In the Oakwood Cemetery in Syracuse, New York, philanthropist Christina Colvin commissioned sculptor Ralph Cook (1847 – 1912) to create a monument to honor those orphans of the asylum who had died. According to the April 4, 1892 edition of the Syracuse Journal, Colvin’s “devotion to the Orphan Asylum has often stimulated others to follow her example. She labored for it in various directions … How large would be the pile of socks, stockings and mittens she knit till her lame, tired hands could knit no longer. She did good, as she had opportunity. Often stricken by sorrow, she strove in helping others to forget her own loneliness. Long connected with the Reformed church, whether she took the care and responsibility from less broad and experienced shoulders in her own social gatherings, greatly helping to ensure their success, or came into our homes with strong but tender hands and heartfelt sympathy in times of sickness and death, we all know we could trust dear “Aunt Tiny.”
According to the Smithsonian American Art Museums Art Inventories Catalog, the sculpture created by Cook depicts a “female figure holding a child in her left hand while comforting a toddler with her right.” The irony of the monument featuring a mother with two children and dedicated to the orphans of the county, is that the children buried in this section of the cemetery did not have mothers.
Two Pennsylvanian prominent families united—Johnston and McCandless. William Freame Johnston was an attorney and politician, elected to the state Assembly and state Senate and was eventually elected Governor. After a successful term as Governor, he went on to prove his ability in business in several different industries—oil refining, iron manufacture, and salt production.
Johnston’s daughter married William McCandless. William McCandless was an officer in the Civil War. After he mustered out with an honorable discharge he went into business as president of the American Window Glass Company.
Their Neo-classic monument features the Doric order characterized by columns that are usually fluted with a slightly curved and unadorned capital. The architrave is enhanced with triglyphs and a repeating motif of circles in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Between the columns, the monument features a classically dressed angel standing in a field of lilies. The lily, as a funerary symbol, has many meanings including purity, innocence, virginity, heavenly bliss, majestic beauty, and Christ’s resurrection.
The Easter Lily has long been associated with the Christian religion, commonly referred to as “White-Robed Apostles of Christ.” Early Christians believed that lilies sprouted where Jesus Christ’s sweat and tears fell to the ground in the Garden of Gethsemane. Christians also believe that the trumpet-shaped blossoms announce the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The bronze inset was cast at the T.F. McGann & Sons Foundry in Boston, Massachusetts. Unfortunately, there is not an artist’s signature on this piece.
The Brown Family Mausoleum in the Oakwood Cemetery in Syracuse, New York, is an Art Deco masterpiece. Art Deco is a design movement from the 1920s that marked a break from the fluid and flowing Art Nouveau designs of the 1890s. The term ‘Art Deco’ is derived from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, an exhibition of artists that showed their work in Paris in 1925. Arts Décoratifs was eventually truncated to Art Deco.
The Brown Family Mausoleum was constructed with white granite, and exhibits the clean, straight lines characteristic of the Art Deco designs from the 1920s. This mausoleum was modelled to look like a skyscraper, partly achieved with the vertical lines and by its soaring height of 25 feet. The exterior of the mausoleum is white granite, but the interior is a stark contrast constructed of polished black marble.
The inventor, Alexander Brown and his wife are buried within the mausoleum. Brown was a serial inventor with over 150 patents to his name in a wide variety of areas which included the L.C. Smith Shotgun, the Smith Premier full-keyboard upstrike typewriter, as well as various patents for the automatic telephone and different automative parts. In addition to his inventions, Brown was president of the Franklin Automotive Company and Director of the First Trust and Deposit Company.
With all of his inventions and creations, one of his most lastly designs was the design for his own mausoleum!
Even though the Ahern Family Mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, the Sherwood Family Mausoleum in the Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C., and the Charles Edward Crouse Mausoleum in the Oakwood Cemetery in Syracuse, New York, are in different cities and of different architectural styles, they share a common feature—the same door.
The Smithsonian Institution Research Information System (SIRIS) describes the door as a “Relief of a standing female figure with her back to the viewer and her face in profile appears on the door … The figure reaches out to the handle of the door with her proper right hand. Her proper left hand is raised and rests on some of the ornamental detail of the door. This ornamental detail consists of three rows of flowers along the top quarter followed by a narrow band of a wave-like design. The lower portion of the door is a grill work of foliage. The figure’s long flowing gown is off the shoulder on the proper right side and her hair is braided around her head.”
The door itself represent a portal. Portals come in many forms—a door, a window, even your eyes and your mouth are considered portals. Many superstitions about death concern portals, many of which come from the Victorian Age, some of which still exist today.
The eyes, for instance, are considered the windows to the soul. Victorians believed the eyes were powerful, almost magical, even in death. When a person died therefore, the body had to be removed from the home feet first (most people died at home in the 19th Century). In that way, the eyes of the deceased could not look back and lure a live person to follow the dead through the passageway to death.
The Victorians also believed that as you passed by a cemetery, you needed to hold your breath. The fear was that if one opened one’s mouth, that a spirit from the dead residing in the cemetery would enter your body through the portal—the open mouth.
Another superstition had to do with the mirrors in the home. After a death, the family very quickly covered the mirrors. It was believed that mirrors were false portals in a sense. The Victorians believed that the spirit of the dead could enter a mirror and become trapped in the mirror. If the spirit did so, it would not be able to complete its trip through the passageway from the Earthly realm to the Heavenly realm, or in some cases, to warmer climes.
The door as a motif in funerary art also symbolizes mystery. The door is the portal from the Earthly realm to the next. In Christianity, the door is usually viewed with hope, charity, and faith. The next life in the hereafter will be better than the one experienced here on Earth.
The bronze door was sculpted and signed by Stina Gustafson. Hilda Kristina “Stina” Gustafson (December 18, 1885 – March 7, 1937) was born in Sweden and married fellow artist Salvatore Lascari, who gained fame as a portrait painter. Gustafson was an accomplished sculptor winning a series of awards including the Waltrous Gold Medal from the National Academy of Design. She also won the McClees Award from the Pennsylvania of Fine Arts In 1935, she was inducted into the National Academy of Design.
Tragedy struck in 1937, Gustafson’s studio caught fire. After, she fell into a deep depression and was hospitalized. According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Monday, March 8, 1937 edition, the headline read, “Hilda H. G. Lascari Noted Sculptress Plunges to Death.” The paper reported, Gustafson “plunged to her death … from the 11th floor of the French Hospital … Manhattan. Early in January Mrs. Lascari suffered a nervous breakdown from which she was slowly recovering in the hospital. The unusually-gifted artist was last seem alive reading a book in the solarium on the hospital roof. An attendant entered the solarium some time later in the afternoon and raised an alarm when Mrs. Lascari was nowhere to be seen. The book was lying beside her chair and the window was open. Her body was found in the courtyard on the west side of the hospital.”
Sadly, the award-wining and talented artist died a tragic death at the age of 51. She was laid to rest in Rome, Italy, her husband’s homeland.
The soaring monument in the Oakwood Cemetery at Syracuse, New York, memorializes Olive and Henry Wigglesworth and James and Sylvia Wigglesworth Maitland.
Henry Wigglesworth was the son of Alfred and Selina Hardy and born in Belfast. Ireland. Their imposing marble monument as described by the National Park Service, American Monuments and Outdoor Sculpture Database, “contains a relief of a full-length female figure in a long, billowy dress. She holds a baby in the crook of her proper left arm, and a branch in her proper right hand. Behind the woman’s head is laurel in low relief.” The laurel symbol dates back to Roman times when soldiers wore them as triumphal signs of glory. In funerary art the laurel, often depicted in a wreath, is seen as a symbol of victory over death.
The sculpture was created by John Massey Rhind (July 9,1860 – January 1, 1936) a Scottish-born sculptor who lived and worked in the United States creating private and public works. His most famous work is the marble statue of Dr. Crawford W. Long which is located in the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington, D.C. Another example of his work can be found on the East side of the Philadelphia City Hall of Sam Wannamaker.
Two bronze statues in the Rose Hill Cemetery in Bloomington, Indiana, honor the men and women who fought in the service of their country.
The first statue erected was a bronze of a Union soldier placed in a circle at the highest point in the cemetery. The statue stands atop a large and elaborate limestone base. The front of the base has the initials G.A.R. carved in the center of the pediment. Each of the four sides of the base has a bronze insert—two depicting battle scenes and two showing the emblems of the Grand Army of the Republic organization.
No other war was like the American Civil War for Americans because every sailor or soldier, every collateral death, every field or railway yard that was destroyed, every city or town devastated by artillery was American. During the Civil War Americans were fighting against Americans—brother against brother—cousin against cousin. The war tore the country apart and threatened the existence of the Republic. And, more Americans were killed in the Civil War than any other war that in which Americans have fought. The total American deaths by war: Civil War 625,000.
The second statue is of an advancing doughboy, complete with metal helmet and rifle. The bronze rests on top of a limestone base that has four Doric columns supporting the platform on which the soldier is placed. Inside the colonnade is a bronze plaque that lists the 34 men who gave the ultimate sacrifice during the “Great War.” The war began in 1914 when Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated setting off a chain of events that embroiled much of Europe in the war. The United States was not initially in the war but sent forces in 1917 and 1918 with 116,516 Americans dying in battle.
Cemeteries throughout the United States pay tribute to the soldiers often with war memorials erected across America in town squares and cemeteries. In this case, both statues were produced by the W. H. Mullins Company of Salem Ohio.
The company produced a wide range of statuary and produced a 120 page catalogue showing the various statuary that could produce.
A couple of years ago during Halloween week, volunteers dressed in period costumes to play Bloomington residents who had passed away and were buried in the Rose Hill Cemetery. As they stood next to the gravestone, they retold the story of the life and death of the person.
In this reenactment, the actress retold the story of Mrs. Dupree’s accidental death when she was struck by a car. She is seen in the photo above, mouth agape and horrified, as Mrs. Dupree sees the car barreling toward her at a whopping 12 miles per hour. The accident was reported by the local news:
“Mrs. Anna Dupree, sixty years old, wife of George Dupree, foreman at the Monon railroad shop in Bloomington, died last Thursday night of injuries suffered when she was struck earlier in the evening by and automobile driven by James Flynn, living 5 miles east of the city. She attempted to dodge another car and stepped in front of Flynn’s machine. Flynn was arrested, but release after it was learned that the accident could not be averted. Mrs. Dupree is survived by the husband and daughter, Mrs. Jessie Mercer.”
In 1922, 14,859 people were killed in car accidents that year, Mrs. Dupree was sadly one of them. In the last data that was collected and reported—2023—over 40,000 deaths were due to car accidents. According to the Center for Disease control, “Fatalities that result from motor vehicle crashes are the second largest cause of accidental deaths in the United States”. Unintentional poisoning, motor vehicle traffic deaths, and unintentional falls lead the way in accidental deaths.
In the Old City Cemetery in Seymour, Indiana, there is a small gated plot that contains three graves of the infamous Reno brothers—Frank, William, and Simeon aka “Sim”. While no one would consider central Indiana the Old West, it is where the first train robbery in US history took place.
The Reno brothers were the nucleus of a gang that terrorized the Midwest. They were one of the very first gangs that consisted mainly of brothers—others followed, such as, the James Younger Gang, the Dalton Gang, etc. The Renos perpetrated small petty crimes at first, illegal card games, then burglaries, horse thieving, robberies, and they were suspected of murder. They grew more violent and eventually held Seymour hostage as they held up in the local hotel. Then they conducted a series of four train robberies, the first just outside the railroad hub of Seymour in late October 1866. The crime spree went on for two more years before they were caught.
Many of the gang members were awaiting trial when a group of vigilantes broke into the jail holding them. Ten members of the gang, including Frank, William, and Sim were strung up and lynched. None of the members of the vigilante group were ever identified or arrested.
A small plaque notes who they were:
“RENO GRAVES
Frank, William, and Simeon Reno, Leaders of the infamous Reno Gang that committed the world’s first train robbery at Seymour, October 6, 1866 were hanged by vigilantes in the New Albany Jail, December 12, 1868 and interred here December 15, 1868.”
Though the Reno Brothers were the first band of gang members to rob a train, they weren’t last. And even though they had national notoriety at the time, they have been nearly forgotten.
The early 1920s Flower Family Mausoleum in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has a vaguely Egyptian design to it without the convincing detail, such as a torus molding at the bottom of the cavetto cornice and around the corners of the mausoleum to emulate long bundled plants. Above the doorway, often on Egyptian-styled tomb would feature a winged globe with uroei snakes depicting three sets of falcon wings that symbolize the king, the sun, emanating from a globe representing the Egyptian god, Horus. Instead, the Flower Family Mausoleum features an acroterion above the doorway. The acroterion is a classical motif found in Roman and Greek architecture though it has its origins in Egyptian art and architecture. Rosettes adorn the moldings flanking the doorway. Even without the Egyptian design trimmings, the tomb gives one the sense of solemnity and a sense of eternity.
The Egyptian theme does not continue on the inside but instead is decorated with a stained-glass window with a distinct nautical theme replete with a sailing ship, sea monsters, gulls, dolphins, and tridents. The mystery: how is the nautical theme connected to Dr. Flower—a dentist?
Gravely Speaking 