in the city. There are many prominent names in Union, some that you still see around town, but these two people are more obscure, at least to me. One is a woman named Harrett Pinnix, who died May 1, 1918, "aged about 100 years." That's all the stone says, but for a charming epitaph: "She hath done what she could." Chances are good that Ms. Pinnix was born into slavery, and lived the first 47-odd years of her life in bondage. But there were free blacks in the South, too, and the Quakers in this area were active in the cause of manumission. Maybe she wasn't from here at all but came here later in life; that's part of the story the slab does not tell, and I could not find her name in various online databases about Greensboro residents from before the turn of the last century.

In any case, she would have lived through almost unimaginable changes -- not just the end of slavery, but Manifest Destiny and civil war and Reconstruction, the rise of a New South. Her early years were spent in an agrarian culture that in some ways had not changed for millennia, yet she saw technological advances that make the Internet seem tame by comparison: railroads, telephones, automobiles, airplanes, electric lights and more. What did those things mean to her? Did she have a family with whom she shared it all? The stone does not say.

At the northwest edge of the cemetery is the other monument I've been pondering, raised in memory of Thomas Reese Alexander, a son of R.S. and M.J. Alexander. He was born April 13, 1893, and died at the age of 21. Again, there is no reference to Alexander or his family in the relatively limited sources I've found online, but his tombstone points to a rich story. "Troop C 10 US Cavalry," it says. "Killed on Mexican border at Yuma, Ariz. May 11 1914."

That means Thomas Reese Alexander was one of the legendary Buffalo Soldiers, the black troops who first earned their reputation for bravery in the long war against the Indians of the West. These are the men Bob Marley sang about, and no unit was more acclaimed than the 10th, which fought its way up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders and accompanied Pershing into Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa.

According to an online text of "The History of the Tenth Cavalry, 1866-1921," by Major E.L.N. Glass, the 10th returned at the end of 1913 to Arizona, where it had long before distinguished itself in bitter fighting against the Apache. Tensions with Mexico were high, and it was the job of the 10th to maintain order. "The border stations were not at all attractive," wrote Glass. "The poor little shacks and 'dobes were eagerly sought for by officers and their wives. Naco was about as it is now, only more so. The usual border patrols were made along the line, enforcing neutrality, and keeping down gun-running." And C troop -- Alexander's troop -- was indeed at Yuma on the day he was killed.

But so much of the story remains a mystery. I've found no account of Alexander's death (although the scripture on the back of the stone, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends," is suggestive, as is the passage from "Bivouac of the Dead," a poem used to honor fallen soldiers). I don't know how he came to join the famous cavalry unit, what his job was, how his body came back to Greensboro, or if he was related to John H. Alexander, one of the first black graduates of West Point, who served in the 9th Cavalry.

If you know anything about Harrett Pinnix or Thomas Reese Alexander, please e-mail me at the address below. I'll keep looking, too, and if I find out anything interesting, I'll let you know. The answers are clues to what this place once was, and what it is today.

Edward Cone (www.edcone.com, efcone@mindspring.com) writes a column for the News & Record alternate Sundays.