Gravely Speaking

Nearly 32 years ago, my father died.  We weren’t prepared for it; in fact, we weren’t even sure where he wanted to be buried.  Dad was irreverent about death, “I don’t care what you do with my body, I’ll be dead.  For all I care you can run my body up a flag pole.”  We didn’t want any trouble with the neighbors, so that really wasn’t an option.

As it turned out, two weeks before Dad died, he told his brother, Fred, he wanted to be buried in the Frazier Cemetery, which was right next to the golf course and country club they both belonged to.  He said, “If a stray ball rolls up to my grave, I might just get up and play a round of golf!”  We bought him a plot and my mother one for good measure—even though my parents were divorced and Mom was very much alive.  We thought we could get them back together in the next life.

I decided the day we buried Dad that I would buy my plots (two just in case I got married, I have always been a hopeful soul).  I met with the cemetery trustee, a woman who was quite elderly, named Bessie.  I told her I wanted the two plots directly in line with my parents.  She carefully wrote my name into a trustee book recording my name and where the plots were that I had just paid for.

Fast forward twenty years.  My Mom went out the cemetery to put flowers on family graves for Memorial Day.  She called me and said, “Douglas, someone is in your spot!”  As it turned out a woman named Luella had been buried in one of my plots, she was in direct line with my father.  I called the cemetery trustee who was now Skip Short, no foollin that was his name, to find out what had happened.  He gave his apologies and told me that Bessie had two sets of books–one that she wrote the sales down in quickly, the other book, where she transferred the information in a very orderly and neat fashion.  Unfortunately, she had gotten behind and had sold some plots three and four times.  My plots were among those.

Skip Short told me that they would find me plots somewhere else in the cemetery.  I told him to pardon the wordplay, but I was going to “hold my ground.”  Luella would have to be moved.  While I sympathized with the situation, I knew that the closer I got to death, the more important it would be for me to be buried next to my parents. 

Skip was understandably quite exorcised and said moving her would be very complicated and costly. If the body was brought above ground, the cemetery would have to pay to have the state coroner to be present.  “Not my problem,” I grumbled, “Luella has got to go.”

The solution was the loop hole.  Don’t bring her above ground, but open the grave she was in and the one next to it and slide her over. 

What saved my perpetual real estate?  I registered the deeds at the courthouse, so when the time comes, I will be in line with my parents and next to Luella for an eternity!

 …O paint the gloomy horrors of the tomb;
Th’ appointed place of rendezvous, where all
These travellers meet.–Thy succours I implore,
Eternal King! whose potent arm sustains
The keys of Hell and Death.–The Grave, dread thing!

—By Robert Blair, “The Grave”

In Douglas Keister’s book, Forever Dixie: A Field Guide to Southern Cemeteries & Their Residents, he writes about six kinds of cemeteries: Graveyards and City Cemeteries; Churchyards; Garden and Rural Cemeteries; Lawn-Park Cemeteries; Memorial Parks, and Specialty Cemeteries. I would add one more—Military Cemeteries. Each one of the types of cemeteries have distinct characteristics:

 Graveyards and City Cemeteries

Granary Burying Ground, Boston, Massachusetts

Early American graveyards were often in the middle of town. These burial grounds were unorganized and neglected places, with weeds and overgrowth, stones willy nilly, where the dead were buried, sometimes with markers, sometimes not. Often cattle grazed among the gravestones. In William Cullen Bryant’s poem “The Burial Place” he accurately describes the city graveyard:

…Naked rows of graves

And melancholy ranks of monuments

Are seen instead, where the coarse grass, between

Shoots up its dull spikes, and in the wind

hisses, and the neglected bramble nigh…

 Churchyards

Old Brick Reformed Church Graveyard, Holmdel, New Jersey

This type of cemetery is the easiest to describe. The name churchyard, in fact, tells the story. The burials took place in the yard around the church and was reserved for members of the congregation. These dot the countryside and can be found in nearly every community. For the most part, churchyards lack to the large monuments and mausoleums that can be found in garden and rural cemeteries and the gravestones tend be more simple forms—tablets, columns, and block markers.

Garden and Rural Cemeteries

Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, Ohio

In 1831, Mt. Auburn Cemetery opened in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was the first garden cemetery to open in the country and represented a new attitude about burying the dead. These cemeteries were designed spaces, with pathways and avenues, and were landscaped to have the look and feel of a public park. In Victorian Cemetery Art, written by Edmund V. Gillon Jr., he writes “The large amounts of space in the Victorian cemetery were to revolutionize cemetery art, and permit the use of sculpture in a way that crowded churchyard had never allowed. Sepulchral sculpture, with it prone effigies and kneeling weepers, had flowered in the past, but only for the rich and powerful.” The opening of Mt. Auburn was the dawning of the rural cemetery movement–the concept of the cemetery as a landscaped space. Cities across America began to open garden cemeteries in their communities—Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn—to name just a few.

Lawn-Park Cemeteries

Laurel Hill Cemetery, Erie, Pennsylvania

This type of cemetery is really a combination of two types—the garden cemetery and the memorial park. This cemetery has areas for large monuments and mausoleums, as well as, large sections reserved for grass markers. These cemeteries are designed with large avenues and pathways for visitors.

 Memorial Parks

Sarasota Memorial Park, Sarasota, Florida

Two of the greatest influences on the design and look of the cemetery in the 20^th Century were the cost of labor and the invention of the motorized lawn mower. By designing cemeteries with only grass markers—gravestones that lay flat and level to the ground—groundskeepers could mow large swaths of the cemetery in much less time than it took to push a mower around tombstones and trim the grass growing next to monuments. The improvement in the efficiency of maintaining the cemetery gives way to artistic and expressive aspect of tombstones used to mark the graves of the deceased.

Specialty Cemeteries

Hearthside Rest Pet Cemetery, Erie, Pennsylvania

According to Keister, this category of cemeteries includes family cemeteries, as well as, cemeteries that are dedicated to members of secret societies. Some of these would include Masonic, Odd Fellow, and Knights of Pythias cemeteries.  This also includes pet cemeteries, which were established in the United States in the late 19th Century.  In 1896, Veterinarian Dr. Samuel Johnson offered to let his friend bury his beloved dog in his apple orchard. Today more than 70,000 pets are buried in what is now the Hartsdale Canine Cemetery, Hartsdale, New York, which became the first and oldest pet cemetery.  Since that cemetery was founded others have dotted the countryside.

Military Cemeteries

Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia

On July 17, 1862, during the Civil War, Congress passed an act that gave the president the power “to purchase cemetery grounds and cause them to be securely enclosed, to be used as a national cemetery for the soldiers who shall die in the service of the country.” That year 14 cemeteries were established:

• Alexandria National Cemetery, Alexandria, Virginia
• Annapolis National Cemetery, Annapolis, Maryland
• Antietam National Cemetery, Sharpsburg, Maryland
• Camp Butler National Cemetery, Springfield, Illinois
• Cypress Hills National Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York
• Danville National Cemetery, Danville, Kentucky
• Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery, Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas
• Fort Scott National Cemetery, Fort Scott, Kansas
• Keokuk National Cemetery, Keokuk, Iowa
• Loudon Park National Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland
• Mill Springs National Cemetery, Nancy, Kentucky
• New Albany National Cemetery, New Albany, Indiana
• Philadelphia National Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Soldier’s Home National Cemetery, Washington, D.C.

There are now 146 National Cemeteries in the United States, the most famous being Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, which was created on the grounds of General Robert E. Lee’s ancestral home.

The gravestones found in National Cemeteries are overwhelmingly the segmented-top white marble tablet. These gravestones are 42 inches tall, 4 inches thick, and 13 inches wide. In an article written by Edwin Dethlefsen and Kenneth Jensen, “Social Commentary from the Cemetery”, published in Natural History, June/July 1977, Volume 86, they write, “Another type of gravestone is that provided for veterans by the United States government. This takes the form of a simple granite, marble or bronze tablet and is a specific indicator of what we know to be an important aspect of culture in America—the increasing paternalism of government”.