Cemeteries and Gravemarkers: Voices of American Culture PDF
Preview Cemeteries and Gravemarkers: Voices of American Culture
Cemeteries and Gravemarkers Voices of American Culture Cemeteries and Gravemarkers Voices of American Culture Edited by Richard E. Meyer With a Foreword by James Deetz a Utah State University Press Logan, Utah 1992 Utah State University Press Logan, Utah 84322-7800 Copyright © 1989 Richard E. Meyer All rights reserved first Utah State University Press printing: 1992 second Utah State University Press printing: 1995 Cover Design: Heidi Dailey Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cemeteries and gravemarkers : voices of American Culture / edited by Richard E. Meyer: with a foreword by James Deetz. p. cm. Reprint. Originally published: Ann ArbOl; Mich. : UMI Research Press, c1989. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87421-160-3 1. Sepulchral monuments-United States. 2. Cemeteries-United States. 3. Epitaphs-United States. 4. United States-Social life and customs.!. Meyer, Richard E., 1939- GT 3203.C46 1992 393'.l'0973-dc20 92-31114 CIP In Memory oJ Erwin Conrad Meyer (1910-1980) Ruhe in Frieden Contents Foreword ix James Deetz Acknowledgments xv Introduction: "So Witty as to Speak" 1 Richard E. Meyer Icon and Epitaph 1 Innocents in a Worldly World: Victorian Children's Gravemarkers 11 Ellen Marie Snyder 2 The Bigham Carvers of the Carolina Piedmont: Stone Images of an Emerging Sense of American Identity 31 Edward W. Clark 3 Images of Logging on Contemporary Pacific Northwest Gravemarkers 61 Richard E. Meyer 4 The Epitaph and Personality Revelation 87 J. Joseph Edgette Origins and Influences 5 The Upland South Folk Cemetery Complex: Some Suggestions of Origin 107 D. Gregory Jeane viii Contents 6 J. N. B. de Pouilly and French Sources of Revival Style Design in New Orleans Cemetery Architecture 137 Peggy McDowell Ethnicity and Regionalism 7 The Afro-American Section of Newport, Rhode Island's Common Burying Ground 163 Ann and Dickran Tashjian 8 Navajo, Mormon, Zuni Graves: Navajo, Mormon, Zuni Ways 197 Keith Cunningham 9 San Fernando Cemetery: Decorations of Love and Loss in a Mexican-American Community 217 Lynn Gosnell and Suzanne Gott 10 Western Pennsylvania Cemeteries in Transition: A Model for Subregional Analysis 237 Thomas J. Hannon Business and Pleasure 11 Monumental Bronze: A Representative American Company 263 Barbara Rotundo 12 Strange but Genteel Pleasure Grounds: Tourist and Leisure Uses of Nineteenth-Century Rural Cemeteries 293 Blanche Linden-Ward Bibliography 329 Richard E. Meyer Contributors 341 Index 343 Foreword To write a foreword to this collection of essays on cemeteries and grave markers is rather daunting, since the excellent introduction serves this purpose quite well. On the other hand, the introduction permits a certain freedom which I shall now indulge by touching on several subjects that otherwise, for better or worse, might never have appeared in print. I sup pose it is natural that when our careers stretch further behind us than before, we look back on how it all took place, and what, if anything, it all meant. In my case, the period of the early sixties stands out particularly as a time of great excitement and pleasure, for it was then that Ted Dethlefsen and I discovered cemeteries. The four years we spent studying the grave markers of early New England were for me the most enjoyable time of my professional life, and one of the main reasons for this is the ephemeral, anecdotal context in which the more disciplined research took place. One was always encountering the unexpected; local folks had wonderful tales to tell; and, on occasion, something would happen that defied rational explanation. It is this aspect of gravestone studies that deserves attention, and I hope that my freedom of subject might allow me to indulge in the anecdotal. It all began for Ted and me one steamy July afternoon in Somerville, Massachusetts, where we were both teaching archaeology at Harvard sum mer school. Sitting on the porch of Ted's top-floor apartment in a classic Boston tripledecker, we were finding it very hard to keep cool, in spite of the two quarts of Ballantine Ale we had consumed. Prior to coming east from California, I had read an article in Time magazine (I think that Muham mad Ali's picture was on the cover) on Neal and Parker's gravestone rub bings, and having lived in Concord, Massachusetts, some years before, I recalled the gravestones along the street by the Catholic church. I sug gested that perhaps Concord would be cooler than Somerville, and that we might drive out and take a look at the "quaint" gravestones as well. It wasn't that much cooler, as it turned out, in spite of two more quarts of ale
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