Gravely Speaking

The William Remy Cole Monument, Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta, Georgia

The monument in the photograph is of a draped urn.  This particular urn is a dramatic example of this symbol, cast in bronze and freestanding.  For the most part, the urns are found on top of columns and mausoleums, ornaments. 

The urn, of course, is a container used to hold the ashes or the cremated remains of the dead.  In this case, the urn is draped.  The drapery either represents a shroud representing death and sorrow, or can also be a motif that reperesents a veil that separates the earth and Heaven.  The urn was an almost ubiquitous 19th Century symbol found in nearly every American cemetery. 

The irony is that very few people were cremated during the 19th Century when the draped urn motif was at the heighth of its popularity.  For instance, during the eight years from 1876 until 1884, only 41 Americans were cremated.  Though the number of cremations in the United States slowly increased, by the 1950s only less 4% of our dead were cremated.  Cremation, though, has been increasing each decade: 1960–3.56%; 1970–4.59%; 1980–9.72%; 1990–17.13%; 2000–26.24%; 2010–35.93%.  Some are predicting that by 2025, almost half of our dead will be cremated.  Maybe the urn will re-emerge as a symbol for the 21st Century.

Close up

The Old Burying Ground at the Presbyterian Church at Morristown, New Jersey, is full of red slate gravestones, the most interesting of them by far is the gravestone of Abigail Goble, believed to be the oldest woman buried within the churchyard.  The image is dramatic.  In the right side of the top of the gravestone or the tympanum, out of the sculpted clouds of the Heavens, comes the hand of God weilding a hatchet. God’s axe has felled the Tree of Life!  The Tree is hacked down, life is over.  Over the top of the gravestone are the words “Memento Mori”.  This is a medieval reminder from the depths of the Black Death that swept through Europe to “remember death”.  Death was a constant and one must be prepared to die at any time.

Memento Mori                                                                                                                                  In Memory of                                                                                                                                      Mrs. ABIGAIL GOBLE                                                                                                                     who died in Oct.br 1742                                                                                                                     Aged 62 Y

Calvary Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois

Have you ever heard the expression, “Time Flies”?  This symbol, a winged hourglass, brings that expression to life, so to speak.  A reminder in stone that life is short and that time is fleeting, every minute of every day brings one closer and closer to death.

Lucy Ann Seaton, the first person buried in the Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis

Yesteday, the Indiana Chapter of the Association for Gravestone Studies met at the Waiting Station of the Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis, Indiana, organized by Jeannie Regan-Dinius from the Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology, and Joy Giguere, an history professor at Ivy Tech Community College and the State AGS Chapter Chair.  They did a yeoman’s job of organizing an intersting program that included, Mike McNerney speaking about Discoid Neck Grave Markers, Lillian Green speaking about Warren Township Cemeteries, and Dick Powell speaking about Indiana Materials Used As Grave Markers, among others.  After lectures in the morning, Tom Davis, a cemetery docent gave a tour of some of the historic graves in the cemetery, including the grave of Lucy Ann Seaton, who was buried just days after the cemetery was established. 

LUCY ANN wife of CAPT. JOHN SEATON Born in Halifax, Va. 1830 Died May 30, 1864 AGED 33 Y’rs 7 Mo’s & 10 D’s

Tom Davis noted Lucy’s grave as the Crown Hill’s first.  Lucy’s husband was Captain John Seaton.  The couple had only recently moved to Indianapolis when Lucy died of consumption.  Because they did not know many people, Captain Seaton put a notice in the newspaper.  Locals wanting to show to the honorable captain that city was an hospitable place to live organized several hundred people to attend the funeral.  He also mentioned that the symbol on the marble gravestone, badly weathered, was of a willow tree, which had been a popular symbol but was already becoming less popular by the 1860s–only a few of the graves bear this motif of the hundreds of thousands of graves in the cemetery.  The willow first made its appearance in cemeteries, according to James Deetz and Edwin S. Dethlefsen, in their groundbreaking article, “Death’s Head, Cherub, Urn and Willow” in the early 18th century.  In that article, the motif included an urn with the willow.

Mrs. Polly Loring's gravestone at the King's Chapel Burying Ground, Boston, MA

The willow motif represents what one might expect; sorrow and grief, it is after all a “weeping” williow.  An epitaph found on a grave in Harrison County, Iowa, on a child’s grave speaks of the grief that the parent’s felt:

A light from our household is gone                                                                                                  A voice we love is stilled                                                                                                                      A place is vacant in our hearts                                                                                                         That ne’r can be filled                                                                         

There’s a fresh little mound neath the willow                                                                              Where at evening I wander and weep                                                                                            There’s a dear vacant spot on my pillow                                                                                 Where a little face used to sleep.

The LOUIS H. RAETH gravestone, Green Hill Cemetery, Bedford, Indiana

LOUIS H. RAETH                                                                                                                          son of                                                                                                                                            JOHN & SARALDA                                                                                                       RAETH                                                                                                                                        BORN                                                                                                                                               Dec. 30, 1851                                                                                                                                DIED                                                                                                                                               May 21, 1853

As I walk through cemeteries and read the text on the gravestones, the hardest for me are the gravestones of the children.  It always seems unfair to me that these tiny children did not have a chance to fulfill their promise.  It is a reminder of how fragile life is, especially young life.  Often you can see fairly quickly in cemeteries how high infant mortality rates were in frontier America.  There is an old saw that it wasn’t tough to live to 70, the major feat was to live past five. 

Cemeteries have many symbols that represent children–shoes, seedpods, cribs, cherubs–but one of the most common is the hanging bud.  The broken bud represents the flower that did not bloom into full blossom, the life that was cut short before it had a chance to grow to adulthood.  What is unusal about this gravestone is the hanging bud is severed by an arrow, what looks to be an overt action from Heaven.

The William Warner Monument, Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia

Alexander Milne Calder, the eldest of the family of Calder artists, gained fame for over 200 landmark sculptures he completed for Philadelphia’s City Hall including the massive sculpture of William Penn on top of the building. 

Calder, like many great artists, earned money from commissioned works including the William Warner Monument, a Victorian masterpiece of funerary art in the Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.  The female figure gazes into the distance, stoic and unemotional, as she lifts the lid of the coffin releasing billowing clouds that portray a visible face, presumably Warner’s. The visage swirls upward, with what appears to be faint wings amid the wisps, and is said to be of his soul being released from the grave to Heaven.