Cherubim

Posted on August 29, 2012 by gravelyspeaking

Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta, Georgia

Cherubim, an order or choir of angels, are usually portrayed as chubby babies with wings.  In the angel hierarchy cherubim are considered to be in the second highest order of the nine orders of angels.  The Cherubim were sent to Earth to protect the pathway to the Tree of Life.

Cherubim sculptures often adorn the graves of children.  Here, the cherub is leaning against a tree and holding a wreath.  The tree represents a life that has been cut short.  The scroll which contained the inscription is almost completely illegible.  The word “son” is visible, so we know this is the grave of a child, we just don’t know how old he lived to be.

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Mother and Daughter

Posted on August 28, 2012 by gravelyspeaking

Union Cemetery, St. Clairsville, Ohio

In the Union Cemetery at St. Clairsville, Ohio, stands a lifesize white marble gravestone of a woman.  She is leaning against a post, holding a scroll in one hand and a wreath in the other.  The gravestone looks like a piece of folkart, slightly amaturish, yet compelling.  The woman’s gaze is captivating.

The inscription is faint and told the story of her death but is now illegible.  What looks to be clear is that a young mother and her daughter died and are most likely buried together.

At first the child is not apparent until you notice the base of the gravestone.  The baby girl is depicted as a mini-adult, wearing a long dress, arms folded and lying at the feet of the woman in the base of the gravestone.

Note: I first saw the gravestone above on the Website: www.graveaddiction.com.  Beth Santore, the Webmaster gave me great directions to find the cemetery.  I was recently in Ohio and snapped some pictures of the gravestone for myself.  I highly recommend her Website, especially for those tramping around Ohio graveyards!

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Baby Shoes and Socks!

Posted on August 26, 2012 by gravelyspeaking

Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta, Georgia

A pair of shoes often memorializes the grave of a child.  In this case, the pair of shoes marks the grave of a one and a half-year girl named Eleanor buried in the Oakland Cemetery at Atlanta, Georgia.  The headstone forms the end of this white marble cradle grave from 1922.  In this example, the shoes are sitting on top of the socks, too.

Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta, Georgia

 

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Baby Shoes

Posted on August 25, 2012 by gravelyspeaking

Eldridge Cemetery, Burlington, Vermont

There are many symbols that represent the young in funerary art—the broken bud, the lamb, and shoes.  A pair of shoes, reminiscent of the baby shoes that so many parents have bronzed, represents the loss of a child.  Sometimes one of the shoes is on its side.

The shoes are a poignant image of a baby that conjures up memories of a lost child–those first faultering steps, the first steps to an adulthood that never comes.

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Double scroll

Posted on August 25, 2012 by gravelyspeaking

Union Cemetery, Morristown, Ohio

This monument of cast zinc in the Union Cemetery at Morristown, Ohio, marks the graves of a mother and a father, Jonathan and Mariah Carpenter.  The monument features two scrolls side by side.  The scroll is a symbol that has more than one meaning.  The scroll can symbolize the Law or the Word of God.  The scroll can also commemorate honor.

Here each scroll displays a different epitaph.  Interestingly, the mother’s epitaph is specifically about her and is even addressed, “Dear Mother.”  The other epitaph, however, is not about the father but about both parents.

Dear Mother, in Earth’s thorny paths,

How long thy feet have trod,

To find at last this peaceful rest,

Safe in the arms of God.

.

Dear is the spot where Christians sleep,

And sweet the strains that Angels pour,

O! Why should we in anguish weep,

They are not lost but gone before.

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Same Statue, Different Base

Posted on August 24, 2012 by gravelyspeaking

Forest Home Cemetery, Forest Park, Illinois

The Monumental Bronze Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, produced white bronze cemetery markers and monuments to order—none of the monuments were premade.  The customer put together a marker paging through a catalog, choosing the frame, the panels, the epitaph, and the inscription.  After that was done, then the local sales rep sent the order to company where it was made.

Forest Home Cemetery, Forest Park, Illinois

In the two photographs both customers, one at Forest Park, Illinois, and one at St. Clairsville, Ohio, chose the same statue of a woman standing holding an open book in her left hand, with her right hand raised upward with a finger pointing to the Heavens.  But the monument in the Forest Home Cemetery at Forest Park had the statue mounted on a granite base 6 to 8 feet above the ground, while the monument in the Union Cemetery at St. Clairsville is made with a cast zinc base.  Same statue but completely different treatment to order for each base.

Union Cemetery, St. Clairsville, Ohio

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Praying child, A closer look

Posted on August 23, 2012 by gravelyspeaking

Somerset Cemetery, Somerset, Ohio

KATIE L. McCARTY

DAUGHTER OF E.E. & S.F. McCARTY

DIED AUG. 26, 1882

AGED 13 YRS 4 MOS 19 DYS

A closer look at the zinc monument of Katie McCarty portrays an innocent young child in image and word. The statue depicts a young child sitting on a pillow, looking upward to Heaven in prayer.  The epitaphs on the two side panels and the back panel speak to her young age at the time of her death, referring to her as a child, a cherub, and a floweret.

WHERE IMMORTAL SPIRITS REIGN,

THERE WE SHALL MEET AGAIN

.

SLEEP ON, MY SWEET ONE!

SLEEP! SO EARLY GONE!

TO EARTH A CHILD IS LOST,

TO HEAVEN A CHERUB BORN.

.

ANGELS GUARD THEE,

‘TILL WE MEET THEE.

.

WE MISS THE BRIGHT EYES

OF OUR DARLING CHILD,

AND THE SWEET, ROSY LIPS

THAT SO OFT ON US SMILED.

.

A FLOWER JUST BLOOMING INTO LIFE,

ENTICED AN ANGEL’S EYE,

TOO PURE FOR EARTH, HE SAID, “COME HOME”

AND BADE THE FLOWERET DIE.

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Praying Child

Posted on August 22, 2012 by gravelyspeaking

Somerset Cemetery, Somerset, Ohio

The Monumental Bronze Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, produced white bronze cemetery markers and monuments in a wide assortment of sizes and shapes.  The markers they produced often mimicked the gravestones that were being produced in stone.  What traditional stone carvers created in marble and granite, the Monumental Bronze Company produced in cast zinc. Though the base is quite different on each of these grave markers, there is no mistaking the similarities between the statues of the child.

Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York

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Our Drummer Boy

Posted on August 21, 2012 by gravelyspeaking

Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York

The Monumental Bronze Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, produced “white bronze” cemetery markers and monuments in a wide assortment of sizes and shapes including statues like the one produced for and in the likeness of 12-year old Clarence Mackenzie found at the Green-Wood Cemetery at Brooklyn, New York.

The monument is adorned with symbolism.  The corners display artillery cannons pointed downward.  One panel is emblazoned with the G.A.R. flag ribbon and star while another shows two flags with their staffs crossed.  The number “13” is centered just below his feet representing the regiment in which he served.

The Grand Army of the Republic ribbon and star

The panels tell part of his story.  The drummer boy was shot in his tent by an errant bullet from soldiers practice shooting close by.  Clarence never saw the battlefield and yet was the first casualty of the Civil War from King’s County.

Erected by the Drum and Bugle Corps of the

13th REGT. N.G., S.N.Y.,

In Memory of

CLARENCE D. MACKENZIE,

Born Feb. 8, 1849,

Died at Annapolis, MD., June 11, 1861,

Aged 12 YRS 4 MOS 3 DYS

This Young Life Was the First Offering

From King’s County in the War of the Rebellion

OUR DRUMMER BOY

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American Bronze

Posted on August 20, 2012 by gravelyspeaking

Forest Home Cemetery, Forest Park, Illinois

The Monumental Bronze Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, set up their first subsidary in Detroit, Michigan.  Others followed in Philadelphia, New Orleans, St. Thomas, Ontario, Des Moines, and Chicago.  The Chicago subsidary was named the American Bronze Company and the characteristic bluish-gray zinc markers can be found with that name.  Many of the zinc markers do not display a manufacturer’s name.

Contrary to popular beleif, the markers were not carried in the Sears Roebuck catalog.  They were sold by enterprising salesmen who carried a catalog with them to show customers the many styles and price ranges of their product line.  In many cemeteries you can find evidence of highly successful salesmen who sold a large number of the markers.

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