If my father had been with me on Saturday at Bennington Centre Cemetery, he would’ve died and gone to heaven — if he hadn’t already achieved the former.

At Vermont’s oldest cemetery, I found a few of his favorite things: U.S. history, poetry, peace and quiet. He also loved graveyards themselves and this one — with a mountain view; stones carved with birds, flowers and angels; and a grassy path to a gravestone etched with an epitaph for the ages — is hard to top.

The cemetery is on Monument Avenue in the historic district of Bennington, next to the Old First Church. The people buried on its grounds include 75 soldiers who fought for the nation’s independence, five Vermont governors and the author of the state’s Declaration of Independence.