Markers XXVII

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MARKERS XXVII Annual Journal of The Association for Gravestone Studies edited by

June Hadden Hobbs

The Association for Gravestone Studies Greenfield, Massachusetts

Markers XXVII Editorial Board June Hadden Hobbs, Editor Bruce S. Elliott Richard Francaviglia Laurel K. Gabel Joy M. Giguere Blanche M. G. Linden Tom Malloy Richard E. Meyer Cornelia Paraskevas Julie Rugg Timothy Sedore David Charles Sloane Richard Veit David H. Watters Elizabethada Wright Wilbur Zelinsky

Gardner-Webb University Carleton University University of Texas at Arlington Independent Scholar Ivy Tech Community College Independent Scholar Mount Wachusett Community College Western Oregon University Western Oregon University University of York (UK ) The City University of New York Bronx Community College University of Southern California Monmouth University University of New Hampshire Editor, Markers II-IV Rivier College The Pennsylvania State University

The Association for Gravestone Studies Greenfield Corporate Center 101 Munson Street - Suite 108 Greenfield, MA 01301 www.gravestonestudies.org Copyright Š 2011 All rights reserved ISBN: 1-878381-19-9 ISSN: 0227-8726 LCN: 81-642903 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper of Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984 Printed in the United States of America Publications Unltd., Charlotte, North Carolina www.publicationsunltd.com Publication layout by C.V. Davis Cover Photograph:

CONTENTS Editor’s Introduction

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June Hadden Hobbs

A Tribute to Helen Sclair

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John Martine

A Tribute to Ralph L. Tucker

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Bob Drinkwater

Memorializing the Civil War Dead: Modernity and Corruption under the Grant Administration

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Bruce S. Elliott

Cities of the Dead: Architectural Motifs and Burial Practices 56 in Curaçao’s Religious and Ethnic Communities Kent Coupé and Laura Leibman

Eighteenth-Century Gravestone Carvers of the Upper Narragansett Basin: The Real George Allen Jr.

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Vincent F. Luti

Wooden Artifacts in Cemeteries

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Kimberly D. Dugan and Ronald W. Anthony

The Year’s Work in Cemetery and Gravestone Studies: An International Bibliography

155

Joy M. Giguere

Contributors

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Index

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Editor’s Introduction June Hadden Hobbs

Markers XXVII illustrates quite deftly the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of gravestone studies. The first two essays in this issue interpret the cultural history of the United States and Curaçao by employing the tools of historical, sociological, anthropological, religious, and cultural studies. They answer the need Cary Carson identified in 1997 to broaden the scope of material cultural studies by putting this still-young discipline “into a national, even international picture.”1 Bruce S. Elliott’s “Memorializing the Civil War Dead: Modernity and Corruption under the Grant Administration,” for example, examines the business of honoring the Civil War dead with appropriately respectful headstones in the national cemeteries, both as part of the struggle toward inventing an America that recognized “the democracy of sacrifice” and as a vexed, non-linear process of establishing modernity in a nineteenth-century nation that at once valued and distrusted economic and cultural “progress.”

Similarly, Kent Coupé and Laura Leibman’s article, “Cities of the Dead: Architectural Motifs and Burial Practices in Curaçao’s Religious and Ethnic Communities,” problematizes a commonplace understanding of race and ethnicity as fixed and impermeable. Coupé and Leibman analyze Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Masonic cemeteries to argue that burial practices and memorialization both create and challenge the ethnic, religious, and class distinctions of this small Caribbean nation. They conclude that “Curaçao’s cities of the dead reflect the island’s complicated racial and religious history, as well as the ties that bound and split the community.”

On a more regional level, Vincent Luti’s “The Real George Allen Jr.,” illustrates a particularly important branch of gravemarker scholarship: carver studies. The third of three articles on the Allen family shop of Rehoboth, Massachusetts, that have now appeared in Markers, Luti’s essay is a tribute to the value of the patient, painstaking study of material objects over many years.

In addition to untangling the complicated attribution of a number of stones carved in the unique Narragansett Basin regional style, Luti’s essay offers a valuable glimpse into the cultural conditions under which colonial carvers

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worked and provides a cautionary tale for those who leap to conclusions about material objects without doing their homework.

Finally, Kimberly D. Dugan and Ronald W. Anthony’s essay takes gravemarker studies from the realm of the theoretical to the venue of the scientific and the practical. These noted preservationists and scientists offer low-cost and preventative strategies that can be used by cemetery stewards to “forestall the deterioration of irreplaceable civic and personal historic resources.” Science has rarely been one of the multiple disciplines represented

by Markers scholarship, yet its fundamental importance to the field should be obvious. No scholar will be able to study, analyze, and theorize about monuments unless they are preserved, both for the witness they bear to the existence of lives and communities and for their cultural significance.

Taken together, these four essays illustrate the challenges of material studies in general and of gravestone studies in particular: the need to stay on the cutting edge of a discipline that prides itself on engaging the interests of both academics and non-academics; the importance of flexible thinking that views material phenomena through a variety of lenses; the necessity for thoughtful, time-consuming, unglamorous field research; and, perhaps above all, the crucial importance of addressing what gravestone scholar Scott Baird calls the “so what?” of the data, especially as it relates to a national or international construction of culture.

Markers is currently indexed in the Bibliography of the History of Art, America: History and Life, Historical Abstracts, and the MLA International Bibliography. In partnership with the University of Massachusetts–Amherst Special Collections Library, the Association for Gravestone Studies has now archived past issues of Markers on the University of MassachusettsAmherst Libraries website for free viewing and downloading. Prospective contributors should consult the editorial guidelines on the AGS website at www.gravestonestudies.org. Please send questions, comments, and submissions to June Hadden Hobbs at P.O. Box 1345, Boiling Springs, NC, 28017-1345 or jhobbs@gardner-webb.edu.

J.H.H. Correction: The photos of Dr. James A. Slater on p. 9 of Markers XXVI should have been attributed to Ruth Shapleigh-Brown. The editor regrets this omission.

1. Cary Carson, “Material Culture History: The Scholarship Nobody Knows,” in American Material Culture:The Shape of the Field, ed. Ann Smart Martin and J. Ritchie Garrison (Wintherhur, DE: Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1997), 420.

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A Tribute to Helen Sclair 1930-2010 John Martine

I was at Helen Sclair’s one afternoon when she received a phone call from a telemarketer. She had politely told him that she wasn’t interested in whatever he was selling, and he asked if her neighbors might be interested.

She told him she was certain that they would not be interested. He asked her how she knew that, and she answered “Because all of my neighbors are DEAD.” She had been living in Bohemian National Cemetery in Chicago since 2002, which was also the year I met her at the AGS Conference in Savannah, Georgia. Comments like that made Helen Sclair such an enjoyable person to be around.

If you never met her, more is the pity. She was an amazing woman, ever willing to explain or discuss some aspect of current Chicago politics or history or debate which is the ugliest grave monument in Chicago, but she never suffered a fool kindly. She particularly disliked misinformed writing, because misinformation is often read and quoted until it becomes a “fact.”

When Helen was young she sang opera, and later taught music and instructed children with learning disabilities in Chicago’s Inner City. She mentioned to me once that it was her husband’s death that started her interest in cemeteries. Her knowledge of Chicago history was vast, and some of it was quite personal.

Helen’s parents had been missionaries in Africa. The mission station had no church building, and her father devised a plan to solve the problem.

He knew of a zoo in Chicago that did not have a gorilla, and he decided to capture one to sell to the zoo to raise the money for the church. That gorilla was Bushman, a very famous attraction in his day who now resides in the Field Museum.

Helen had a copy of John Dillinger’s death mask under her dining room table, and she once mentioned, almost in passing, that her husband’s parents had owned a bar next to the Biograph Theater, where Dillinger was shot in 1934. The bar was also where he stopped for his last drink before going to the movies.

The last time I saw her, she recuperating from surgery across the street from Bohemian National, with a view of the crematorium. She was very excited about getting a copy of Illinois’ new cemetery legislation and pointed out the similarities of her roommate’s bed to a colonial headstone

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and footstone, while the woman was in it. That was Helen: she was always excited to be learning something new, or doing something--giving lectures, teaching a class at the Newberry, maintaining her post at the Newberry Library’s yearly book sale in the collectable’s room, where she could direct me to the best (not the most expensive) books on Chicago. Those are the places I will miss seeing Helen Sclair.

I am going to miss our Sunday morning telephone calls when she would tell me she what had planned for the coming week. Her agenda was always more interesting than my plan to go to work and come home.

She might be entertaining the Czech Ambassador, who visited Bohemian National once a year. One year he asked her if she wanted anything from the Czech Republic, and she asked for a Czech funeral memorial poster. He said he would see what he could do. One week later a package of them arrived and were duly added to The Collection.

She loved to show off The Collection, and there was always something new being added. Perhaps it was a wicker casket or a guest book stand from a funeral home. There were the hundreds of postcards of cemeteries; casket catalogs and the other books—hundreds of them—on every aspect of cemeteries; items from Dia de Los Muertos and Ching Ming, Mexican and Chinese Festivals that honor the dead; fraternal ribbons that could be reversed for funerals; memorial cards; a tea cup from Princess Charlotte’s funeral in 1817; a commemorative handkerchief from King Edward VII’s funeral; a sign from a cemetery that was misspelled: “Cemetary Entrance.”

Then there were more whimsical things: candy shaped like bones, Halloween decorations, a welcome mat that shrieked when you stepped on it. There was something at every turn. Was it Halloween gone wild?

She was usually interviewed when Halloween was approaching by one of the Chicago newspapers or magazines. I remember one Halloween interview was at Helen’s home at Bohemian National. Viewing The Collection, the interviewer asked if she decorated this much for Christmas as well. It was a story Helen relished.

Did she really know everything about Chicago history? Probably not, but I would be hard pressed to have found a deficiency in her knowledge. Where is the last wooden street in Chicago? Where was the lakeshore 10,000 years ago?

What part of Chicago is not in Cook County? What Chicago mayor isn’t really in his mausoleum? She knew it all. But, ultimately, she knew where the bodies were buried. When a skeleton was found by work crews repairing a water main or constructing a building, the Chicago Police called Helen, because she could tell you if that street had once been inside a cemetery that was relocated. She was usually at least mentioned on the evening news when that happened. One large mansion in Chicago has been placed on the market to be sold every few years. Each time it happened, Helen called the owners to remind them it was on the site of a cemetery that was not relocated. Each time the mansion was removed from the market within hours. She was, after all, “The Cemetery Lady.” Every year she was auctioned off at National Public Radio’s Auction for a Cemetery Tour. Every year she commanded a high figure.

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Always looking for new information, Helen would ask everyone she met, taxi drivers, mail men, store clerks, “Where are you from?” She was fascinated by people and by Chicago’s ethnic diversity. She was excited when she found out that her new neighbors—living ones--were Transylvanians.

But an Uzbek taxi driver could send her into raptures. She had a game with Chicagoans. You could tell her what nationality you were, and she would tell you where your family is buried. She guessed where my family was buried and where we held the post-funeral luncheons. She always wanted to learn new things. She purchased a computer not long before her death and was taking lessons on how to use it.

She was an advocate for the dead. She helped stop the planned relocation of a Jewish cemetery on land where someone wanted to build condos. Commenting in a Chicago Tribune interview about moving St. Johannes Cemetery as part of the expansion of O‘Hare Airport, she intoned, “The dead are always getting in the way of the living.” It was Helen’s job to make certain that everyone was aware of any problems she came across, whether it was cemeteries leveling markers or selling off land to developers.

She seemed to know about everything that was going on in the industry. She was against Illinois’ lax supervision of cemeteries, yet took no delight at the recent events at Burr Oak Cemetery, the final resting place of several notable African-Americans, where people who worked for the cemetery allegedly disinterred bodies so that their grave plots could be resold. She was part of the group that designed the replacement gravestone for Charles Dickens’ brother Augustus, who is buried in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.

On my first visit to her house in Bohemian National, she took me on a tour of the cemetery and to see her gravestone of Barre Granite. She designed it herself. It reads, “Helen A. Sclair, The Cemetery Lady , 1930- ,” and on the base “An Advocate for the Dead.” So she hasn’t really moved very far, I guess. But I will miss the Sunday phone calls.

Helen Sclair reading the AGS Quarterly. Photo courtesy of John Martine.

John Martine

Helen Sclair’s gravestone in Bohemian National Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois.

Photo courtesy of John Martine.

Helen Sclair and John Martine. Photo courtesy of John Martine.

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A Tribute to Ralph L. Tucker 1921-2010 Bob Drinkwater

On June 19, 1976, more than a hundred gravestone enthusiasts— scholars, museum curators, photographers, preservationists, professionals and amateurs--converged at the Dublin School in Dublin, New Hampshire, to share their passion for Puritan gravestone art. Among them was the Rev. Ralph Tucker. Ralph had begun photographing gravestones in the Boston area during the 1960s. He was especially interested in the work of the Lamson family. At that time, Ralph and his family lived in Malden, Massachusetts, where the Lamsons had lived, not far from Bell Rock Cemetery, where eighty per cent of the early gravestones are believed to have come from the Lamson shop. The Dublin conference was a historic moment in the life of this important gravestone scholar and in the history of the Association for Gravestone Studies.

After moving to Newbury, Massachusetts, in Essex County (north of Boston), Ralph began studying and photographing the work of a group of stonecutters he referred to as the Merrimac Valley School. Included in this group were Lt. John Hartshorne and all of the Essex County gravestone cutters who adopted Hartshorne’s robust, stylized folk imagery. Lt. Hartshorne moved to southeastern Connecticut around 1720. (There, the stonecutting tradition he had introduced in Essex County was taken up by several families of Connecticut stonecutters.) In 1978, Ralph Tucker, in collaboration with Jim Slater and Dan Farber, presented a definitive study, “The Colonial Gravestone Carvings of John Hartshorne,” at the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, and thereby helped set the standard for gravestone attribution studies for years to come. Since then, Ralph’s articles on the Lamsons, the Merrimac Valley School, and other New England gravestone cutters have appeared in Markers, the AGS Newsletter, AGS Quarterly and other publications (see below).

Who was Ralph Tucker? From his obituary, published in the Portland (Maine) Herald, we learn that Ralph was the son of Sidvin and Ruby Tucker.

He was born in Winthrop, Massachusetts, just north of Boston, May 29, 1921. (When Ralph spoke, it was immediately apparent that he had spent most of his life in the Boston area.) After attending Winthrop High School, MIT, and Tufts University, he enrolled at the Episcopal Theological School in

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Cambridge. He was ordained as an Episcopal priest on Palm Sunday, 1947.

From 1947 to 1949, the Rev. Tucker served as a missionary in Kiangsu, China.

He spent most of the rest of his professional career in eastern Massachusetts, serving as the rector of Episcopal parishes in New Bedford, Burlington, and West Newbury and as a chaplain at hospitals and prisons. Ralph Tucker is remembered to have been “especially dedicated to serving the troubled, the sick and the institutionalized” and to have been a strong supporter of civil rights. In 1965, he traveled to Montgomery, Alabama, to participate in a march led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and in subsequent years, he was active in protests against racial discrimination in the Boston area.

Laurel Gabel met Ralph in the 1960s while researching her family’s history. She was then living in California, and wrote to Ralph regarding her ancestors, the Wymans. After she and her family had moved back to New England, she attended a family reunion, and there met Ralph, who had come to talk about the Lamsons. At Ralph’s suggestion, Laurel attended the 1980 AGS Conference at Bradford College. She soon found her calling in gravestone studies. Many will remember Ralph as a driving force during the formative years of AGS; as a generous mentor, always happy to share his knowledge; and as a loyal friend.

I met Ralph Tucker at the first Dublin Seminar in 1976 and remember him as someone who knew how to get things done. Ralph was one of the five Dublin conferees invited to meet and discuss the formation of what would become the Association for Gravestone Studies. In July 1977, he became the first president of AGS. Following his term as President, Ralph continued to serve on the AGS Board of Trustees. He helped plan and organize our 1980 Conference at Bradford College in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and our 1989 Conference at Gov. Dummer Academy in Byefield, Massachusetts. During this time, Ralph continued to pursue his research on the Lamsons and the Merrimac Valley carvers. In recognition of his many years of intensive research and dedicated service, we honored him with the Harriette Merrifield Forbes Award in 1992.

After retirement, Ralph and his wife, Mildred, moved to Georgetown, Maine, a small coastal town south of Bath. There, he continued his research and writing, and in 1996, helped organize our 1996 Conference, held at the University of Southern Maine in Gorham. In 2005 Ralph Tucker donated his substantial collection of early New England gravestone photographs and research notes to the AGS Archives. His collection includes several hundred color slides and several thousand black and white prints and negatives, individually labeled. When I spoke with Ralph in early 2006, he told me: “I have attempted to photograph all the stones regardless of condition, not just the ‘pretty’ ones.” His research notes are compiled in a folder of Microsoft Word and Excel files. Within those files, Ralph has left us a number of loose ends to pick up and follow.

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Ralph Tucker’s published work includes: “The Colonial Gravestone Carvings of John Hartshorne” (co-authored with Jim Slater, with photographs by Dan Farber) in Puritan Gravestone Art II, Annual Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, 1978.

“The Mullicken Family Gravestone Carvers of Bradford, Massachusetts, 1663-1768,” in Markers IX, 1992.

“The Lamson Family Gravestone Carvers of Charlestown and Malden, Massachusetts,” in Markers X, 1993.

“Merrimac Valley Style Gravestones: The Leighton and Worster Families,” in Markers XI, 1994.

“Merrimac Valley Carvings,” in The Essex Genealogist, Feb. 1995.

“The Joshua Hempstead Diary,” in Markers XII, 1995.

“The Pratt Family of Stonecutters,” in Markers XIV, 1997.

Short articles and notes in the AGS Newsletter (1979-1990) and AGS Quarterly (1991-1998).

Note: Included with the Tucker Collection are computer spreadsheets on which the 6000+ stones represented in the collection are listed. Entries can be sorted by carver, date and a number of other variables. There are several binders of 35 mm. slides in archival plastic slide sheets, sorted by carver; several file boxes of black and white prints; and several volumes of black and white negatives. All of the slides, prints and negatives are labeled and/or indexed for easy reference.

Bob Drinkwater

“It’s not a Lamson!”

Ralph Tucker (with camera), Dan and Jessie Lie Farber (to Tucker’s right), and two unidentified conferees.

Mechanic St. Burying Ground, Westfield, Massachusetts.

Photo by Carol Perkins.

Ralph Tucker, 1995 AGS Conference.

Westfield State College, Westfield, Massachusetts.

Photo by Carol Perkins.

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Frontispiece 1: Headboards at Arlington National Cemetery, c.1870, from a stereoview. Deterioration of the wooden headboards posed the question of how 300,000 permanent markers could be produced economically. Private collection.

Frontispiece 2: Same view May 2009. The headboards have been replaced by headstones, and the pathways of 140 years ago have given way to additional modern graves.

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Memorializing the Civil War Dead: Modernity and Corruption under the Grant Administration Bruce S. Elliott

The American Civil War in many respects was a prototypically modern conflict. It was fought by volunteer armies that incurred large-scale losses, and the proliferation of print media and photographic technology brought gruesome accounts and images into the nation’s homes. The Civil War saw the beginning of the widespread use of embalming, employed by private contractors who returned home the corpses of members of wealthy families. The war also occasioned the government’s acknowledgement of the necessity to recognize the democracy of sacrifice by marking the graves of all who fought for the Union, regardless of wealth or status.1 It was no longer acceptable to leave the dead strewn on the field of battle, or bury them anonymously in trenches or common graves, and erect public monuments merely to the generals. Whether the pervasiveness of death in antebellum culture inured the citizens of the new Republic to the sacrifice of the nation’s youth, as Mark Schantz has argued, or whether the populace was deeply shocked by the scale of the slaughter, as Drew Gilpin Faust has contended, there emerged a general consensus that citizen soldiers had to be commemorated as individuals and be accorded appropriate funerary rites.2 For a state in the process of formation, official recognition of voluntary sacrifice was necessary to legitimate the state’s employment of such colossal violence in its own defense.3

Despite this emphasis on memorializing the common soldier, the burgeoning literature on Civil War commemoration4 pays scant attention to the actual production of the headstones contracted by the War Department to replace the deteriorating wooden headboards in the new national cemeteries (Figs. 1 & 2).5 Faust in This Republic of Suffering explores the logistical as well as the emotional response to the slaughter. Her seventh chapter deals with the postwar re-interment program, the national cemeteries, the repatriation of Confederate dead, and the centrality of Ladies Memorial Associations in the South, a story enlarged upon by Caroline Janney.6 Faust terminates her account in 1871, thus omitting consideration of the War Department’s headstone program which began the following year.

Commemorating the dead of a modern war demanded modern solutions. Producing 300,000 individual permanent markers to standard

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specifications tested the capacity of what was largely a craft industry to move closer to modernity, and this in two respects. First, the headstone project can be acknowledged as a significant milestone in the shift toward mechanized, deskilled mass production techniques. It marked the first time, indeed, that every stage in headstone production was accomplished by machinery. But the detailed narrative reveals that this transformation advanced by fits and starts and was not a simple linear progression. Secondly, it constituted a movement in the direction of modern business models, where innovation was advanced not by traditional craftsmen skilled in their trade but by entrepreneurs and businessmen putting technology, capital, and labor together.

Both innovations were broadly contested; indeed, every aspect of the project became a bone of contention, even a focal point for fury.

Modernity was not a set of universally adopted, self-evidently advantageous new practices and principles. If one could praise the efficiency and costeffectiveness of machine production, standardization, and larger markets, one might query the aesthetics and durability of the product, and lament the loss of the handcrafted, the diverse, and the local.7 In the view of Anthony Giddens, indeed, modernity implied the “disembedding” of social and business relations from face-to-face local contexts and webs of personal relationships. It necessitated learning to trust in “expert systems. . . . of technical accomplishment or professional expertise” of people one did not know and whose knowledge it was beyond one’s capacity to evaluate.8 It was especially difficult for those in the trade to accept that solutions to thorny problems might come from interlopers who lacked “the expertise of generations.”9 This could be profoundly unsettling. The Civil War headstone project was in many respects a hothouse environment for forcing these developments and the ensuing debates. As there was a substantial government contract involved, state subvention became a motivation for innovative solutions.

The incentive of profits lured the entrepreneur, but also the charlatan and parasite. I will argue, however, that the charges of scandal attaching to the award of the contracts were intensified by the tendency to see the involvement of entrepreneurs and contractors with no previous experience in the stone trades as prima facie evidence of jobbery rather than as an appropriate and legitimate business form. The Secretary of War and the Quartermaster General were themselves floundering at divining a way to produce 300,000 stones affordably, and some of the irregularities of the contract process arose from adjusting the specifications to the emerging realities of new production techniques.

Distrust of Novelty: Meigs’ Iron Markers

Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs (Fig. 3) himself proposed, in 1866, a technological solution to replacement of the wooden headboards: markers of galvanized iron, or cast iron coated with zinc. He

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designed the headblocks himself (Fig. 4),10 but they proved unappealing aesthetically and were greeted with derision. They were denounced in the Senate as looking “more like a tin kettle than anything else, and are liable to be kicked off and kicked about,” a “burlesque rather than a monument.” The bill to establish the National Cemeteries was postponed for a month, and was passed in February 1867, mentioning only “a small headstone, or block” without specifying the material.

Concerns were raised about the wisdom of adopting a new and unproven technology, as well as about the appropriateness of their appearance.

The Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, submitted the question of the headblocks’ durability to the National Academy of Sciences. The experts reported back that if any of the iron were exposed to rain by chipping away of the zinc coating, a galvanic current would erode the zinc entirely leaving the iron fully exposed to the elements.11 Bids, however, had already been called for in October 1866, Fig. 3. General Montgomery C. with sample markers distributed to Meigs (1816-1892), Quartermaster depot quartermasters’ offices throughout General U.S. Army 1861-1882, the country.12 Ninety-two bids were the officer in charge of national received, the lowest from the Washington cemeteries. Library of Congress, partnership of Strong & Donohue.13 Both LC-B813-6417 B [P&P] partners were known to the Department, though neither had experience in foundry work. Samuel Strong, a New York builder, had been Meigs’ predecessor as general superintendent of works for the extension of the Capitol Building in the 1850s, but he had resigned following accusations by a Senate committee of extorting money from workmen and having an interest in the brick contracts.14 His partner in the proposal, William J. Donohue, was a conveyancer and general agent but he had been acting superintendent for the burial of Union soldiers under Lt. Col. James M. Moore following the war. Presaging the type of business arrangement that would produce the government headstones in 1873, these men with no experience in the metal trades retained a former Albany ironmaster at an annual salary of $5,000 to lease a furnace and supervise the work.15 But for months nothing happened.

Rumors circulated about the outcome of the competition. The Boston Post complained in 1868 of “the celebrated tombstone job under Stanton and his gross mismanagement of the contract.” The Post reported that the contract had been let to the low bidders, but that two-thirds of the job had

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subsequently been taken from them and doled out to some of Secretary Stanton’s political cronies.16 In fact Stanton had referred the specifications to a high-level internal committee in 1867, which reported in favor of Meigs’ design.17 Still unconvinced, Stanton in January 1868 had ordered that nothing be done about the markers, and so the contract was not in fact awarded. In 1870 the money appropriated for the project reverted to the Treasury.18 The Boston report cannot have been more than an elaborate unsubstantiated rumor. Strong & Donohue nonetheless sued for failure to award the contract, but the case was dismissed in May 1871.19 There is often said to be one of Meigs’ cast-iron headblocks in Section 13 at Arlington National Cemetery, a reminder of the abandoned plan, but the marker there is in fact a later white bronze monument.20

Fig. 4. Design for iron headblock by Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs, July 1866. Meigs’s design was widely disparaged and compared with a kettle. NARA, RG92 E294, Box 1, M.C. Meigs, press copies of private letters, 1865-67, f. 301, memo July 12 [1866].

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Contested Memorial Landscapes

While the replacement of the headboards was on hold (1870), one of the inspectors of national cemeteries, Major Oscar Mack, drafted a report to the new Secretary of War, General William Worth Belknap (Fig. 5), appointed 25 October 1869, recommending that the Department follow the example of Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati and employ unobtrusive 6”x6” granite markers flush with the ground. “Long rows, or large numbers, of uniform head-boards, or marble or other slabs, are not pleasing to the eye,” Mack averred, “whilst scarcely any thing in a landscape is more agreeable to the sight than a fresh, neatly trimmed lawn.”21 Spring Grove was the prototype of the late-Victorian lawn cemetery that would flower in the 20th century as the memorial garden aesthetic. Adolph Strauch, the superintendent and godfather of Spring Grove, had won a convert in Mack, who readily acknowledged his advice.22 But Mack’s boss, Montgomery Meigs, was already irked that his pet iron markers were being savaged in the press and the legislature, and miffed that Secretary Belknap was slighting his advice. He no doubt was less than thrilled that Mack had gone over his head and written directly to the Secretary of War.

Fig. 5. General William Worth Belknap (1829-1890), Secretary of War 1869-1876.

Belknap was accused of corruption over the 1873 headstone contracts.

Library of Congress, LC-BH83-2519 [P&P].

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Meigs responded, rejecting what was to become, in time, the modern aesthetic, but he did so to argue the primacy of another modern principle: universal commemoration, the naming of common soldiers and not merely of generals. It was imperative, he said, that each soldier have a stone with his name and details, for he was convinced that their great-grandsons would want to find their specific burial places and see their contributions honored individually, and not collectively or anonymously.23 He had earlier rejected suggestions that his iron markers bear only the grave number: “I do not believe that those who visit the graves of their relatives would have any satisfaction in finding them ticketed and numbered like London Policemen or convicts. Every civilized man desires to have his friend’s name marked on his monument.”24 He responded to Mack’s report in similar vein: [T]he usual practice of man is to raise, not to sink, a monument, and it had better be followed. The whole object is to gratify a sentiment; and I think there can be no doubt that the mere numbering the dead would shock 99 out of 100 visitors, while all would be gratified to find the graves of their dead friends distinguished by inscriptions giving name and rank, date and Regiment, which last also gives the state from which he entered the service.25

Meigs had his way in this, though dates of death were not at first included.

The markers for the unknowns, however, ended up a variant of what Mack proposed, based on the Spring Grove model.26

In practice, the democratization and implicit egalitarianism of commemoration were compromised by the persistence and indeed intensification of traditional social categories, of class and racial boundaries.

Others have recounted the controversies and consequences of the decision to exclude the Confederate dead (reversed at Arlington in 1901 and generally in 1906).27 Commercial monuments already mingled with the headboards, erected by families that could afford them, and they would continue to be erected amongst the standard-issue headstones that followed (Figs. 1 & 2). (They are now allowed only in sections where precedents existed before 1947.28) At Arlington signs still forbid visitors intruding on the lawn in sections reserved for high-ranking officers. The races, too, were segregated by “local custom” in national cemeteries. At Arlington colored troops and civilian contrabands were marginalized in the peripheral Sec. 27 (Fig, 6). Integration was mandated in 1948, but the regulation was applied only to newly surveyed sections until well into the 1950s.29 Modern or Shoddy? The 1872 Competition

It was likely the Strong & Donohue lawsuit that delayed further action into 1872. Following passage of an amending Act of June 9, 1872, the

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Quartermaster General issued a new circular on August 1 calling for proposals for headstones. Unfortunately no restrictions were noted as to size or type of stone, even in the “Information for Bidders.”30 An undated supplementary circular attempted to clarify that “no size, kind of stone, or style of letter is prescribed. The law [of February 22, 1867] requires the War Department to invite proposals for head-stones.” The Department would adopt the style that seemed best suited from amongst the samples submitted, and use the same type in all the National Cemeteries.31 The wording was unfortunate, for “no size, kind of stone, or style of letter” was widely construed to mean that any material was acceptable, “iron, stone, marble, wood or composite coming under the bids,” as one newspaper stated it, despite the specification of headstones.32

Fig. 6. Headstone to a member of the U.S. Colored Troops, Sec. 27, Arlington.

Photo by B. Elliott.

This generated a flood of some 350 submissions in an arresting variety of designs and materials ranging from the “exceedingly chaste and beautiful” to the utterly unacceptable. The samples were put on view to potential contractors and the public in a former art gallery on F Street in Washington. Marble works in Newark (Ohio), Cincinnati, and Louisville had submitted “the most fitting and beautiful designs in Italian marble, and the

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prices, owing to importation direct by the river, are quite as low as those of Eastern yards.” Dealers in Missouri, Ohio, and Indiana submitted sandstones, and a Missouri dealer polished red syenite that resembled Scottish granite.

All of these were judged too expensive. Some bidders submitted models at the other end of the scale. Markers were made of “wood, iron, pottery, fire clay, plaster Paris, wire netting, and several varieties of patent stone.” One pottery marker was said to resemble “a section of glazed Scotch sewer pipe” and one contractor sent “twenty galvanized iron tablets, exactly like music stands, with the standards cut down to a foot in height.” One even submitted wire netting strung between two posts with lead lettering attached with fine wire.33

The Congressional appropriation for 300,000 stones was, however, only $200,000, or 66 cents each, hence the proposals for cheap artificial materials. This seeming parsimony generated some journalistic venom.

“It appears,” noted one correspondent, “that the poor soldier is liable to be made the victim of shoddy, even in his grave.” It was not enough that he had suffered from shoddy hats, coats, boots, and rations in service; now “his grave must be haunted by the same sham and swindle in the shape of a last head-stone that is not stone at all, but some vile, ‘artificial compound,’ that will crumble away with winter’s cold or summer’s heat, or dissolve in the rains of autumn or spring.”34

It was expected that the War Department would select a model and then award contracts to manufacturers in various parts of the country. But how was General Belknap to do this when each applicant had bid on his own design and process? Belknap was nonplussed by the variety on offer and sought a legal opinion as to whether he was obligated to accept the lowest bid. The low bid was for a marker of burnt clay, but it still was projected to cost over twice the amount of the Congressional appropriation. The Judge Advocate General opined that the contract must go to the lowest bidder whose sample could be termed a headstone, but warned that the Secretary could not enter into a contract for a sum exceeding what Congress had approved. Belknap therefore referred the whole matter back to Congress.35

Despite the journalistic fulmination against “shoddy,” the variety of materials and processes that were brought to public attention provide a revealing insight into American industrial inventiveness during Reconstruction and at the dawn of the Gilded Age. Even as the bureaucrats were drafting the terms for a third competition, Meigs’ office continued to receive plausible if unorthodox submissions. Iron founder Walter Withers wrote from Atlanta, claiming to be an English immigrant and a “union man” (though his wartime record suggests otherwise). He enclosed a tintype photograph of a cast iron “head piece” he was putting up in Confederate cemeteries for $1.50 each (Fig. 7), but promised “a much prettier one to adorn the graves of the defenders of our Country”!36 In April 1873 Milo A.

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Richardson and O.J. Willard, the originators of the pure zinc monuments that would soon begin to proliferate nationwide under the trade name “white bronze,” submitted details of their new product . This was just a month before the partners contracted to have their first commercial models cast in Patterson, New Jersey. They were initially marketed as “Corinthian Monuments,” in allusion to the durability of the relics of classical antiquity, but the partners soon sold out to a firm in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The marker proposed to the government was not what the Bridgeport company later produced. At this point Armstrong and Willard were still burning the inscriptions onto heavy plate glass rather than casting them into the zinc, nor had they submitted their patent application.37

Fig. 7. Tintype photograph of a cast iron marker proposed by foundryman W.S. Withers of Atlanta, 1873. The 1872 competition showcased a wide variety of materials and technologies. NARA, RG92 E225, Box 786.

Thinner Stone or Foreign Labor: the 1873 Competition

The legislators raised the appropriation to $1,000,000 on March 3, 1873 and a new request for proposals was issued in June, calling more conservatively for markers “of durable stone.” The contract was to be awarded to “some responsible person or persons whose samples and bids shall in the greatest measure combine the elements of durability, decency, and cheapness.”

This wording left it to the Secretary’s judgment whether to award the contract to the lowest bidder, a point that was not universally comprehended, and that would cause Belknap much trouble later.38 The terms of reference appeared

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to give Belknap considerable latitude but raised the suspicions of bidders who were reluctant to incur considerable expense researching and preparing bids only to see another inconclusive outcome, or one influenced by graft or political considerations. Bids would be opened on September 6, 1873 in the presence of the bidders.39

Two kinds of markers were specified. Numbered blocks six inches square by three feet long, but extending only four inches above ground level, were to mark the graves of the unknown. Identified remains were to be marked with headstones four inches thick, ten inches wide, twelve inches above ground and two feet below (south from Washington) and two feet six inches below (north of the capital).40 The source of the headstone design is uncertain. George A. Meyer, once clerk in charge of national cemeteries, thought later that the design had been prepared “upon a large sheet of brown paper” by a firm called Bridges and Richardson, but the chosen design--text cut in relief within a recessed shield on a slab of white marble—was very similar to a design submitted the year before by a Kansas marble dealer (Fig. 8).41

The experiences of several of the bidders in this competition suggest something of the nature of the marble industry, and of how the applicants proposed to obtain the information needed to calculate their bids and accomplish the volume of work required. They also show how they thought they might generate profits from what the Secretary of War still privately believed to be an unreasonable proposition,42 and how they sought to ensure that their products received an informed and advantageous hearing.

One of these bidders was Eagleson & De Veau, marble dealers in New York City (Fig. 9) who were extensive suppliers of Vermont stone to dealers in the American South. They contracted exclusively with one of their major suppliers, Rutland Marble Co. of West Rutland, Vermont, to provide “stone in the rough” should they succeed in their bid.43 In their submissions they highlighted the fragmented nature of the trade, and expressed their understanding that they were the “only parties possessing independent command of the requisite Quarry and Mill facilities,” the consequence of their partnership with the West Rutland quarrymen. But they argued frankly that no one could meet the specifications and come in within the milliondollar Congressional appropriation, and in fact only thirteen of the more than eighty bidders did so.44 Their solution was to suggest that West Rutland marble was durable enough to stand upright even if the length below ground were halved to a foot and the thickness reduced from four inches to two.45

Eagleson & De Veau had submitted a bid in 1872.46 They were prepared to enter the ring a second time, but free-floating rumors created concern about the fairness of the competition. They spent a great deal of money gathering the information on which they based their bids. They had written to transportation companies throughout the country and paid friends to

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Fig. 8. The headstone design adopted in 1873 was similar to one proposed the year before by W.D. Bolles, a marble mason of Fort Scott, Kansas.

NARA, RG92 E225, Box 290: Cemeteries, National.

Fig. 9. Eagleson & De Veau, marble dealers of New York City, worked with one of their main suppliers, the Rutland (VT) Marble Company, to bid on the military headstone contract, but exceeded the allowable unit cost.

Vermont Historical Society, Doc. 423:13.

investigate the locations of the cemeteries. Not knowing anyone in the War Department, they tried to safeguard their interests by approaching a clerk in the department, Charles F. Benjamin, for advice. At his suggestion, they drew up and submitted a pamphlet advocating the advantages of marble (especially the West Rutland variety).47 Benjamin also recommended that

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they contact an insider unconnected with the contract to lobby on their behalf, but General E.C. Rice rejected out of hand the $5,000 they offered for his services as totally unreasonable for a million-dollar contract.

Eagleson & De Veau argued that the margin was so small that the most they could hope to gain was enhanced standing in the trade.48 In agreeing to supply the New York firm with stone at 32.5 cents per superficial foot (for two-inch slabs), by contrast, the Rutland Marble Company had entered in the details of their minutes that it was “very desirable” to enter into the arrangement because the contract “will return a very large excessive profit over present prices.”49 However, since Eagleson & De Veau still had to transport the stones to their place of business, have the inscriptions cut, and then ship and set the stones in the myriad national cemeteries across the country, their margin may well have been narrow, even if that of their marble supplier was not.

Meigs clearly was impressed by the document submitted in advance of the Eagleson bid. Meigs wrote to Secretary Belknap that he thought their fine-grained white marble preferable. He accepted that West Rutland had the best quarry, but cautioned that if its marble were specified: the whole business is thrown into the hands of the proprietors of the West Rutland quarry, as they in fact have a monopoly of that particular quarry of marble, and for grave stones it is generally considered to be the best native marble. If the sample is made of one not quite so fine there will be competition, and the West Rutland will probably be the lowest, or within the limit fixed by law, as that Company has, I understand, the largest capital and best machinery.50

No technology was specified in the advertisements, as the goal of the War Department was to encourage bidders to devise the means of producing the most durable, appropriate, and reasonably-priced markers.

Maurice P. Walsh of Walsh Bros., also of New York City, was convinced that only Italian marble could meet the quality requirements and come in under the appropriation. He arranged to have the work done in Carrara where stonecutters were paid forty to fifty cents a day rather than the four dollars prevalent in the United States. What he would have to pay in customs duties he would save in transportation costs, for during the cotton season he could ship headstones from Italy to New Orleans for five dollars a ton, the same amount it cost to send stones by rail from Vermont to New York.51 As most of the national cemeteries were in the South, three-quarters of the stones would have to be shipped to New Orleans in any case. But the costs of preparing the bid were substantial. Walsh visited or sent agents to

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all seventy-two national cemeteries, calculated the transportation costs, and sent a man to Carrara for two months before concluding that he could make a decent profit by taking advantage of cheap foreign labor. All of this cost Walsh between $7,000 and $8,000, but his company refused to honor the expenditure, with the result that Walsh left the firm and set up on his own.52 Following opening of the bids, Meigs was impressed with Walsh’s figures and recommended his proposal to Belknap, rather than the West Rutland marble he had advocated on the eve of the competition.53 In the end Belknap rejected Walsh’s bid, claiming that President Grant would not have foreign stone over the graves of American soldiers, though a “Buy American” policy had not been specified in the call for proposals.

Entrepreneurs Over Craftsmen: Awarding the Contracts

Five contracts were signed late in 1873 because Belknap was concerned that none of the bidders had the means to accomplish the work independently.54 None of the successful bidders had any experience in the quarry or monument industries, but all were entrepreneurs and contractors of various kinds who saw an opportunity to do what they claimed to do best: bring together the technology, capital, and labor to accomplish a job.

Many people at the time (including quarrymen such as William Patrick of Knoxville, Tennessee, and one of the clerks in the War Department) were highly suspicious of this lack of expertise, and concluded that if contracts were to be given to men unconnected with the stone trades, corruption and jobbery must be behind it.55 Indeed this was the conclusion drawn by the superintendent of the Rutland Marble Company that had partnered the bid of Eagleson & De Veau: The head stone contracts, as I supposed from the first, have been a matter of jobbery & ring favoritism: there are too many wheels within wheels in this Washington business. The parties to whom the bids are awarded I do not think, are marble men, not one of them. The Keokuk man, Bridge, is a tinker or watchmaker, and I don’t think one of them can fill their Contract at the price awarded.56

Belknap had concluded that granite was the most durable material and was therefore preferable, but the only low bid for granite markers came from Edward P. Doherty of Washington. He had bid on the work for only one cemetery, in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and he was given the contract for the granite slabs and blocks there.57 Doherty was a Canadian who had moved to New York in 1860, served in the cavalry during the war, and commanded the

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party that subdued Lincoln’s assassin. Following the war he was a contractor for roadworks in the capital.58 Despite problems fulfilling the contract, the stones at Fredericksburg are indeed of granite and met the original specifications (subsequently altered) for capital letters twice the height of the rest (Fig. 10).

Fig. 10. Granite headstone at Fredericksburg National Cemetery, VA, displaying the original sizes of lettering proposed.

Photo courtesy Tom Ledoux, vermontcivilwar.org

The second contractor, Dewitt Clinton Sage (1836-1900), had been a manufacturer since inheriting a factory at 16; he had operated a cartridge plant in Middletown, Connecticut during the Civil War, employing 150 women at five dollars a week. After the war he manufactured silver-plated butts and hinges there, and later he operated a brick factory in Cromwell, Connecticut.59 Sage bid high on the slabs ($5) but so low on the blocks ($2.42) that it was claimed the government saved $125,000 by giving the rest of the block contract to him.60

The remainder of the contract, for headstones, was divided amongst three bidders, none of them the lowest. Charles S. Jones of Washington had been appointed doorkeeper of the Senate in 1858, was an army paymaster for six years, and in 1870 was made Indian agent for various tribes in Montana.

He conceded that he had no experience in the stone trades: “No, sir; but I had character and credit.�61 Thomas P. Morgan, also of Washington, was a more

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formidable figure. An apothecary by training and latterly a general contractor, he was active in D.C. politics and a few years later was simultaneously Superintendent of Police and a member of the Board of Fire Commissioners.

He became afterward a District Commissioner, and a Washington school was named for him.62

Samuel Green Bridges, the final successful bidder, had moved from Massachusetts to Keokuk, Iowa, in 1857 after apprenticing with a watchmaker in Boston. He had been acquainted with Secretary Belknap both in Keokuk and during their Civil War service, which raised a red flag to critics who were already expecting to see rank favoritism. Bridges was in the jewelry business, but from 1868 to 1873 he had a supply contract for government posts in the west, which he secured before Belknap became Secretary of War.63

Though successful in their bids, the contractors were far from happy with the terms. Sage had bid low on the blocks, but the other bidders had averaged their bids for slabs and blocks and were offered contracts only for the more expensive slabs, but at the averaged price, and for cemetery locations scattered all over the country. Morgan agreed to proceed only because the financial panic of 1873 reduced costs somewhat. He bought unpolished blanks from the Richmond Quarry 16 miles north of Rutland, Vermont, and some from Dover, Vermont.64 He agreed to take over Jones’ contract for a quarter of the expected profits ($2,125) but had many of his stones rejected at the quarry by the Quartermaster General’s inspectors as not white enough. He concluded that he could do as well by selling out as by continuing, thereby avoiding further delays and bother. After completing one cemetery and starting on four others, Morgan assigned both contracts to the final bidder, Bridges, for $14,000.65 Bridges also secured Sage’s contract for the more lucrative blocks in October 1874 and agreed with Sheldons & Slason to supply marble at 81 cents a block. Sage appears, however, to have remained at least a front man for the operation as he and his agents were recorded actively setting stones into 1876.66 New Technology: the Sand Blast

The question arises as to how Bridges, a jeweler with no experience in the monument trade, proposed to fulfill the various contracts. He did this by subcontracting the work to Sheldons & Slason (Figs. 11 and 12), a quarry firm in West Rutland, Vermont, that provided the marble and advanced the money to ship and set the stones.67 But he also realized that the job could not be done in a reasonable time by hand. The sawing and polishing of marble with water-powered machinery had been pioneered in the 1790s, and the larger city monument firms were employing steam-powered equipment by the 1840s. Inscriptions and iconography were, however, still accomplished by batteries of men wielding mallet and chisel (Figs. 13-15).68 Bridges estimated

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the work would take five years, which is what the Rutland Marble Co. also had calculated when planning their bid with Eagleson & De Veau. Bridges found that by consolidating the contracts he could make better deals for freight, but most importantly he contracted for patent rights to a new invention, the sand blast, for a royalty of four cents a stone.69

Figs. 11 & 12. C.H. Slason and Charles Sheldon, of the West Rutland, Vermont, quarry firm Sheldons & Slason, contracted with S.G. Bridges to provide the marble and advance the money to ship and set the government headstones.

This was the first time Sheldons had produced finished monuments.

History of Rutland County, Vermont (1886).

The sand blast was patented in 1870 by General Benjamin C. Tilghman of Philadelphia.70 As “a new invention for engraving glass” it was demonstrated at the American Institute Fair in New York in 1871 and at the Maryland Institute Fair in October 1872.71 Meigs had been aware of the sand blast, writing to Belknap on the eve of the competition that “[t]he use of the sand blast will permit the whole inscription to be engraved at reasonable cost.”72 There had been proposals to employ the sand blast in 1872, but Eagleson and De Veau did not propose to employ it, and, as we have seen, Meigs ended up favoring Italian handcarving.73

Bridges did more than secure the patent license and supply three of the machines to Sheldons. A contemporary account of the process by a West Rutland doctor credits Bridges with first demonstrating the practical utility of using the sand blast for engraving marble, “determining proper distance between the end of the blast tube and the face of the stone,” and the force of the steam, by trial and error, and conducting experiments in Keokuk using sands from the shoals of the Mississippi. In the end sand from the beaches at Northport, Long Island, was employed at Rutland.74

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Fig. 13. Sawing room at Baird’s Spring Garden Marble Works.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1853. Godey’s Lady’s Book.

Fig. 14. Polishing room at Baird’s Spring Garden Marble Works, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1853. Godey’s Lady’s Book.

Fig. 15. Stonecutters’ room, Baird’s Marble Works, Philadelphia, 1853.

Though sawing and polishing of marble had long been mechanized in the larger city works, inscriptions and iconography were still hand cut by batteries of stonecutters wielding mallet and chisel. Godey’s Lady’s Book.

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Slabs were cut from seven-ton blocks by forty-eight gangs of saws at Sheldons’ West Rutland Mills, running night and day. The slabs were set on a moveable table (Fig. 16), and “lettering boys” selected one-inch iron letters from a type box and spelled out the inscription on a hot griddle, sticking them onto the stone with heated shellac. Sand from the blast gun cut each inscription in four minutes, “every grain of sand … a miniature chisel, cutting out a particle of marble.”75 Charles Sheldon estimated he would have needed 200 men, all unionized stonecutters at four to five dollars a day, to do the work by hand. Bridges claimed that one man could engrave manually about ten inscriptions a day, but that raised letters in relief in a shield, the style adopted, reduced production to three.76 By contrast, with “a small force of boys” to adhere the letters, the three machines at Rutland turned out 800 stones a day. At four minutes per inscription, this suggests that all three machines were running at least eighteen hours daily. Allowing for the time needed to remove one stone from the machine and replace it with another, and for frequent replacement of the blast guns (which wore out and had to be replaced every four or five hours, despite being cast in steel in Troy, New York) it is likely that, like the gang-saws, the sand blast machines operated through the night.77

Fig. 16. Sand-Blast machine at West Rutland, 1875.

The sand blast allowed Samuel Bridges to reduce the unit cost under the terms of his contract. Manufacturer and Builder 8, no. 10 (October 1876): 229.

Courtesy of Cornell University Library, Making of America Digital Collections.

The “Headstone Job” and the Fall of General Belknap

Though the quality of the sand-blasted inscriptions was questioned, scandal erupted in 1876, not over the quality of the headstones but over the contract process. Secretary Belknap was already embroiled in controversy over payments allegedly made to his wife by the recipient of a western trading post contract. The accusations were part of a campaign by a Democratic Congress to unseat Republican President Grant at the next election, and the Belknap

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accusations broke not long after Grant’s private secretary, vice president, and brother had been implicated in a conspiracy to help distillers evade the liquor tax (Fig. 17).78 Belknap resigned to save his wife from further investigation, but his insistence that he knew nothing of the payments was not widely credited. His prompt resignation, hours before the House filed articles of impeachment, saved him from conviction in his subsequent Senate trial, but only because a number of Congressmen believed they had no jurisdiction to try an official who had already left office.79

Fig. 17. Accusations against Secretary of War Belknap (middle row right) were among several causes célèbres besetting the Grant administration.

“Grant and the Scandals”, Puck, 4 February 1880, 282-283.

Library of Congress repro no. LC-USZC4-5606

Though there had been much grumbling about the headstone contracts at the time they were awarded, bidders now rehearsed old grievances to the press and to the House Committee on Military Affairs, making the “headstone job” a late addition to the Secretary’s woes. Press allegations that

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Belknap pocketed $90,000 on the tombstone contracts 80 seem unlikely given the narrow margins, and at the House hearings in 1876 no one would support the accusation. Serious consideration was given to claims that Bridges’ bid had been slipped in after a number of the others had been read. Bridges denied it, and testimony before the Committee was inconclusive.81 Walsh was convinced he had seen a bid added, but could not be positive it belonged to Bridges.82 A clerk was reported to have said that one bid fell out of the basket in the vault and upon discovery was brought into the room.83 The clerks recalled several bids being presented once the opening had begun, but said Meigs simply noted the time of receipt without reading them; they were subsequently noted in the abstract as received too late.84 Walsh claimed in the press, more dramatically, that the bids had been opened and resealed prior to their reading, but he made no such claim at the Congressional hearings.85

Unsuccessful bidders complained about changes to the headstone specifications, both before the closing of bids and following award of the contracts, and the House Committee concluded that they constituted irregularities in the process. Most, however, arose from adjusting the specifications to the emerging realities of production. In July 1873 Meigs had been through a frustrating exercise with William Struthers & Sons of Philadelphia who had been contracted to produce prototypes of the selected designs. Struthers had complained that the specifications (drawn up by Belknap but not yet advertised) increased costs because of Belknap’s ignorance of the technologies employed in sawing and polishing the slabs.86 At the end of July, Bridges, then an intending bidder, had written for clarification as to whether the rank, name, and state might be abbreviated. Meigs forwarded his letter to the Secretary, observing that the decision should be published so that bidders would remain on an equal footing. Belknap decided in the affirmative, and Meigs issued a press release on August 16.87 As Bridges in the end decided to use the sand blast, the change did not materially affect his own bid, but by reducing the number of letters it would have allowed competing bidders planning to have the inscriptions cut manually to reduce theirs. As bids were opened on September 6, the notification may not have allowed sufficient time for all bidders to revise their figures, but some doubtless did so.88

In May 1874, before much work had been done, Belknap agreed further to reduce lettering to a uniform one inch in height and one-eighth inch in depth. Initial letters were to have been double height but this made it more difficult to fit in the inscriptions, and deeply-cut relief letters were at greater risk of chipping. He also allowed the edges of the slabs to be slightly rounded when it was explained that sharp edges fresh from the saws were likely to be damaged in transit. Finally he clarified that the term “white marble” signified marble of monumental rather than statuary quality. These

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alterations were seen by disgruntled bidders as post-facto cost savings, but seemed sensible pragmatic adjustments to the officials involved.89

Robert Prickett, who studied the Belknap scandals many years ago, concluded that “while the circumstances of the contracts were unusual, to say the least, no criminal offense could be definitely proved.” This was possibly “just a case of patronage with no bribery involved … it is more likely that he was just doing an old friend a favor.”90 In the context of the trading post scandal, and other accusations encircling Grant’s Cabinet, the accusations were believable and certainly the Democrats seized upon the tombstone business as another clod of mud to hurl at the Grant administration in the coming election. The Democratic Party’s Campaign Text Book included a section entitled “Jobbery in Gravestones: Even Dead Soldiers are Victimized

by Republican Sharks.”91

The Committee on Military Affairs concluded that Belknap’s division of the contracts, his failure to award to the lowest bidder, and his changes in the “form and dimensions of the head-stones, without a corresponding change in price” were abuses of authority. Even before their report was tabled, Belknap’s successor had assigned the management of national cemeteries and headstone contracts entirely to the office of the Quartermaster General.92 While Belknap’s decisions seemed questionable in hindsight, most of the alleged irregularities arose from the unfamiliarity of new technologies and business models. The changes in the terms of reference were, however, taken as evidence of favoritism toward particular bidders and contractors, lending credence to the suspicions that had arisen when the contracts were awarded to men with no prior experience in the marble industry. In his lengthy internal report on the affair, however, Oscar Mack concluded that the evidence showed “on the part of the Secretary of War a desire to aid the contractors in every way consistent with the true interests of the Government – and not to tie them down to the strict letter of the contract when the Government would not be benefited thereby.”93 Beyond the National Cemeteries: the 1879 Contracts

Congress on February 3, 1879, approved a suggestion by the War Department that the government headstone program be extended to include the graves of Union soldiers buried outside the national cemeteries.

Quartermaster General Meigs called for tenders on March 31. It was estimated that 17,000 headstones would be required, and the specimen monuments were displayed in the Quartermaster General’s office in Washington.

American white marble was demanded, with grades carefully spelled out in the specifications. Outside the national cemeteries, the thickness of the stones was reduced to two inches and the company and regiment of the deceased were added to the inscriptions. Meigs had favored a two-inch

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thickness from the outset, and had also wanted a more complete inscription.

Now fully in control of the contract process, Meigs seems to have shaped the 1879 legislation to his liking.94

The project met with some opposition, one newspaper suggesting that “the secretary of war may expect to be severely criticized for placing headstones at the Union soldiers’ graves. These headstones, like the floral decorations, tend to keep the embers [presumably of north/south animosity] alive.” The Indianapolis Sentinel rejected this suggestion, arguing that there would be no “severe criticisms” if soldiers’ graves were marked “with a comely and honest headstone.” But they cautioned the Secretary of War to “keep his eyes open on the old rings which encircled every species of contract during Grant’s administration” and to guard against the “swindling and rascality connected with it. . . . The old soldiers’ headstone swindle will not be forgotten soon.”95

Despite the continuing sensitivity of the question, especially in Democratic circles, the contract was awarded to Daniel W. Whitney of Troy, New York—and Samuel G. Bridges of Keokuk, Iowa. Clearly official blame for the 1876 scandal had not attached to Bridges.96 Whitney had had some prior experience with the War Department. In 1863, when a resident of New York, he had contracted for 2,500 black walnut headboards at eighty-one cents each.97 Bridges put to good use the experience he had gained from his earlier contract. Early in 1880 he leased the Manhattan Quarry at Rutland from Vermont’s ex-Governor Page and repaired and enlarged W.H. Fullerton’s marble works at Manchester Depot, equipping Fullerton with sand blast machinery to do the lettering.98 The contracts had issued, however, just as the long recession of the 1870s began to ease, and almost immediately “prices for labor and materials went up.” Whitney found he was losing money and tried to recover his position by appealing to the GAR or the soldiers’ relations to pay the cartage and freight and absorb the costs of setting the stones. Though this arrangement was soon to become a standard feature of the contracts, at this point it was contrary to the terms and he was compelled to forfeit his bonds.99 By 1883 the contracts required that the stones be delivered to the nearest railway station, and the parties applying for the markers (often GAR branches) were required to provide satisfactory evidence that they would be collected and set.100 Whitney’s contract was re-awarded to D.L. Kent & Co. of East Dorset, Vermont. Complaints about misdirected and undelivered stones continued to flood into Washington for some time after Whitney was relieved of his contract.

The Sand Blast vs. Pneumatic Tools: Quality, Deskilling, and Labor Unrest

To what extent did the application of sand-blast technology move the monument business from craft to industry? Charles Sheldon testified

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before the House Committee on Military Affairs with regard to the original headstone contract that “nothing made it possible to do that work without a large loss except the sand-blast.”101 Their participation in Bridges’ contract involved Sheldons in the marble finishing business for the first time (prior to this they had sold dimension stone and blank slabs), and Bridges used sand blasting to fulfill his 1879 contract as well, though with a different partner.

But when Sheldon & Sons secured the contract for supplying 11,000 more soldiers’ headstones in 1883, they reverted to lettering by hand, “the old sand blast method not having been found so durable.”102 William Patrick of Tennessee’s Knoxville Marble Company had testified in 1876 that the sand blast cut stone irregularly, sometimes to a depth of an eighth inch, sometimes a quarter. When Bridges was experimenting with the machinery in Keokuk, the iron letters sometimes blew off. The workmen then cut out replacement letters and stuck them on with shellac. The application of heat to do this, however, turned the marble surface to lime, and Patrick alleged the letter could easily be wiped off with a handkerchief.103 As he was a disgruntled bidder, we may have to allow for a hint of sour grapes. Successful bidder Thomas P. Morgan by contrast was a fan of the new technology: “It is novel and it looks prettier.” But he acknowledged that it cut relief lettering better than incised letters: the lines and angles of the recessed letters were not sharp enough.104

We think of the sand blast as the technology that facilitated the rise to dominance of the harder and therefore more expensive granite over marble toward the end of nineteenth century, but sand blasting only became important in the granite industry around 1915, presumably after its technological proficiency was improved.105 Pneumatic tools (Fig. 18), a technology adopted in the industry in the early 1890s, did much to facilitate granite’s proliferation. Like the sand blast, compressed air had reasonably contemporaneous applications in a variety of industries, from mining coal and caulking steam boilers to repousée work in metal and “every form of stone-cutting, from the dressing of the rough block to the execution of the most delicate carvings in the studio of the sculptor.” These applications of a patent of 1885 were all in practical if not wide-spread use by 1889.106

A crucial difference between the two technologies was that the twentieth-century application of the sand blast brought about a deskilling of the craft, whereas the pneumatic tool enhanced the work of the skilled craftsman. The sand blast was resisted by the trade unions in Georgia, and likely elsewhere, for this reason.107 A manufacturer observed that a pneumatic tool “combines the intelligent judgment of the workman with the economy and rapidity of power-driven machinery,” reducing costs and increasing quality.108 Its use in carving required “no forcible pressure by the carver” as it cut through granite “literally ‘as though it were cheese’”109:

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[It was] essentially a skilled workman’s tool, demanding … the highest manipulative ability, on the part of the operator. In the hands of the ignorant tyro it can accomplish nothing. In the hands of the expert workman, it not only diminishes the drudgery of his work, but quickens his perceptions, emboldens him to venture upon achievements which he may vainly have tried to realize with his unaided skill, but failed; it enables him to multiply his productive capacity many fold.110

Its introduction, however, proved a mixed blessing for granite workers, skilled or not. Its greater efficiency was credited in 1898 with having put many men out of work at the Quincy, Massachusetts, granite works, and the agitation of the stonecutters’ union for the eight-hour day was in part an attempt to require more men to be employed to produce the same amount of product.111 In 1874 Sheldons’ sand blast had been operated round the clock by small boys: this was a precedent the unions did not want repeated.

Fig. 18. The sand blast allowed gravestones to be made entirely by machinery, but was abandoned for the 1883 headstone contract because of quality issues.

Pneumatic tools (shown here) instead facilitated the widespread shift to granite.

Stone 2, no. 5 (September 1889).

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The application of the sand blast at West Rutland was the first successful commercial experiment in carving inscriptions by mechanical means. All other steps in the production process had been mechanized, by the larger firms, decades earlier. It now was clear that inscriptions, too, could be done by machine, but not everyone was satisfied with the result. Sheldons had retreated to handcarving to meet their military headstones contract of 1883, and Gross Bros. of Lee, Massachusetts, with a labor force of thirty men, likely employed hand work to complete their 1885 contract for 4,509 headstones at a unit cost of four dollars. They turned out nearly 1,000 stones a month, and each man could easily have inscribed 150 stones by hand over the five months of the contract. It was said that in retail business the cost would have been fifteen dollars each, which was reasonable for small handcut headstones at the time.112 By the mid-1890s a military contract for 10,000 stones was being tendered every two years, and the unit cost had dipped below two dollars, the cost of erection, however, now being borne by those requesting the headstone. In 1900 the West Stockbridge Marble Co. won the contract with a new low bid of $1.28.113 Whether they employed the sand blast or pneumatic lettering tools seems not to have been recorded.

The lesson of the sand blast for historians of the monument industry is that there was no necessary linear relationship between the invention of new technologies and shifts in the materials used. New technologies had drawbacks that had to be overcome, and their adoption took place in fits and starts, often following and facilitating rather than inaugurating a shift to new materials. They also faced resistance from organized labor.

Bridges’ headstone contract for the national cemeteries was also the first step toward moving quarry owners Sheldons & Slason in the direction of adding finished gravestones and monuments to their inventory (Fig. 19).

Even so, they did not make the move until after the recession following the panic of 1873 bottomed out six years later and the market began to improve.

A press account of 1883 notes that the town of West Rutland was growing remarkably due to “the marble finishing business introduced some two years ago,” which had “added largely to the population and consequent prosperity of the place.”114 Sheldons & Slason issued their “Design Sheet No. 1,” with 57 illustrations (Fig. 20), sometime prior to the retirement of Francis Slason and the reorganization of the firm as Sheldon & Sons on October 1, 1881.115

Perhaps more important than the technologies employed were the business structures that were coming to dominate the industry. Business people and entrepreneurs were consolidating quarrying and marble finishing into ever-larger companies, often controlled outside the communities, indeed the states, in which they had their operations. In 1883 two new quarries were about to be opened in West Rutland by Boston and New York interests that had purchased mills in their vicinity and were putting them in a state of repair, and the local manager of the West Rutland Marble Company had

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Fig. 19. Sheldons & Slason’s marble mills, West Rutland, Vermont, c.1870s.

From a stereoview. Private collection.

Fig. 20. Following completion of the first government headstone contract, Sheldons & Slason expanded into the monument finishing business.

Their Design Sheet no. 1 (c.1881). Private collection.

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been succeeded by a Boston man. Redfield Proctor, the president of the Vermont Marble Company and instigator of the 1883 Producers Marble Company combination, was by training not a marble man but a lawyer. In 1889 it was widely rumored that both Sheldons and Vermont Marble were to be bought up by a syndicate of English capitalists.116 Conclusion

The Civil War headstone program marked an important stage in the movement toward the mechanization, consolidation, and standardization that were to characterize the monument industry for much of the twentieth century,117 but evolving business structures were perhaps more immediately important than the technologies. They did not have their origins in the postwar headstone contracts–periodic attempts to integrate supply, production, and distribution on a national scale dated back to the 1790s–but the headstone contracts became a flashpoint for controversy in which the involvement of entrepreneurs from outside the stone trades was seen as evidence of corruption and helped in a small way to contribute to the political downfall of the Secretary of War.

Despite the accusations of jobbery, bribery, and favoritism in 1876, the headstone program in fact was a success. More than 300,000 stones had been produced and set in just three years, and the work had been done for $200,000 less than the Congressional appropriation of $1m.118 By the 1890s a contract for 10,000 stones was being tendered every two years, and whether using the sand blast or pneumatic tools, the unit cost had dipped to $1.28 by 1900. Secretary Belknap’s reputation remained solid with many of his fellow veterans, if not with future generations of historians. Admirers erected an impressive monument–of granite–to his memory at Arlington National Cemetery (Fig. 21), not far from that of his often unhappy subordinate, Montgomery C. Meigs. Oscar Mack lies buried at Congressional Cemetery, without a surviving headstone, which is fitting given his early espousal of the lawn cemetery aesthetic.

The concept and aesthetic of military commemoration pioneered in America’s National Cemeteries, including the principle of equality in memorialization, were replicated in Europe following World War I by Britain’s Imperial War Graves Commission and similar institutions of the other combatant nations.119 Remarkably, however, the British commission seems to have been entirely ignorant of the earlier American experience, and they puzzled through the logistical problems anew.120 Commissioner Rudyard Kipling (the British poet) articulated the challenge in 1918: “There is no possibility of expediting the delivery of the headstones. More than half a million of these will be required, and at present there is not labour enough in all the world to cut, carve and letter them.” Granite and marble were rejected

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Fig. 21. Grave of disgraced Secretary of War W.W. Belknap, Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia. Belknap was impeached for financial irregularities, but remained popular with many of his fellow soldiers. Photo: B. Elliott.

because of their cost, and Portland stone and Hopton Wood limestone, widely used in England, were employed instead. Hand-carving of a regimental badge, however, took up to a week . After experimenting with acid etching and other methods, a Lancashire company invented a pantograph machine that could both trace and cut the inscriptions. But each machine produced only three stones a day, a far cry from the relief lettering accomplished decades earlier by the sand blast at West Rutland—in four minutes, and at one-eighth the cost.121

On a still larger canvas the controversies that beset the Civil War headstone program remind us that modernity was more than an exhilarating ride along a linear path toward novelty and progress: modernity itself was

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“flux and discontinuity.”122 The novel and the modern presented a bewildering, disorienting, and fluctuating juxtaposition of gain and loss, an uncertainty as to which changes were truly progressive and which were retrograde and even dangerous. The headstone program demonstrated the profound ambivalence of the modern condition.

The 1866 competition revealed some of the limitations of belief in unfettered scientific advancement. Innovative headblocks of galvanized iron posed a technological solution to the costs of naming the dead but generated both uncertainty as to the reliability of the industrial process and public ridicule over the appropriateness of the material and design. Congressmen as well as the regional staff of the national cemeteries mocked this departure from tradition, judging both material and design more appropriate for domestic appliances than for a rural cemetery. The 1872 competition provided an opportunity for American inventiveness to showcase a wider range of materials, styles, and technological applications. But the lowerend prototypes aroused accusations of “shoddy,” making it more difficult to reconcile cost with dignity and an assurance of permanence. The 1873 competition summoned tenders for marble, the socially acceptable material dominant in the current marketplace. Solutions to the cost question ranged from Walsh’s foreign sweatshops to Bridges’ sand blast technology, but efficiency, speed, and volume did not win the sand blast solution immediate and permanent adoption. Designs and inscriptions were simplified to maximize its technical advantages, but by 1883 quality issues and perhaps opposition by organized labor saw the sand blast abandoned in favor of a return to handwork. Decades would pass before the sand blast became a fixture in the nation’s stone yards.

Nor did the reduction in unit cost guarantee its acceptance in the wider world beyond the national cemeteries. Economy was desirable in a government contract, but in a commemorative landscape dominated by the middle-class Victorian family, family plots and family monuments proclaimed sensibility, affection, continuity, and status, and the trend was toward more rather than less costly materials and markers. White marble, dominant throughout North America by 1850, was more aesthetically pleasing but also more expensive than the slate and other regionally-specific materials that preceded it. In the twentieth century, marble would be succeeded by granite, more durable but once again more costly, and large family monuments continued to displace simple headstones. Thus was consumerism tied to respectability, sentiment, and emotion and not merely to rational calculation.123

Evolving business models also failed to win universal acceptance.

A society that celebrated the entrepreneurial, the inventive, and the novel had not entirely come to trust unproven technologies, nor to accept that a competitive bid from an unlikely source could represent genuine ingenuity rather than something more sinister. Many observers fell back upon the

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traditional reassurances of a more personalized space of face-to-face familiarity and craft apprenticeship, seeing only the specter of jobbery and corruption in the awarding of contracts to men without experience in the stone trades. In a world of constant and disorienting change there indeed were enhanced opportunities for charlatans and parasites to prosper in a rapidly expanding and depersonalized marketplace. But the 1866 competition had been advertised in Scientific American as well as in the popular press, and new means of disseminating information opened the door to entrepreneurs who could assemble an effective combination of technology, materials, and labor, and not just to scroungers seeking to enrich themselves from the public purse.

Acknowledgements

For advice and assistance the author is grateful to Dennis Montagna, National Parks Service; Trevor Plante, NARA; Jennifer Perunko, Historian, National Cemetery Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs; David Gerleman, The Lincoln Project; Michael Trinkley, Chicora Foundation; Paul Carnahan, Vermont Historical Society; Tom Ledoux, Vermont in the Civil War; Janet Stewart, Newsbank/Readex; Chris Lofty, Commonwealth War Graves Commission; Anne Tait; Laurel Gabel; Karen A. Michalec; June Hadden Hobbs; Bob Drinkwater; Harry Pietersma; Andrew Johnson; Mary Donovan; Leighann Neilson; and James McCallum. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the American Culture Association, New Orleans; Association for Gravestone Studies, Schenectady; and the Shannon Lectures in History, Carleton University, Ottawa.

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Notes

1. Susan-Mary Grant, “Patriot Graves: American National Identity and the Civil War Dead,” American Nineteenth-Century History 5, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 84-86. The exclusion of the Confederate dead from the federal program was a topic of angry and divisive debate.

2. Mark S. Schantz, Awaiting the Heavenly Country:The Civil War and America’s Culture of Death (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), 2-3, 89; Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), xi-xiv.

3. Grant, “Patriot Graves,” 86.

4. Other examples include David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: the Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2001); Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); John R. Neff, Honoring the Civil War Dead: Commemoration and the Problem of Reconciliation (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005); Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory, ed. Cynthia Mills and Pamela H. Simpson (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003).

5. The literature specifically on the national cemetery system and military headstones is mostly descriptive and does not contextualize the headstone program or deal at any length with its contested nature. Mark C. Mollan, “Honoring Our War Dead: The Evolution of the Government Policy on Headstones for Fallen Soldiers and Sailors,” Prologue 35, no. 2 (Spring 2003); Department of Veterans Affairs, “History of Government-Furnished Headstones and Markers,” www.cem.va.gov; “The History of U.S. Military Grave Markers,” www.militaryhistoryinstone.org/history.php; Therese T. Sammartino, “A Promise Made – A Commitment Kept: The Story of America’s Civil War Era National Cemeteries” (2000) and Edward Steere, “Shrines of the Honored Dead: A Study of the National Cemetery System,” Quartermaster Review (1953-54) both on www.cem.va.gov/hist-histhome.asp.; Mark Hughes, Bivouac of the Dead (Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2008). Sarah Amy Leach notes the controversy over Meigs’ cast-iron blocks: “Remembering Veterans: The Past and Present of Their Historic Headstones,” American Cemetery (May 2003): 20-21, 54 (I am grateful to Jennifer Perunko for sending me this article).

6. Caroline E. Janney, Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies’ Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008).

7. Thomas A. Zaniello, “Chips from Hawthorne’s Workshop: The Icon and Cultural Studies,” in Puritan Gravestone Art II, ed. Peter Benes (Dublin, N.H.: Boston University, 1977), 73. There is a large and diverse literature on modernity. Useful reviews include Alan O’Shea, “English Subjects of Modernity,” in Modern Times: Reflections on a Century of English Modernity, ed. Mica Nava and Alan O’Shea (London & New York: Routledge, 1996), 7-37; Simon Gunn,

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“Modernity,” in his History and Cultural Theory (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2006), 107-130; and Stuart Hall, “Introduction,” Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies, ed.

Stuart Hall, et al. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 3-19.

8. Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 21, 26-28.

9. Giddens, Consequences of Modernity, 37.

10. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), RG92 E294, Box 1, M.C. Meigs, press copies of private letters, 1865-67, f. 301, memo July 12 [1866]. A printed image showing a flatter top is in RG92 E225, Quartermaster General, Consolidated Correspondence, Box 787, Headstones.

11. Frederick W. True, A History of the First Half-Century of the National Academy of Sciences 1863-1913 (Washington: National Academy of Sciences, 1913), 232-239. It is unclear how they were to be fixed to the ground, but they were hollow and were to be filled with earth or cement. “Washington Matters,” Jamestown Journal, 27 November 1868, 1.

12. Scientific American, NS 15, no. 22 (24 November 1866): 1; San Francisco Bulletin, 21 January 1867; Daily Iowa State Register (Des Moines), 14 May 1867, 2.The printed specifications, dated October 1, 1866, are in NARA, RG92 E225, Box 786, Headstones.

13. “Washington News,” New York Times, 3 December 1866, 1. Another 13 arrived after the closing date: Evidence for Claimants, U.S. Court of Claims, no. 5125, Dec. Term 1870, 16 in NARA, RG92 E225, Box 1087, Quartermaster General, Consolidated Correspondence: Strong & Donohue.

14. Barbara Wolanin, Constantino Brumidi: Artist of the Capitol (Washington: United States Capitol Historical Society, 1998), 37-38, www.access.gp.gov/congress/senate/brumidi/ Brumidi_4.pdf.

15. Evidence for claimants, 28-29.

16. “Hark from the Tombs! A Doleful Sound,” New Hampshire Patriot (Concord), 15 January 1868, 1; same in Pittsfield Sun, 16 January 1868, 2.

17. Their reports are in NARA, RG92 E225, Box 787, Headstones.

18. NARA, RG92 E225, Box 787, Headstones: R.W. Allen, Acting QMG, to John M. Crebs, January 23, 1872.

19. For dismissal of the suit, see 42nd Cong., 2d Sess., Senate Misc. Doc. no. 5, Report of the Clerk of the Court of Claims, December 4, 1871. There are two files of documents concerning the lawsuit in NARA, RG123, U.S. Court of Claims: general jurisdiction

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case files 1855-1939, Box 280, Claim no. 5125, Strong & Donohue vs. the United States. The evidence for the claimants is more accessible in printed form in Evidence for Claimants, U.S. Court of Claims, no. 5125, Dec.Term 1870 in RG92 E225, Box 1087, Quartermaster General, Consolidated Correspondence: Strong & Donohue.

20. Philip Bigler, In Honored Glory: Arlington National Cemetery The Final Post (St Petersburg, FL:Vandamere Press, 2005), 22; James Edward Peters, Arlington National Cemetery: Shrine to America’s Heroes (Bethesda: Woodbine House, 2008), 316-317; “The Meigs Family,” Arlington National Cemetery Website, www.arlingtoncemetery.net/meigs.htm; Jennifer M. Perunko, Historian, National Cemetery Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, confirmed in an e-mail that there are none of Meigs’ iron markers at Arlington.

21. NARA, RG92 E225, Box 787, Headstones, Recommendations of Major Oscar Mack, July 5, 1870.

22. On Spring Grove see Noël Dorsey Vernon, “Adolph Strauch: Cincinnati and the Legacy of Spring Grove Cemetery,” in Midwestern Landscape Architecture, ed. William H. Tissler (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 5-24; David Charles Sloane, The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 99-109, 115.

23. NARA, RG92, E225, Box 787, memorandum by M.C. Meigs, February 8, 1873.

24. Evidence for Claimants, 27.

25. NARA, RG92 E225, Box 787, Headstones, Meigs to Belknap, July 8, 1870.

26. When some 700 government headstones arrived at Spring Grove Cemetery in 1879, Adolph Strauch protested that the graves were “about to be disfigured by unsightly headstones, two feet in the air”; he won permission to “sink the stones to within an inch or two of the surface” and inscribe the names on the top. This was not in fact done. In the end the standard-issue marble headstones were cut down to the area of the shield bearing the personal details, and these were set flat in the ground. In 1884 the cut-down “marble slabs” were described as lying in circles, ”thick as snow flakes amid the green turf of the triple mounds.” Strauch’s preference would have been to “build one handsome monument for all, and thus convert these burial places to places of beauty, where the people would resort as to a park.” The six-inch granite squares Mack had praised in 1870 likely were not in the military section. “Headstones for Soldiers’ Graves,” Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, 29 October 1879, 5; 1 June 1880, 6. “Stone Spikes for Soldiers’ Graves,” Cincinnati Daily Gazette, 4 March 1873, 4; Blanche M.G. Linden, “Spring Grove: Celebrating 150 Years,” Queen City Heritage 53, nos. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 1995): 74-77; Cincinatti Commercial Tribune, 31 May 1884, p. 1, col. 2. My thanks to Diana Brake for guiding me around Spring Grove Cemetery and its Civil War plot.

27. Catherine W. Zipf, “Marking Union Victory in the South: The Construction of the National Cemetery System,” in Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the

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Landscapes of Southern Memory, ed. Cynthia Mills and Pamela H. Simpson (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003), 27-45; Neff, Honoring the Civil War Dead, 111-136; Karen L. Cox, “The Confederate Monument at Arlington: A Token of Reconciliation” in Monuments to the Lost Cause, 150.

28. Peters, Arlington National Cemetery, 316-317.

29. Neff emphasized the exclusion of the Confederate dead, arguing that the color line was “between blue and gray, not black and white.” He conceded that “the legacy of black interments is a mixed one” with Colored Troops “occasionally relegated to separate portions of the burial field,” and detailed their virtual exclusion from Gettysburg and Antietam: Honoring the Civil War Dead, 133-134. MacGregor, however, indicates that “local custom. . . dictated racial segregation in most of the cemeteries” and documents how their integration became “an emotion-laden issue in 1947” and later. Morris J. MacGregor, Jr., Integration of the Armed Forces 1940-1965 (Washington: Center of Military History, 1985), 223-226; Jesse J. Holland, Black Men Built the Capitol: Discovering African-American History in and around Washington, D.C. (Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 2007), 153. African-American veterans of World War I are buried in Sec. 19 at Arlington, at the opposite extremity to Sec. 27: P.F.W., Find-a-Grave Forum, September 25, 2009, http://www.findagrave.com/forums/ ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1199391.

30. Information for Bidders, August 1, 1872, RG92 E225, Box 786, Headstones, file 3.

31. Documents attached to Letter from the Secretary of War, in relation to the execution of an amendment to an act entitled “An act to establish and protect national cemeteries,” Senate Exec. Doc. no. 8, 42nd Congress, 3rd Session, December 9, 1872.

32. Buffalo Evening Courier & Reporter, 19 August 1872, http://fultonhistory.com.

33. H.V.B., “Marking the Graves of the Boys in Blue,” Cincinnati Daily Gazette, 23 October 1872, 3. Another reporter suspected some entries were made “more for the purpose of advertising” than in expectation of winning the contract: “A Unique Exhibition,” Daily Patriot, 19 October 1872, in NARA, RG92 E576, General correspondence and reports relating to National and Post Cemeteries, Box 75, Headstones.

34. “Military Gravestones in Congress,” Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, 12 January 1873, 4.

35. Letter from the Secretary of War, in relation to the execution of an amendment to an act entitled “An Act To Establish and Protect National Cemeteries,” December 9, 1872, U.S. Congressional Serial Set,Vol. 1545, Session Vol. No. 1, 42nd Congress, 3rd Session, Senate Exec. Doc. no. 8; Times-Picayune (New Orleans), 8 November 1872, 1.

36. RG92 E225, Box 786, Consolidated correspondence: Headstones,W.S.Withers to M.C. Meigs, Atlanta, April 19, 1873; on Withers see Walter Spencer Withers, The Story of Walter Samuel Withers 1883-1907 (Wilmington, n.p., 1967).

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37. NARA, RG92 E225, Box 786, O.J. Willard to M.C. Meigs, Paterson, N.J., April 5, 1873. The sketch they forwarded to Meigs unfortunately was returned and is not in the file. The standard reference on white bronze is Barbara Rotundo, “Monumental Bronze: A Representative American Company,” in Cemeteries & Gravemarkers: Voices of American Culture, ed. Richard E. Meyer (Ann Arbor: U.M.I. Research Press, 1989; or Logan: Utah State University Press, 1992): 264-291. On the inventor Milo A. Richardson, see Rosell Lewellyn Richardson, Amos Richardson of Boston and Stonington, with a contribution to the history of his descendants (New York, n.p., 1906), 110-112 and Rev. Samuel Orcott, A History of the Old Town of Stratford and the City of Bridgeport, Connecticut (Bridgeport: Fairfield County Historical Society, 1886), Part. II: 813-814. Richardson’s patents are numbers 148,245 (1874),158,866 (1875), and 169,192 (1875). On marketing as Corinthian Monuments: St Alban’s Daily Register, 18 December 1876, 3.

38. Wheeling Register, 11 March 1876, 3.

39. “Proposals for Head-Stones for National Military Cemeteries,” New York Times, 30 August 1873, 3.

40. NARA, RG92 E576, Box 75, Belknap to Meigs, “Mem: Head Stones,” June 25, 1873. I presume the difference in depth was due to differential frost penetration.

41. Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, House of Representatives Report no. 802, 44th Congress, 1st Session, August 4, 1876, testimony of George E. Meyer, 84, 74; Kansas design attached to business card of W.D. Bolles’ Pioneer Monumental Marble Works, Fort Scott, Kansas: RG92 E225, Box 290: QMG Consolidated Correspondence: Cemeteries, National.

42. NARA, RG92 E225, Box 787, Headstones, MS report by Col. O.A. Mack on the history of the headstone program, March 1876, p. [11]; Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of William Patrick, 77.

43. Vermont Historical Society, Barre, Doc. 427, Vermont Marble Company Treasurer’s Records, file 21, Rutland Marble Co. legal papers, 1873-74, contract between Rutland Marble Company and Eagleson & De Veau, September 4, 1873.

44. Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of Oscar Mack, 8.

45. Vermont Historical Society, Doc. 423:13, Rutland Marble Co. correspondence 1873 E-H, Eagleson & De Veau to Meigs, covering letter to bid, September 4, 1873; NARA, RG92 E225, Box 786, Headstones, Eagleson & De Veau, September 13, 1873.

46. RG92 E225, Box 786, Headstones, printed bid of Eagleson & De Veau, October 11, 1872.

47. The document as submitted is in NARA, RG92 E225, Box 787, with covering letter from Eagleson & De Veau dated March 24, 1873; a draft is in Vermont Historical Society, Doc. 427:11, Rutland Marble Co. legal papers.

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Markers XXVII 48. Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of Charles F. Benjamin, 68-71.

49. Vermont Historical Society, Doc. 427:6, Rutland Marble Co. minutes, September 2, 1873.

50. NARA, RG92 E225, Box 787, Headstones, Meigs to Belknap, June 23, 1873.

51. S.G. Bridges later estimated the latter cost to be three dollars per ton. Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of Samuel G. Bridges, 46.

52. Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of Maurice P. Walsh, 48.

53. NARA, RG92 E225, Box 787, Meigs to Belknap, September 8, 1873.

54. Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of Samuel G. Bridges, 28.

55. “More Charges. What a Disappointed Contractor Says of the Awards for Headstones,” Chicago Inter-Ocean, 7 March 1876, 5; Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of Charles F. Benjamin, 69-70, and of William Patrick, 76-80.

56. Vermont Historical Society, Doc. 424, Vermont Marble Company Treasurer’s Records, J.N. Baxter, Supt., Rutland Marble Co., W. Rutland, to A. Smedberg, NYC, November 25, 1873.

57. The contracts are summarized in New York Times, 3 April 1876, 1.

58. Doherty moved to New Orleans in 1875 and became a contractor there, fixing batture holes in the levies for the City. He also secured an Indian agency trading contract in Dakota in 1886 and then moved to New York, where in 1888 he was appointed inspector of street paving, a position he held till his death in 1897. Daily Picayune, 18 August 1879, 1; 18 July 1889, 4; Grand Forks Herald, 20 April 1886, 1; obituary, Springfield Republican, 5 April 1897, 5.

59. Around 1881 Sage moved to Fisher’s Island, NY and in 1887 established the Long Island Brick Company near Greenport. Terry A. White, ”Broux to Sage Ammunition Works,” www.thomaspublications.ca/civilwarprojectiles/articles/broux_to_sage.htm; Springfield Republican, 17 May 1862, 8; Trenton State Gazette, 10 January 1863, 2; Middletown Constitution, 25 November 1868, 2; 21 July 1872, 3; 1 October 1873, 2; 1880 census: brickmaker, Cromwell, CT; New Haven Register, 22 June 1881, 1; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 3 June 1887.

60. Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of Samuel G. Bridges, 28.

61. Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of Charles S. Jones, 40; Weekly Wisconsin Patriot, 18 December 1858, 4; Cincinnati Daily Gazette, 10 September 1871, 3.

62. Daily Critic, 6 February 1878, 1; “Thomas P. Morgan,” D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, http://mpdc.dc.gov/mpdc/cwp/view,A,1230,Q,565393.asp.

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63. The History of Lee County, Iowa (Chicago: Western Historical Company, 1879), 686. A photograph of a coin silver cup with the maker’s mark of S.G. Bridges is on SM Publications, Silver Salon forums, http://www.smpub.com/ubb/Forum19/HTML/000692.html.

In later years Bridges lived with his daughter Cora in Kansas City, Missouri, where he was still living in 1910. George Creel and John Slavens, Men Who Are Making Kansas City: A Biographical Dictionary (Kansas City: Hudson-Kimberly Publishing Co., 1902), 28; 1910 census, Ward 4, p.

6A.

64. Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of George A. Meyers, 75-76.

65. Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of Thomas P. Morgan, 87.

66. Bridges v. Sheldon and others, Circuit Court, D. Vermont, January 6, 1880 in Federal Reporter, Peyton Boyle, ed., vol. 7, (Saint Paul, 1881), 17; Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of Dewitt C. Sage, 98; Cincinnati Daily Gazette, 23 March 1876, 2.

67. New York Times, 3 April 1876, 1; Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of Samuel G. Bridges, 25, 33.

68. On the regional proliferation of water-driven marble mills in western New England see Ezra Brainerd et al., The Marble Border of Western New England (Middlebury: Middlebury Historical Society, 1885). On steam power see C.T. Hinckley, “The Spring Garden Marble Works of J. & M. Baird,” Godey’s Lady’s Book (January 1853): 2-11.

69. Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of of Samuel G. Bridges, 28-30, 32.

70. “Etching Glass and Stone with Sand,” Manufacturer and Builder 8, no. 10 (October 1876): 229, http://digital.library.cornell,edu; United States patent 108,408, Insulator Patent Reference Library, http://reference.insulators.info/patents/detail/?patent=U108408.

71. Galveston News, 10 November 1871, 2; Baltimore Sun, 4 October 1872, 1.

72. RG92 E225, Box 787, Headstones: Meigs to Belknap, June 23, 1873.

73. Eagleson’s suggestion that they could deduct a further $14,000 from their bid if the soldiers’ ranks could be omitted suggests their intention to letter the stones by hand: Vermont Historical Society, Doc. 423:13, Rutland Marble Co. correspondence 1873 E-H, Eagleson & De Veau to Meigs, covering letter to bid, September 4, 1873.

74. J.B. Smith,“The Sand Blast and Its Application at West Rutland,Vermont,” in Henry R. Seely, Third Biennial Report of the Vermont State Board of Agriculture, Manufactures and Mining (Rutland: Tuttle & Co., 1876), 639-640, www.archive.org/details/biennialreportof03verm.

75. Smith, “The Sand Blast … at West Rutland,” 633-642; Manufacturer and Builder (1876): 203; Bridges v. Sheldon and others, Circuit Court, D. Vermont, January 6, 1880 in Federal Reporter, Peyton Boyle, ed., vol. 7, (Saint Paul, 1881), 17.

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76. Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of Charles Sheldon,101, and of Samuel G. Bridges, 29.

77. “Etching Glass and Stone with Sand,” Manufacturer and Builder 8, no. 10 (October 1876): 203; Smith, “The Sand Blast … at West Rutland,” 640.

78. L. Edward Purcell, “The Fall of an Iowa Hero,” Palimpsest 57, no. 5 (1976): 134; D. Alexander Brown, “The Belknap Scandal,” American History Illustrated 4, no. 2 (1969): 33.

79. Brown, “The Belknap Scandal,” 35; Purcell, “The Fall of an Iowa Hero,” 137-142.

80. The Nation, 9 March 1876, 151; Montpelier Argus & Patriot, 9 March 1876, 2.

81. Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of John M.Wright, 20, Samuel G. Bridges, 58, and William Patrick, 77.

82. Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of Maurice J. Walsh, 47-51.

83. Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of John M. Wright, 21.

84. NARA, RG92 E225, Box 786, John Jay Washburn to Meigs, April 7, 1876;Walter Woollcott to Meigs, April 6, 1876.

85. “Post-Traderships and Headstones,” Keokuk Gate City, 5 March 1876, 1, quoting Chicago Times.

86. NARA, RG92 E225, Vol. 787, Struthers to Meigs and reply, July 1873; on the Struthers firm see Philadelphia Inquirer, 22 November 1876, 2; 16 April 1877, 2.

87. NARA, RG 92, E225, Box 787, Bridges to Meigs, 31 July 1873; printed notice by Meigs re abbreviations, August 15, 1873; Meigs to Associated Press, August 16, 1873.

88. Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of Samuel G. Bridges, 23, and Thomas P. Morgan, 89.

89. NARA, RG92 E576, General Correspondence and Reports relating to National and Post Cemeteries, Box 75, Headstones, Belknap to Meigs, May 14, 1874; Meigs to Morgan, Washington, May 16, 1874, and Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of Samuel G. Bridges, 24-25, Thomas P. Morgan, 88-89, and William Patrick, 79.

90. Robert C. Prickett, “The Malfeasance of William Worth Belknap,” North Dakota History 17, no. 1 (January 1950): 48. He was less forgiving on the trading post contract: 17, no. 2 (April 1950): 126-130. Edward S. Cooper, in a monograph on the Belknap accusations, concluded that “the most plausible story” was Walsh’s allegation that the bids had been

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opened beforehand, and Bridges tipped off. There seems no particular reason to believe this. William Worth Belknap: An American Disgrace (Madison & Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003), 188.

91. Prickett, “Malfeasance,” 127. Joachim argues that Clymer, the chair of the Committee on Expenditures that investigated the trading post scandal, committed blunders in his eagerness to secure a conviction: Walter Joachim, “Hiester Clymer and the Belknap Case,” Historical Review of Berks County 36, no. 1 (1970): 28-30). If the Democrats were content to make political points for the election, however, they may not have felt the need to push for a conviction. The Democratic Campaign Text Book (New York: Democratic Party National Committee, 1876), 684-689.

92. Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, v.

93. NARA, RG92 E225, Box 787, Col. O.A. Mack, report of March 1876, 22.

94. Cincinnati Daily Gazette, 11 April 1879, 8; New York Times, 4 April 1879, 6; Annual Report of the Secretary of War for the Year 1879, 365-6. Michael Trinkley of the Chicora Foundation, a preservation contractor in Columbia S.C., pointed out to me that the headstones at the St Elizabeth’s Hospital cemeteries in Washington measure from 1.5 to 2.25 inches in thickness.

95. Indianapolis Sentinel, 29 May 1879, 4.

96. Report from Washington, August 14, in New Haven Register,18 August 1879, 1.

The Secretary of War was then George W. McCrary, like Belknap a Republican from Iowa.

97. Memo in NARA, RG92 E225, Box 787 Headstones 1866-72, contract with D.W. Whitney, August 18, 1863.

98. Montpelier Argus & Patriot, 24 March 1880, 2; Rutland Herald & Globe, 20 March 1880, 1; 20 April 1880, 4; on Fullerton see Edwin L. Bigelow and Nancy H. Otis, Manchester Vermont: A Pleasant Land Among the Mountains (Manchester:Town of Manchester, 1961), 138-9, 150, and Montpelier Argus & Patriot, 23 July 1890, 4.

99. St Alban’s Daily Messenger, 11 November 1881, 3.

100. Wisconsin State Journal (Madison), 17 July 1883, 8.

101. Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of Charles Sheldon, 101.

102. “Letter from West Rutland,” Montpelier Argus & Patriot, 25 April 1883, 3. The firm was reorganized as Sheldon & Sons upon the retirement of Francis Slason in 1881.

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103. Contract to Furnish Soldiers’ Head-stones, testimony of William Patrick, 79-80.

104. Ibid., 89.

105. Paul Wood, “Tools and Machinery of the Granite Industry,” Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association 59, no. 4 (December 2006), Part III, www.bnet.com.

106. “MacCoy’s Pneumatic Tool,” Manufacturer and Builder 21, no. 11 (November 1889): 244; Wood, “Tools and Machinery,” Part III. The patent of James S. McCoy of Brooklyn for a “pneumatic tool” is no. 323,053 of July 28, 1885; he also patented later improvements.

107. S.W. McCallie, A Preliminary Report on the Marbles of Georgia (Atlanta: Geological Survey of Georgia, 1907), second edition, 93.

108. “Surface Cutting Granite by Machinery,” Manufacturer and Builder (1894), 207.

109. Manufacturer and Builder 21, no. 11 (November 1889): 244.

110. “The Pneumatic Tool,” Manufacturer and Builder, 21, no. 4 (April 1889), 73.

111. “Quincy Granite Cutters Give Notice That They Will Ask for Shorter Hours and 30 Cents an Hour,” Boston Journal 16 December 1898, 1.

112. Springfield Republican, 12 January 1885, 6; 20 May 1885, 6.

113. Chicago Inter Ocean, 14 May 1896, 6; Boston Journal, 17 May 1900, 5.

114. “Letter from West Rutland,” Montpelier Argus & Patriot, 25 April 1883, 3.

115. Yet the notification sent out to their clients two weeks later still described the firm as “wholesale dealers in block and sawed marble” and made no reference to their wholesaling of completed monuments. St Albans Daily Messenger, 14 October 1881, 3; the design sheet and circular are in a private collection.

116. Boston Journal, 12 December 1889, 2.

117. The challenge to entrepreneurial and industrial hegemony by late 20thcentury postmodern phenomena such as personalized monuments and roadside memorials is explored in Albert N. Hamscher, “Pictorial Headstones: Business, Culture, and the Expression of Individuality in the Contemporary Cemetery,” Markers 23 (2006): 6-35 and C.D. Abby Collier, “Tradition, Modernity, and Postmodernity in Symbolism of Death,” The Sociological Quarterly 44, no. 4 (2003): 727-749.

118. RG92 E225, Box 786, Headstones, Meigs to Banning, July 31, 1876; Grant, “Patriot Graves,” 93.

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119. Richard E. Meyer, “Stylistic variation in the Western Front Battlefield Cemeteries of World War I Combatant Nations,” Markers 19 (2001): 188-253.

120. In Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning:The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), Jay Winter rejects the idea that World War I resulted in a cultural break, or that modernist anger, irony, or artistic forms were the dominant cultural response. He emphasizes “the power of traditional languages, rituals, and forms to mediate bereavement. Irony’s cutting edge. . . could express anger and despair. . . but it could not heal. Traditional modes of seeing the war. . . enabled the bereaved to live with their losses, and perhaps to leave them behind.” (115) He briefly discusses war memorial production as a business, and war memorials in war cemeteries, but he says nothing about headstone design or production. Nor, despite his comparative framework, does he consider American memorials at any great length, and he makes no acknowledgement of the Civil War precedent.

121. IWGC contractors produced 10,000 stones a year at a unit cost of £4, with half the stones being rejected by quality inspectors. Even today the custom-designed Italian machines employed by the CWGC produce only ten stones daily, and some are finished off by hand.The American relief carving was more attractive than the British incised inscriptions, but the American stones were produced with minimal detail and no iconography. Julie Summers, Remembered: The History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (London & NY: Merrell Publishers Ltd., 2007), 26-28.

122. Keith Walden, Becoming Modern in Toronto: The Industrial Exhibition and the Shaping of a Late Victorian Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 338.

123. Karen A. Michalec, “The Slate to Marble Transition in Early NineteenthCentury Gravestones” (M.A. thesis, Historical Archaeology, University of Massachusetts, Boston, 1995), 90; I am grateful to Laurel Gabel for this reference. Barbara Rotundo argued that one of the reasons white bronze ultimately failed in the consumer marketplace was that its cheapness was associated with poor quality: Rotundo, “Monumental Bronze,” 288.

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Frontispiece: Tomb architecture in Mikvé Israel section of Beit Haim, Berg Altena.

The black and white checkerboard tiles at the base of the markers is characteristic of the “mosaic pavement” used in the Synagogue as well as Jewish houses from this era.

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Cities of the Dead: Architectural Motifs and Burial Practices in Curaçao’s Religious and Ethnic Communities Kent Coupé and Laura Leibman

In this study we analyze the cemeteries of Curaçao, a small desert island in the Dutch West Indies near the coast of Venezuela that was once a crucial player in colonial smuggling and the slave trade. Our study compares the island’s Jewish (Spanish-Portuguese), Protestant (primarily Dutch), and Catholic (Afro-Curaçaoan) cemeteries. Following the work of Dickran and Ann Tashijian, Keith Cunningham, Lynn Gosnell, Suzanna Gott and others, we interpret these stones within the religio-cultural context of the people who used them. We argue that whereas ethnic cemeteries in the United States often emphasize the distinctiveness of the communities, Curaçao’s cemeteries emphasize both ethnic distinction and ethnic elision. The permeability of racial and religious boundaries in the cemeteries reflects the island’s complicated racial history and is an important reminder of how race is often constructed differently outside of the United States. This permeability should not be confused with social equality: indeed, as racial categories became more fluid following emancipation, islanders used other categories such as wealth and status displays to reinforce social privilege within (as opposed to between) ethnic groups.

In order to contextualize the gravestones, we consider the history of race and ethnicity on the island. Although Curaçao, like many Caribbean nations, has historically been a place of rigid racial and social classes, two incidents are revealing about both the permeability of social categories and the ways in which race and religion are often elided on the island. The first incident occurred in 1769, when a dispute erupted between the island’s civil military officers and the DWIC (West-Indische Compagnie—Dutch West India Company) about whether the offspring of mulattoes and whites (mustiesen) should serve in the white or mulatto militia. By 1789, the civil militia officers had won, and the mustiesen were marching with the white militia, albeit towards the back of the parade.1 Their military placement was symbolic: by marrying Jacomeinchis (low-ranked white Protestants), a Catholic mustiesen’s descendents could eventually be classified as white, and even infiltrate the upper class Dutch community of the island.2 The second incident involves the black and mulatto cemetery (1748), which ostensibly was created based

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on racial boundaries, but is later indicated as a “Roman Catholic Cemetery” on island maps. This subtle reclassification reflects island realities: most Catholics in Curaçao are people of color (Afro-Curaçaoan), and most people of color are Catholics. Catholics missionized the slaves of both Protestants and Spanish-Portuguese Jews, and the religious divisions continued along racial lines years after emancipation. Today, even if Catholic, the offspring of Sephardi (Jewish) Curaçaoan men and Afro-Curaçaoan women (known as yu di hudiu)3 sometimes attend synagogue to celebrate Yom Kippur, at death the progeny would almost certainly be buried in a Catholic, not Jewish, cemetery.4

Keeping this religio-racial history in mind, we look to the cemeteries of Curaçao as a site of ethnic distinction and elision. In their studies of ethnic American cemeteries, In Memorials for Children of Change and “The Afro-American Section of Newport’ Rhode Island’s Common Burying Ground,” Dickran and Ann Tashijian argue forcibly for the need to interpret gravestones within their specific historical and ethnic contexts. Other scholars such as David Gradwohl and David Watters have likewise clarified the need to think about the specific religious traditions of the interred. Following these scholars, we analyze the stones on Curaçao within their religio-cultural contexts. Scholars such as Tashijian, Cunningham, Gosnell, and Gott have shown that ethnic American cemeteries often highlight the community’s distinctiveness, and to a certain extent the cemeteries of Curaçao reflect this pattern.5 In life Curaçao’s Jews, Catholics, and Protestants shared their city space; however, in death they resided in separate cities composed of elaborate tomb architecture that reflected many of the de facto divisions that ruled island social life (Frontispiece). Since a person only has one body, at death one must choose the community with whom one has the greatest allegiance.

Moreover, both Jews and Catholics require that their congregants be buried exclusively in denomination-specific burial grounds. Thus, although there was no formal policy of ghettos for either Jews or Afro-Curaçaoans during life, at death there was a certain self-selecting segregation. Although all three major denominations (Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant) show an interest in architectural motifs, the burial practices of each vary tremendously.

In spite of these distinctive features, however, Curaçao’s cemeteries also commemorate the dead in ways that cut across, and even defy religious and ethnic boundaries. This permeability is best reflected in the island’s Masonic cemetery and in Masonic symbols used elsewhere on the island.

Whereas in the United States racial distinctions between African Americans and whites are usually codified, on the island of Curaçao, racial assignments are more fluid and can be impacted by issues such as wealth, religion, and marriage. As scholars such as Elisa Larkin Nascimento have shown, race is a socially constructed category and “what stands out is its plasticity, mutability,

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and diversity of expression over time” and place. Whereas in the United States racial classification was historically assigned according to origins (one drop of African blood makes a person), on Curaçao--as in Brazil--a person’s racial assignment is dependent upon self-assertion as well as external social factors.6 Through her work on Afro-Curaçaoan social life, Rose Mary Allen suggests how in the “post-emancipation daily life [of] Afro-Curaçaoans . . . identities that evolved in and from [their] social interactions were complex, multidimensional, and fluid.”7 The role of self-assertion in racial assignment makes markers such as gravestones crucial, since they serve as testimonials to an individual’s self-fashioned identity for both themselves and their descendents.

Beyond their role in creating ethnic identities, Curaçao’s cemeteries are of both artistic and historical significance. Although today Curaçao has a marginal role in the culture and economy of the Americas, during the colonial era it was a force with which to be reckoned. Curaçao was a major port for traders throughout the Americas and played a key role in the triangle trade, as a hub for Dutch smuggling, and as a producer of salt for the Dutch herring business.8 Originally controlled by the Spanish, the island came under Dutch control in the seventeenth century. Once under Dutch power, the island became a place of refuge for Spanish-Portuguese conversos—Jews who had been forced to convert to Catholicism and were then pursued by the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions. These conversos had fled the Iberian Peninsula, first to Amsterdam and then to the colonies in order to remake their fortunes and practice Judaism openly. Until around 1820, Curaçao had the largest, best educated, and most significant Jewish community in the Western Hemisphere. This community—and its gravestone art—influenced every other colonial Jewish settlement. Although the colonial Jewish cemetery has been extensively surveyed, there have been no publications in English regarding the Catholic or Protestant cemeteries on the island, nor of the later Jewish cemetery (1864-present).9 This article contains the first survey of all of the cemeteries found on the island. By looking at cemeteries across racial, ethnic, and religious boundaries, we seek to better understand how group identity was defined—and defied—through burial practice on the island.

Introduction to Curaçao’s Cemeteries

Certain elements of Curaçao’s cemeteries are shared across the island’s religio-ethnic communities and reflect a distinctive island tradition, rather than ethnic variability. Curaçao’s cemeteries reflect the desert climate and the depressed economic conditions that followed the collapse of the slave trade in the nineteenth century.10 The island’s coral ground is hard and dry, and in all the cemeteries, aboveground architecture is used to mark

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and protect the shallow graves. This architecture often mimics the much celebrated Dutch colonial architecture found throughout Curaçao; yet, each community imitated different aspects, whether the charming gables of the landhuizen (plantation houses) or the “mosaic pavement” of the synagogue (Figs. 1, 14, 15). Beyond this shared interest in architectural motifs, however, there are important differences; for example, we found that Curaçao’s Jewish cemeteries had a higher proportion of mortality symbols (Fig. 2) than either the Protestant or Catholic cemeteries on the island.

Figs. 14 and 15: (Left) Dutch gable on the “house tomb” of C. M. Schouwe (1912).

Catholic Cemetery, Berg Altena. (Right) Façade and gable of Werfstraat 6, Scharloo. In the nineteenth century, the Scharloo district was quite upscale and had many Jewish residents. Tombs from different denominations not only borrow from classical architecture, but also mimic motifs found on Curaçao itself.

Like the island’s colonial houses, the tombs are often built from the local cliff stone. Impregnated with saltpeter, the walls decay quickly, and houses and tombs alike are eaten apart from within (Fig. 11).11 In several of the cemeteries, a rank smell pervades the burial grounds, and cracks allow one to peer inside the tombs and the boxes above them. Animals have invaded the burial grounds. Foot-long whiptail lizards leap out frantically of the enormous cracks in the tombs, and small birds fly up started out of their ground-level nests. The contrast with the lush “garden cemeteries” found throughout the United States during the nineteenth century could not be stronger. In Curaçao, cemeteries are often choked by scraggly weeds festering with small burrs that cling to one’s skin and clothes. The only lush plants are those that feed off of the bodies of the dead. Their green limbs crawl out from cracks in the tombs.

Several types of tomb architecture fill the burial grounds. For the wealthy among the dead, marble boxes or elaborate gothic spirals rise above single or double tombs (Fig. 1), whereas the poor are generally housed

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in large utilitarian aboveground “house tombs” that resemble decrepit apartment complexes (Figs. 13, 14, 16).12 Curaçaoans also buried their dead in plantation kin plots; however, the majority of islanders are buried in large denominational cemeteries (Figs. 3, 4). The placement of the earliest cemeteries reflects the locations of the island’s first settlements after the Dutch conquest around the main port. We turn now to the denominational and Masonic cemeteries, beginning with the Jewish cemeteries.

Fig. 2. “Debt, disease and death were the only topics of conversation on the island.”

This stone shows three mortality symbols: the hand of God cutting down the tree of life (top), a winged hourglass (second to bottom), and a skull and crossbones (bottom). Circles in the center of the stone contained inscriptions that have largely been eroded due to air pollution from the nearby oil refinery. Representations of divine images (such as the hand of God) are forbidden by Jewish Law. Ishak Senior gravestone (1693). Beit Haim, Blenheim.

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Fig. 13. Angels, cherubs, and crosses adorn “house tombs.”

Catholic Cemetery, Otrobanda.

Fig. 16. View of the entrance pathway and “house tombs.”

Catholic Cemetery, Berg Altena.

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Fig. 3. Map of known kin plots designated on A. Fullerton’s “Dutch Possessions in South America and the West Indies” (1872). Courtesy of the David Rumsey Map Collection. White circles indicate known locations of kin plots.

For denominational cemeteries in inset box, see Fig. 4

Fig. 4. Denominational, Masonic, and military cemeteries.

See Appendix I for street addresses.

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During the first two centuries of Dutch colonization, Curaçao’s cemeteries provided Spanish-Portuguese Jews with an important means of distinguishing themselves from their Catholic brethren. For the conversos and their descendents, the separate Jewish burial ground attested to their newly reclaimed faith, as did their distinctive burial practices. While they may have been forced to practice Catholicism on the Iberian Peninsula, in Curaçao they openly rejected this religious heritage. Starting in the later part of the nineteenth-century, Curaçao’s Jews began to use their cemeteries to clarify distinctions among Jews, and the newer cemetery highlighted ethnic, religious, and social differences within the Jewish community.

The early Jewish cemetery near the Blenheim plantation (Fig. 4, No. 10) followed the Portuguese rite as established by the Jews of Amsterdam.

The first two groups of Sephardic Jews to arrive from Amsterdam settled across Schottegat, the island’s large central bay, from Willemstad. Here they established their first cemetery, which they continued to use until the middle of the nineteenth century, even after their economic interests shifted from agriculture to maritime and mercantile endeavors and they became centered around Willemstad as well. Funeral cortèges heading across Schottegat to Beit Haim Blenheim were often composed of canoes and barges. The Sephardic parent community in Amsterdam had a similar mode of conveyance by means of which they would proceed up the Amstel to their comparably elaborate Ouderkerk aan de Amstel burial ground. Overall, the Beit Haim Blenheim cemetery emphasized the distinctiveness of the community: not only was it exclusively for Jews, it contained special buildings related to purity rites, and the gravestones reflected the community’s messianic fervor.

The world of early Curaçaoan Jews was highly mystical, and at times messianic fervor gripped the island: the gravestones reflect this religious world.13 The early Jewish cemetery is famous not only for its elaborate stones, but also for images forbidden by Jewish law such as biblical scenes, angels, and the hand of God cutting down the tree of life. One explanation for the forbidden images on early stones (Fig. 2) is that they represent “realized eschatology”14: that is, Curaçaoan Jews may have believed that the messiah had already arrived and hence Jewish law was in a state of flux. Such an explanation may also help explain their penchant for mortality symbols: in the end times, God would purify the world and resurrect the dead (Techiyas ha-Mesim). Thus, the name Beit Haim (House of Life) should be understood as not merely a euphemism for the cemetery, but as part of a theological aspiration for life after death: with the resurrection, the “body dies and deteriorates and a new structure is composed, that the soul can enter and purify.”15 Mortality symbols serve as an important reminder for the living that the bodies they inhabit today are transitory. Likewise the ubiquitous winged hourglasses on the gravestones remind those visiting the cemetery both that “time flies” (Figs. 2, 8), and that they live in an era of what Anthropologist Joel

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Robbins refers to as “everyday” or quotidian millenarianism, in which time progresses both in a steady manner (the slow pouring of sand) and is liable to radical ruptures (flight).16 The quotidian millenarianism of the community is also reflected in the nearly ubiquitous use of the “mosaic pavement,” a symbol that we discuss in a moment, in the later Jewish cemeteries.

Fig. 8. Neoclassical Winged Time. Gravestones of Elias P. Delvalle (1927) and Sarah P. Delvalle (1960). Mikvé Israel section of Beit Haim, Berg Altena.

Fig. 6. La Casa de Rodeos (left) and the House of the Cohenim (right) on the south side of the Beit Haim Bleinheim Cemetery and adjacent to the Shell Oil Refinery.

The obsession with death impurity and the transitioning of the death into the world to come can be seen in two key structures at the Beit Haim Bleinheim Cemetery: the Casa de Rodeos (House of the Rounds) and the house of the Cohenim (Priests) (Fig. 6). After the ritual washing of the

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dead, the Hevra kadisha (burial society) led the men in seven circuits around the body in the House of the Rounds.17 These circuits not only embedded the dead into the memory of the community, but also helped transition the deceased from the world of the living to the world to come. In Judaism, seven is a holy number symbolizing God, completion, and the covenant. Although most Jews could visit the dead after burial, those descended from the priestly family (Cohenim) are not permitted to walk in cemeteries. Thus, Beit Haim Bleinheim Cemetery provided a vantage point for them in the house of the Cohenim from which they could visit the dead and yet not violate Jewish law.

Both the buildings and iconography of the Bleinheim Cemetery emphasize in allegiance to Jewish traditions of purity, resurrection, and the afterlife.

The 1860s marked a change in Jewish life, and hence death, on the island. Slavery was abolished in 1863, and the emancipation of slaves impacted not only the island’s economy, but also social life: as racial assignment became more fluid, islanders increasingly used wealth and status displays to reinforce social privilege within ethnic groups. Thus, during this era, Curaçao’s Jews began to build elaborate tombs (Fig. 1). Moreover, theological rifts within the Jewish community became more extreme and necessitated separate cemeteries. Thus, the Curaçao Jewish Reform Community of 1864 purchased land for a cemetery in Berg Altena (Fig. 4, No. 2), northeast of the Protestant graveyard in that district. Several years later, the Orthodox community established their own burying ground adjacent to that of the Reform community. When the Reform and Orthodox Sephardi congregations merged in the 1960s, the cemeteries united as well and the dividing wall came down (Fig. 7).18 During this era distinctions between Sephardim (Spanish Portuguese Jews) and Ashkenazim (Eastern European and German Jews) became more pronounced.

In Papiamentu, the local language used on Curaçao, there are two words for Jews that reflect differences in social status: hudiu (“Jews”), which refers to Spanish-Portuguese Jews, and the rather derogatory term polako (“Poles”), which refers to Ashkenazim. Whereas Spanish-Portuguese Jews have lived on the island since the seventeenth-century, most Ashkenazi Jews arrived in the 1920s-1930s, drawn in part to the island by work at the oil refinery.19 Anthropologist Alan Benjamin notes that the two groups are considered to be different social groups, though there is intermarriage between the two.20 In addition to having different synagogues and different minhagim (religious traditions), the two have separate sections of the modern Jewish cemetery.21 Indeed the largest changes in burial practices are not between the orthodox and reform sections of the Berg Altena cemetery, but between the Sephardi and Ashkenazi sections (Fig. 7, Nos. 1-3). Although Curaçaoan Ashkenazim use flat “Sephardi-style” stones to protect their shallow graves,22 the iconography of the Ashkenazi stones is like that found in

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almost any Ashkenazi cemetery in the Western hemisphere during this era: most commonly, the star of David or a menorah. In contrast, the Sephardi sections of the old and new cemeteries (whether orthodox or reform) have their own distinctive burial style that has evolved slowly over the decades that includes many unusual iconographic elements, such as the forbidden images discussed above. These differences reflect a more general pattern noticed by Alan Benjamin amongst island Jews: Curaçao’s Sephardim see themselves as hudiu (Curaçaoan Sephardi), while Curaçao’s Ashkenazim see themselves as part of a subgroup of the larger worldwide Ashkenazi community, rather than a group defined by their relationship to Curaçao.23

Fig. 7. Map of Beit Haim, Berg Altena.

In contrast to the Ashkenazi section, the Sephardic burials in the Berg Altena Cemetery reflect a tradition has slowly evolved during the over three hundred and fifty years that Sephardic Jews have lived on the island.

The main characteristics of this style are (1) flat table stones and later obelisks and gothic architecture (Fig. 1), (2) the frequent use of “forbidden” graven

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images including angels (Fig. 5), human figures, and the hand of God (Fig. 2), (3) a high proportion of mortality symbols including winged hourglasses, death’s heads, and the hand of God cutting down the tree of life (Figs. 2 and 8), and (4) the use of “mosaic pavement” starting in the nineteenth-century, a symbol which probably refers to Solomon’s Temple, and hence the return of the messiah (Figs. 1 and 8). Neo-classical marble checkerboard floorings (“mosaic pavement”) reflected a general interest in antiquity, but were also explicitly associated with Solomon’s Temple throughout the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. As such they recalled not only the Temple in Antiquity, but also the third Temple that was expected to appear in the messianic era. By at least 1730 mosaic pavement design was a mainstay of Masonic temples because of the pavement’s Solomonic association. While many prominent members of the Jewish communities in the Caribbean were indeed Masons, mosaic pavement served different purposes in Caribbean synagogues than in Masonic temples. Jews used the mosaic pavement primarily to mark boundaries, not centers as the Masons did.24 As in the island’s Sephardic synagogue, the Berg Altena Jewish cemetery used mosaic pavement as a border around graves, thus marking the boundary between the living and the dead, and between this world and the world to come. Although mosaic pavements are ubiquitous in the Berg Altena Jewish cemetery, they are completely absent from Curaçao’s Masonic cemetery and almost never found in the island’s Catholic or Protestant cemeteries. Mosaic pavement on the island developed as a distinctive Jewish practice associated with thresholds.25

The distinctive hudiu (Curaçaoan Sephardi) style is used primarily in the Berg Altena cemetery to emphasize distinctions between Jews; however, it is also invoked elsewhere on the island by Afro-Curaçaoan who sought to transcend racial boundaries. The hudiu style is perhaps best reflected by a highly popular design which we refer to as the Neoclassical Winged Time, which usually combines a winged hour glass, wreathes, and palmettes26 in a distinctive triangle pattern and mosaic pavement below. This design is found almost exclusively in the Jewish cemetery, though we did locate an example in the Catholic cemetery in Berg Altena on a tomb with a Sephardi last name, which suggests that the deceased may have been (or wished to appear to be) yu di hudiu, an Afro-Curaçaoan descended in part from Sephardi Jews.27 As Benjamin and Abraham-Van der Mark note, there is a certain cultural currency on the island in appearing to be yu di hudiu; moreover, there has been an attempt by some Afro-Curaçaoans to “appropriate the power attributed to Sephardi Jews” through the clandestine use of the older Sephardi cemetery to conduct Afro-Curaçaoan religious rituals.28 This AfroCuraçaoan interest in Sephardim may explain the placement of a small Jesus plaque commemorating Carlos Humberto Luneta (1946-1970) near the gravestone of Victor Jesurun (1891-1945), a member of the Mikvé Israel parnassim (lay council).29

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Fig. 5. Angel from tomb of Sarah Cohen Henriquez (1888).

Temple Emanu-él section of Beit Haim, Berg Altena.

Curaçao’s Protestant Cemeteries

From the earliest days, Curaçao’s Protestant cemeteries display a similar interest in marking divisions within the Protestant community, particularly between Protestant elites and the working class. Located strategically at the mouth of Sint Anna Baai (Saint Anna’s Bay) is Willemstad, Curaçao’s capital and administrative and military center. From the earliest years of the conquest, the Protestant sailors, soldiers, and officials of the Dutch West India Company had a cemetery adjacent to the fort that commanded

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the harbor (Fig. 4, No. 4). In the early nineteenth century, two new Protestant cemeteries were established, one in Berg Altena (Fig. 4, No. 1) and another across Sint Anna Baai in Otrobanda (Fig. 4, No. 6).30

Early in the island’s history, the large Protestant cemetery had negative social associations, and Protestants with the means and a mind to do so generally chose to be interred at their family plantations (Fig. 3). The oldest Protestant cemetery on the island is no longer in existence: officially called the “Gereformeed Kerkhoff ” (Reformed Cemetery) and later “Het burger Kerkhoff der Christenen” (The Public Cemetery of Christians), it was colloquially known as “Behind the Walls.”31 This burial ground had separate burial sections for men and women and was the only cemetery located in Willemstad proper, as it stood to the east of Fort Amsterdam and south of the city wall (Fig. 4, No. 4).32 Churchgoing Governor Faesch exercised his management over the cemetery in 1749 when he urged Curaçaoans to fund the erection of a new gate and wall around the cemetery in an effort to curb violations of its hallowed grounds. Among the profanations listed in his address are the cemetery’s flagrant misuse as a “bordello and dice-throwing parlor” and the plundering of fresh graves for metal parts and firewood.33 Later governor Rodier laid down harsh punishments for those found dumping garbage along the cemetery walls in 1770 and 1779.34 Rabbi and historian I. S. Emmanuel relates that the island’s hard soil made roving animals preying on the shallowly buried corpses a grisly reality as late as 1785.35 Unremarkably, the cemetery was closed in 1810 due to hygiene concerns and the need for developable land in a growing Willemstad whose city walls would be demolished in 1861.36 The newly-formed Reformed Jewish Community acquired 2,000 square meters of land east of the courthouse, where the cemetery and its illegal piles of rubbish had stood, and here they built their Temple Emanu-él (now the Public Prosecution Office).37 Temple Emanu-él, the Contentment Masonic Lodge Building (now Inter-Assure Insurances), Wilhelmina Square, and the immediately surrounding buildings and parking lot stand over Curaçao’s oldest colonial cemetery; its final profanation.

The same year the old “Behind the Walls” burial ground was closed, a new Protestant cemetery was inaugurated in Otrobanda followed by another in Berg Altena ten years later. Both of these cemeteries are still in use today. The Berg Altena Protestant cemetery (Fig. 4, No. 1) bakes in the sun on the northeast corner of the intersection of Berg Altena (street) and Oranjestraat. Tracing its pathways, we got a sense of the wide class gap and varying geographical origins of the island’s Protestants since 1820. Alan F. Benjamin succinctly recapitulates the social situation of the island’s Dutch population by dividing them into “elite and working class strata, for there were small-business operators, crafts-people, and laborers who were Dutch, but were not accepted as social peers by the Dutch elite.”38 Here masterfully-

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sculpted angels, obelisks, sculpted mourners, and coats-of-arms adorn the monuments of the more affluent Curaçaoans, while some cramped and uneven inscriptions on the miniscule and otherwise plain stones of the poor reveal an unprofessional hand. Socially segregated in life, the “‘higher’ Protestants and the ‘lower’ Protestants” are neighbors in death.39 This was not always the case. Before Governor P. R. Cantz’laar passed an ordinance following his arrival in 1820 that restricted burials to established religious cemeteries, the Dutch who had attained landhuizen established kin plots there.40 Under the eyes of their family, they expected to avoid the profanations that their “lower” coreligionists had to endure in “Behind the Walls.”41 Some stones in English accompany Dutch and Spanish inscriptions, and many have with poetic epitaphs. Ornate Jewish stones at Blenheim from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries share this elegiac characteristic. These and other similarities between the monuments to successful Jewish and “high” Protestants underline their position in Curaçaoan society as “rival elites.”42

The number of world travelers and foreign nationals in this cemetery bears witness to the increasing fluidity of movement in the period when the cemetery came into use. Inscriptions serve as passport stamps to Pomerania, Belgium, The Netherlands, and St. Thomas. Several occupants of tombs bearing English inscriptions hail from Scotland, but there’s also an Irish doctor as well as a New Yorker who perished here in 1824.

The wide variety of tomb styles in the Berg Altena Protestant Cemetery attest to the social aspirations and alliances of the occupants.

Some monuments of more well-to-do Protestants reflect the same flare for neoclassical urns, columns, obelisks as their Jewish contemporaries up the street, though fewer examples of free-standing sculpture can be found here than there.

Masonic symbols in both cemeteries indicate that their elite occupants’ similarities ran deeper than mere artistic tastes. Some Protestant tombs are long slabs set atop concrete boxes in a style similar to the early Sephardic stones of Beit Haim Blenheim. The tops of a handful of such box tombs have collapsed with odious and odiferous consequences (Fig. 11). Many less ornate sepulchers Fig. 11. Collapsed tomb with take the shape of the large “apartment indecipherable inscription. house” style tombs that almost exclusively Protestant Cemetery, Berg Altena. compose Curaçao’s Catholic cemeteries.

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Curaçao’s Catholic Cemeteries

As we noted in the introduction, Catholicism on Curaçao is associated primarily with lower-class Afro-Curaçaoans. Markers within the island’s Catholic cemeteries pay allegiance to Catholic traditions, but also forge connections with islander’s African and Jewish heritage. Nearly all of the island’s predominantly Afro-Curaçaoan population has espoused Roman Catholicism ever since Curaçao was a linchpin of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century Caribbean slave trade, but their community was the last of the three dominant religious denominations to gain a place of worship and a cemetery.43 There are three known Catholic cemeteries in Willemstad, though one has been destroyed. On the same street in Otrobanda as the nineteenth century Protestant cemetery is the first Catholic cemetery to appear on Curaçao after the island was wrested away from Catholic Spain (Fig. 4, No. 5). A second Catholic cemetery lay nearby, but it has now been destroyed (Fig. 4, No. 0). One of these more modern Catholic cemeteries is part of the cluster of burial grounds in Berg Altena and is discussed below (Fig. 4, No. 3).

Catholicism on the island of Curaçao went from being the official religion of both colonizer and native while under Spanish dominion, to a forbidden faith and, finally, the exclusive preserve of the colonial underclasses. From 1499 to 1634, Curaçao was under Spanish control, and Native Caiquitíos were introduced to Catholicism under the encomienda system whereby the right to Indian labor was granted only along with the responsibility of Catholicizing native wards. When the Dutch West India Company took Curaçao from the Spanish in 1634, Director Van Weelbeck deemed the Indians “entirely popish and not to be trusted” and evacuated all but 75 members of this potential fifth column with the Spanish.44 What few chapels the Spanish had erected had fallen into ruin by the time of the Dutch conquest and no more Catholic structures were built in Curaçao for over a century despite the presence of a growing non-Indian religious base. 45

While Curaçao was under Dutch rule, Catholicism became the faith of practically all the slaves and freed Blacks on the island, though some servants of the West India Company—especially her sailors and “soldiers” (mercenaries)—also espoused Catholicism.46 In contrast, during this era the Dutch Reformed Church became the official creed of the island’s rulers.

During this same era, companies with agents on Curaçao were granted the slave trade monopoly (asiento) by the Spanish Crown.47 One stipulation for this asiento was that Catholic priests be permitted to missionize to the slaves both as they were prepared for departure from the Dutch slave forts in Africa, and upon their arrival in Curaçao; thus, Catholicism became the religion of Curaçao’s slaves. Today, their descendants form the preponderance of

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that religion’s congregants on the island.48 Catholicism’s status on the island reflects this history. Despite the many initiatives taken by the Catholic Church to alleviate poverty, the Church was called “the Church of the poor” and association with it was considered by some to be deleterious to one’s social standing.49

Due to their cursory indoctrination into Catholicism and the limited interaction with clergy they experienced on the island, Afro-Curaçaoans combined traditional African beliefs with their new observances. Thus, Afro-Curaçaoan burial practices reflect a variety of religio-cultural practices (Fig. 12). What developed in some places was a unique brand of Catholic practice and ritual in a species of creole religion. Patron saints became thinly-veiled African deities, old notions of ritual impurity persisted, as did certain customs and ceremonies—all to the chagrin of the Roman Catholic priests who considered such practices “vicious and uncivilized.”50

Fig. 12. Statue of Jesus with eyes and heart painted turquoise.

Catholic Cemetery, Berg Altena

For Afro-Curaçaoans, one’s relationship to the Church impacted how one was buried. Devout Afro-Curaçaoan Catholics could expect an education, the admission of their daughters to the nunnery, and the right to receive Church land and legal aid.51 Another reward for a dutiful

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Catholic could come in the form of a leadership role in the “sitter” (funeral organization) and confidence that a Catholic burial on consecrated ground (marka buraka) awaited after death.52 Burial practice was also used to punish “deviant” behavior. Children born out of wedlock were given a secondary status, and priests could refuse to consecrate marriages that involved an idler or a Freemason bridegroom.53 Even in death the Church sought to shame those who had cohabitated out of wedlock. Such couples began to be buried in the rear of cemeteries on unconsecrated plots known in native Papiamentu as the chiké (pigsty).54 Likewise Freemasons could not be buried in the cemetery.

The oldest Catholic cemetery on Curaçao (since Spanish control) has its origins in a 1748 Otrobandan land purchase by Anthony Beltran, captain of the militia of free blacks, and Jan van Loenen, captain of the free mulattos.

These men planned to use their lot to inter fellow free blacks and mulattos (Fig. 4, 5).55 On a map of the Schottegat area in I. S. Emmanuel’s Precious Stones of the Jews of Curaçao dated “around 1820,” the land thus purchased appears to be labeled “R. K. Kerkhof,” designating it a Roman Catholic Cemetery.56 The cemetery’s shift from a race- and class-based interment policy to one centered on religious convictions would have been indiscernible. As late as 1816, all slaves and all free blacks except for twenty people belonged to the Roman Catholic Church.57

Today, Sta. Anna Cemetery, named for the Otrobandan basilica that is the island’s oldest Dutch-era Catholic building, contains few signs of her colonial origins. Most tombs are one or two story “apartment house” tombs containing multiple family members and dating from after the enactment of emancipation on Curaçao in 1863. Walking through rows of these apartment/ house tombs, we had the impression we had entered a deserted street in a miniature city. Crosses, angels, and cherubs bedeck the well-maintained structures and supply a small host of residents for the ghost town (Fig. 14).

Stones in a later Catholic Cemetery in Berg Altena (Fig. 4, No. 3) tell a similar story, but these ones show more signs of the living. A Jesus of the Sacred Heart stands vigil over a sepulcher, his eyelids, nostrils, and flaming heart painted turquoise (Fig. 12). Discarded household items—a lawn chair here, an entire toilet there—lie amongst the tombs. Beyond the kempt thoroughfare that extends from the front gates past the more impressive sepulchers rubbish piles and rampaging brambles make navigation difficult.

For the impetuous visitor, single tombs from as early as 1879 and a plot of children’s graves are a variation from the rows of “house tombs,” whose alleys are choked with weeds and swarming with startlingly noisy lizards. The uneven and shallow inscriptions on some stones here in the recesses reveal that there were many Catholic, as well as Protestant, families that could not afford the services of a professional stonemason.

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Curaçao’s Masonic Cemetery

The last type of cemetery we address is that of the Masons—a group that transcended religious boundaries. The Masonic cemetery is one of a small cluster of non-religious burial grounds in Otrobanda. (The other non-religious cemetery is a military cemetery that was built following the disastrous explosion in 1778 of the docked Dutch frigate Alphen that resulted in the loss of the ship with nearly all hands [Fig. 4, No. 8]).58 Unlike the military cemetery, the people interred in the Masonic cemetery were often long-term island residents. While some Jewish and Protestant Masons could choose to be buried in their denominational burial ground and mark their graves with Masonic symbols, the Masonic cemetery was the last refuge for all Catholic Freemasons. On the surface, the Masons are strikingly egalitarian: their organization (and hence cemetery) cuts across racial, religious, and ethnic boundaries and indeed one island lodge was called Igualdad (Equality).

Another way of understanding the Masons, however, is as a retrenchment of privilege particularly following emancipation: as racial assignment became more fluid on the island, the Masons offered a way to regain control of social status and privilege through secret and private means. Thus, we argue that the Masonic cemetery, established a mere five years after slavery was abolished, should be seen a way that social elites reinforced boundaries.

Although Freemasonry was popular on the island since the 1750s, it was not until 1868 that the Freemasons of Curaçao procured a cemetery of their own. By this time, the island was home to several lodges. The small burial ground’s location attests to the multiple religious alliances of the interred. The cemetery shared a common wall with the Protestants, but also was across the street from one of the Catholic burial grounds (Fig. 4, Nos. 5, 6, 7). Walking west down Otrobanda’s Roodeweg Street, past the Catholic Cemetery, along the Protestant cemetery’s two-meter-tall wall, we could have easily missed the change in the barrier’s color from the ubiquitous goldenrod to a more somber beige. This subtle shift demarcates one border of a separate graveyard. Compared to the Protestant burial ground with which it shares a common wall, this cemetery boasts a grander entrance and covers less than half the area. Also in contrast to its Protestant neighbor, the locked gate offers no visitor information, thereby reinforcing the sense of the Masons as a “secret” organization.

Freemasonry was formally first brought to Curaçao in 1757 when Amsterdam Lodge member Jacobus Buys established lodge l’Amitié, though the possibility has been raised that a group of New World Jews with connections to the island were familiar with a form of Masonry as early as the seventeenth century.59 Many lodges were established and revived on Curaçao over the following two and a half centuries with varying degrees of longevity

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and success. In the nineteenth century, Masons were counted among the Curaçaoan Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic congregations. Indeed, some Masons chose to be buried in their denominational cemeteries but proclaimed allegiance to the Masons through tombstone decoration: thus, the same square and compass emblazoned in white on the Masonic cemetery’s black iron gate is featured on tombstones and monuments in both Protestant and Jewish cemeteries around the island (Fig. 17). Such a wide membership base is a clear sign of deviation from the island society’s normally rigid ethnoreligious stratification. However well the ecumenical members of this secret fraternity were able to reconcile their Masonic membership with that of their religious congregation while alive, death forced each one to issue a statement concerning his connections, convictions, and class.

Fig. 17. Masonic square and compass adorn the column monument of A. J. Pypers (1871). Protestant Cemetery, Berg Altena.

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For Protestants, the Masonic cemetery was an important way to reinforce social status upon burial and forge connections with rival elites.

In 1868, when Lodge Igualdad (Equality) purchased the 7,340 square meters of Mundo Novo (New World) plantation that now forms the Masonic Cemetery on Roodeweg, “higher” Protestant Masons were presented with the opportunity to reassert their class superiority. A small and stately burial plot adjacent to the main Protestant cemetery offered the separate, more exclusive burial the “higher” Protestants had not enjoyed since Governor Cantz’laar confined them to the same resting places as the Protestant rabble. It was here that in death they regained a favorable separation from non-Mason coreligionists. Moreover, the cemetery allowed them to transcend religious boundaries to reinforce alliances with other elites, such as the island’s wealthy Jewish citizens.

Although Curaçao’s Jewish residents were among some of the early important Masons on the island, Jewish Freemasons had little inclination to be buried anywhere but their community’s cemetery; instead Jewish Masons used tomb decorations to call attention to Masonic status. Previous scholars have noted the popularity of Freemasonry amongst conversos, but it is worth reiterating here. As conversos began to practice Judaism openly, in some ways Masonic practice served as a substitute for the hidden (“crypto”) Judaism that they left behind on the Iberian Peninsula. Yet whereas cryptoJudaism separated conversos from Christians, the clandestine and mystical Masonic practice served to connect Jews to their non-Jewish neighbors.60 That said, Masonry was sometimes at odds with Jewish belief and practice.

Religious beliefs regarding purity laws and resurrection called for burial in a Jewish cemetery, and community traditions placed a great deal of value on interment with family members. Freemasonry requires certain oaths usually deemed sacrilegious by a traditional interpretations of Jewish Law; yet, Orthodox Sephardic Rabbi Chumaceiro (1856-71) “accepted. . . Masonic ideals”61 and likewise the later orthodox Sephardic Rabbi Emmanuel (193639) asserted that “up to a certain grade masonry did not compromise one’s faith to religious beliefs or theories incompatible with Judaism.”62 With Masonic ideals understood as such, it is little wonder that Masonic symbols appeared on about ten stones at Beit Haim, Blenheim when Emmanuel conducted his research there. Several more Masonic symbols still mark graves in Beit Haim, Berg Altena, where elevated grades of Freemasonry are recorded after names like honorific titles or professional degrees (Fig. 18).

Freemasonry thus emphasized an elite status that transcended differences between orthodox and reform Sephardim and to a lesser extent Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews. A handsome lodge building (now Inter-Assure Insurances) for Contentment Lodge was inaugurated in 1869 in the heart of Punda, adjacent to the Reform Sephardi Temple Emanu-él, which was finished just

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over a year before in 1867.63 Their relation exceeds mere proximity in time and space. A large wooden carving bearing Masonic imagery hung about the temple’s doorway in the years it housed the Reform congregation (Fig. 19).

Whatever of Chumaceiro’s orthodox beliefs the Jewish separatists rejected, their enthusiasm for Freemasonry was a common bond.

Fig. 18. The stone of thirty-first-degree Mason Isaac Moises Penso (1878).

Temple Emanu-él section of Beit Haim Berg Altena.

Fig. 19. Lintel with Masonic symbols from the doorway of Temple Emanu-él (1865). Currently at Mikvé Israel-Emanuel’s Jewish Historical Cultural Museum.

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Freemasons who lived as Catholics—and their families—would endure a more stigmatized existence within their congregation. A Mason’s child was bound for an ignominious subaltern baptism and the parent’s were in peril of being buried in the unconsecrated “pigsty.” Many Catholic and Protestant Masons protested the baptismal regulations and several of their Catholics brought their children to Protestant vicars for the service.64 Allen describes how many members of the Catholic Church on Curaçao, seeking to avoid the shame of a burial in the chiké, entrusted their mortal remains to the Protestant Church.65 Masonic Catholics could go one step further and seek interment at the cemetery of the Protestant elite, frustrating the Catholic clergy’s attempts to make Masons into undesirables.

Conclusion

The dissimilar layouts, overall expense, style, and preservation of Curaçao’s cemeteries reveal the way that religio-cultural beliefs impact burial practice. Even so, class status and social position often motivated Curaçaoans to commemorate the dead in ways that cut across, and in some cases even defied, religious associations. The wealthy and powerful residents of Curaçao, Jew and Gentile alike, evince a continued desire for their social distinction within their own congregation. For the “higher” Protestants, whose beliefs permitted it, the answer was separation—in the form of either a plantation kin lot for early colonists or a Masonic burial for their later counterparts.

The ornate carvings of Biblical namesakes, towering gothic monuments, and Italian marble of Beit Haim Blenheim and Beit Haim Berg Altena affirm that the cream of the Jewish community used cemeteries to display social status.

Likewise, to avoid degrading variations of burial and other religious rites, erstwhile Catholics turned to those outside their denomination in the pursuit of a respectable repose for their earthly remains. Curaçao’s cities of the dead reflect the island’s complicated racial and religious history, as well as the ties that bound and split the community.

Acknowledgments

This paper would not be possible without funding from a Ruby Grant. We are also grateful to the following individuals and organizations for answering our questions and/or allowing us access to their collections: Esther van Haaren-Hart, Curator of the S.A.L. (Mongui) Maduro Foundation Library; Myrna Moreno, Curator of the Jewish Historical Cultural Museum, Mikvé Israel-Emanuel; Alan Benjamin; and Mr. and Mrs. Naarden of the Maritime Museum.

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Notes

1. Wim Klooster, “Subordinate But Proud: Curaçao’s Free Blacks and Mulattoes in the Eighteenth Century,” Nieuwe West-Indische gids 68, no. 3 (1994): 294.

2. Boeli Van Leeuwen, “A Stranger on Earth,” in Founding Fictions of the Dutch Caribbean, trans. Olga E. Roger and Joseph O. Aimone (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 57.

3. ”Marriage and Concubinage among the Sephardic Merchant Elite of Curaçao” in Women and Change in the Caribbean, ed. Janet T. Momsen (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993).

4. Alan F. Benjamin, Jews of the Dutch Caribbean: Exploring Ethnic Identity on Curaçao (London: Routledge, 2002), 54, 147. Bernard R. Buddingh, Otrobanda, ‘Aen de Oversidje van deese haven’: De geschiedenis van Otrobanda, stadsdeel van Willemstad, Curaçao van 1696 tot 1755 (The Netherlands Antilles: De Curaçaosche Courant, 2006), 232-33. Isaac Emmanuel, Precious Stones of the Jews of Curaçao (New York: Bloch, 1957), 40.

5. Dickran Tashjian and Ann Tashjian. Memorials for Children of Change: the Art of Early New England Stonecarving (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan U. P., 1974). Ann Tashjian and Dickran Tashjian, “The Afro-American Section of Newport, Rhode Island’s Common Burying Ground,” in Cemeteries and Gravemarkers: Voices in American Culture, ed. Richard E. Meyer (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1992): 163-96. David H.Watters, “With Bodilie Eyes”: Eschatological Themes in Puritan Literature and Gravestone Art (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981). David Mayer Gradwohl,“Benditcha Sea Vuestra Memoria: Sephardic Jewish Cemeteries in the Caribbean and Eastern North America,” Markers XV (1998): 1-29. Keith Cunningham, “Navajo, Mormon, Zuni Graves,” in Cemeteries and Gravemarkers; 197-216. Lynn Gosnell and Suzanne Gott, “San Fernando Cemetery,” in Cemeteries and Gravemarkers, 217-36.

6. Elisa Larkin Nascimento, The Sorcery of Color: Identity, Race, and Gender in Brazil (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007), 20-22.

7. Rose Mary Allen, “Di ki manera? A Social History of Afro-Curaçaoans, 18631917” (PhD diss., University of Utrecht, 2007), 258, Igitur, Utrecht Publishing and Archiving Services, http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/dissertations/2007-0320-201215/ (accessed August 13, 2007). Emphasis ours.

8. Gert Oostindie, Paradise Overseas; The Dutch Caribbean: Colonialism and its Transatlantic Legacies (Oxford: MacMillan Education, 2005), 8-9.

9. Studies of the Jewish cemetery include Emmanuel, Precious Stones of the Jews of Curaçao; Rochelle Weinstein, “Stones of Memory: Revelations from a Cemetery in Curaçao,”

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American Jewish Archives 44, no. 1 (1992):81-140; Rochelle Weinstein, “Sepulchral Monuments of the Jews of Amsterdam in the Seventeenth and Eighteen Centuries” (Ph.D. diss., 2 vols., New York University, 1979). The cemetery is also discussed briefly in David Mayer Gradwohl’s “Benditcha Sea Vuestra Memoria.”

10. Gert Oostindie, Paradise Overseas, 35-36. The slave trade was abolished in Curaçao in 1815, although slaves were not emancipated until 1863.

11. Pauline Winkel refers to the process as “wall cancer.” Pauline Pruneit Winkel, Scharloo. A Nineteenth-Century Quarter of Willemstad, Curaçao: Historical Architecture and its Background (Florence: Edizioni Poligrafico Fiorentino, 1987), 153-55.

12. Douglas Keister, Stories in Stone: A Field Guide to Cemetery Symbolism and Iconography, (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 2004), 236.

13. Jonathan Sarna, “Port Jews in the Atlantic: Further Thoughts,” Jewish History 20 (2006): 215. Aviva Ben-Ur, “Still Life: Sephardi, Ashkenazi, and West African Art and Form in Suriname’s Jewish Cemeteries,” American Jewish History 92, no. 1 (2004): 40, 44-45.

14. Ben-Ur, “Still Life,” 45.

15. Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, The Way of God, trans. Aryeh Kaplan (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1996), 53. Rabbi Luzzatto (the “Ramchal”) was a highly influential early-eighteenthcentury Sephardic Kabbalist who lived in Amsterdam for part of his life.

16. Joel Robbins,“Secrecy and the Sense of an Ending: Narrative,Time, and Everyday Millenarianism in Papua New Guinea and in Christian Fundamentalism.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 43(3) 2001: 535-51.

17. Emmanuel, Precious Stones, 81.

18. “The Curaçao Jewish Community Today,” Mikvé Israel-Emanuel, http://www. snoa.com. Date of access?

19. Benjamin, Jews of the Dutch Caribbean, 124.

20. Benjamin, Jews of the Dutch Caribbean, 122, 124.

21. Mikvé Israel-Emanuel for the Sephardim and Shaare Tsedek for the Ashkenazim.

22. Typically Sephardic cemeteries use flat ledger stones while Ashkenazi cemeteries use upright stones.

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24. The exception to this is the flooring of the synagogue in Barbados, which uses black and white tiles inside the synagogue, but which, like the other Jewish structures, lacks a blazing star and border.

25. Laura Leibman, “Sephardic Sacred Space in Colonial America” Jewish History (2009). Samuel Lee, Orbis miraculum, or, The Temple of Solomon, pourtrayed by Scripture-light (London: Printed by John Streater, for Giles Calvert, 1659), 14, 39, 244, http://eebo.chadwyck. com. John T. Lawrence, Perfect Ashlar and Other Masonic Symbols (London:A Lewis, 1912), 13334. Samuel Prichard, Masonry Dissected (London: J. Wilford, 1730), 15. Based on information from English Short Title Catalogue, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Group, http:// galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/ECCO. I am grateful to Librarian Jeffrey Croteau of the Van Gorden-Williams Library & Archives at the National Heritage Museum for this reference and for information on the Masonic associations of the pavement. Email to author 7.1.08. See also John D. Hamilton, Material Culture of the American Freemasons (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1994), 35-36.

26. Our thanks to William Diebold (Art History, Reed College) and Ellen Millender (Classics, Reed College) for helping us identify this symbol.

27. Rose Mary Allen, “Di ki manera?”, 155. Eva Abraham-Van Der Mark, “Marriage and Concubinage among the Sephardic Merchant Elite of Curaçao,” in Women and Change in the Caribbean: A Pan-Caribbean Perspective, ed. Janet Momsen (Kingston: Ian Randle, 1993), 4348. Jewish fathers of unwed children sometimes granted their offspring the right to use the Jewish family name. Many received a substantial education and became reliable employees in the family business, whereby they achieved a degree social mobility.

28. Benjamin, Jews of the Dutch Caribbean, 147-49.

29. Isaac S. Emmanuel and Suzanne A. Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles (Cincinnati: American Jewish Archives, 1970), 811.

30. “Otrobanda” literally means “the other side,” and it refers to the district across the inlet from Willemstad.

31. Millicent Smeets-Muskus, e-mail message to Chairman of the Fortchurch Museum, March 12, 2008.

32. Ibid.

33. Governor Faesch’s June 1749 Proclamation, quoted in Emmanuel, Precious Stones of the Jews of Curaçao, 53.

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34. Emmanuel, Precious Stones of the Jews of Curaçao, 52-53. The dumping of refuse on cemetery grounds remains a problem for some Curaçaoan burial sites. Rubbish bags clog pathways and bar access to certain sections of the Catholic Cemetery in Berg Altena and a meter-thick layer of trash covers the entirety of the kin plot adjacent to the Masonic Cemetery on Roodeweg in Otrobanda.

35. Ibid., 53.

36. Smeets-Muskus.

37. The placement of Temple Emanu-él above a burial ground reflects Reform Judaism’s decreased concern with purity laws in general, and death impurity more specifically.

For more on this issue, see our article “Purity, Reform, and the Afterlife in Curaçao’s Jewish Cemeteries.”

38. Benjamin, Jews of the Dutch Caribbean, 54.

39. René A. Römer, “Ethnicity and Social Change in Curaçao,” in The White Minority in the Caribbean, ed. Howard Johnson and Karl Watson (Kingston: Ian Randle, 1998), 160.

40. Given Curaçao’s infertile soil and semi-arid climate, a plantation was more a symbol of social rank than a site of actual income generation. Benjamin, Jews of the Dutch Caribbean, 55;Wim Klooster.“Contraband Trade by Curaçao’s Jews with Countries of Idolatry, 1660-1800,” Studia Rosenthaliana 31, no. 1 (1997): 59-60.

41. Emmanuel and Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles, 67879. A plantation burial did not ensure a tomb would avoid desecration indefinitely. As time passed and families moved off the island, the landhuis kin plots were left untended and vulnerable. The Emmanuels speaks of such a landhuis kin plot lying under a dry cleaning business in their time.

42. Benjamin, Jews of the Dutch Caribbean, 54.

43. David M. Cheney, “Diocese of Willemstad: Dioecesis Gulielmopolitanus.” The Catholic-Hierarchy, http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dwill.html (accessed August 12, 2008). The Diocese of Willemstad reported that 79.2 per cent of the population within its boundaries (which include Curaçao, Aruba, Bonaire, part of St. Maarten, St. Eustatius, and Saba) belonged the Roman Catholic Church.

44. Hartog, Curaçao, 59.

45. Hartog, Curaçao, 35-42.

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46. Schama, Simon. The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (Vintage: New York, 1987), 59. Even with a generous estimate of fiftyfive percent of the [European] Dutch as adherents, Calvinism still faced opposition from a “substantial minority” of Catholics and other followers of other Protestant sects.

47. Linda Marguerite Rupert, “Inter-Imperial Trade and Local Identity: Curaçao in the Colonial Atlantic World” (PhD diss., Duke University, 2006), 80-83.

48. Hartog, Curaçao, 170-71; Jonathan I. Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 15851740 (Oxford: Claredon, 1989), 321. Given that very few Curaçaoan slave owners instructed their slaves in their religions (let alone adopted them into their congregation) and that the West India Company’s interest in evangelism was negligible, there was little organized resistance as the Catholic faith swiftly took root in the African community. Benjamin, Jews of the Dutch Caribbean, 74-75; Hartog, Curaçao, 147-48, 294; Jonathan Schorsch, “Portmanteau Jews: Sephardim and Race in the Early Modern Atlantic World,” in Port Jews: Jewish Communities in Cosmopolitan Maritime Trading Centres, 1550-1950, ed. David Cesarani (London: Frank Cass, 2002), 64-66.

49. Ibid., 151, 170. Owing to efforts initiated by vicar apostolic Niewindt, the Church’s mission on the island brought nearly 85% of enslaved and free Curaçaoans into its fold by 1860. Allen, “Di ki manera?” 147.

50. Rose Mary Allen,“Resistance as a Creative Factor in Curaçaoan Culture” (paper presented to the Congress, Born out of Resistance—International and Interdisciplinary Congress on Cultural Creativity Response to European Expansion, Utrecht, The Netherlands), quoted in Benjamin, Jews of the Dutch Caribbean, 77.

51. Ibid., 170.

52. Ibid., 150, 172.

53. Ibid., 156. Children born out of wedlock who were baptized at all were subject to an alternate and degrading form of the sacrament after which the newborns were designated using a variety of derogatory labels including yunan di skuritdat (children of the dark), yunan di pika (children born in sin), yunan di diabel (children of the devil), and yunan di puta (children of a whore). Ibid., 158, 161.

54. Ibid., 159, 172.

55. Bernard R. Buddingh’, Otrobanda,‘Aen de Oversidje van deese haven’: De geschiedenis van Otrobanda, stadsdeel van Willemstad, Curaçao van 1696 tot 1755 (The Netherlands Antilles: De Curaçaosche Courant, 2006), 232-33.

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56. Emmanuel, Precious Stones of the Jews of Curaçao, 40.

57. Hartog, Curaçao, 286.

58. J. Hartog, Curaçao, from Colonial Dependence to Autonomy (Aruba: De Wit, 1968), 123.

59. In 1693, Jewish immigrants from Curaçao joined a Newport, Rhode Island Jewish community that Newport Touro Synagogue historian Bernard Kusinitz argues practiced “whatever form of Masonry existed in the Old World or was possible in the New.” Bernard Kusinitz, “Masonry and the Colonial Jews of Newport,” Rhode Island Jewish Historical Notes 9, no. 2 (1984), 180-3. Hartog, Curaçao, 148.

60. A forthcoming collection of essays, Marranos and Masons: Problems and Possibilities, endeavors to probe the links between the two groups and assess the “role of Freemasonry in supporting social networks and articulating social identity” and its relevance to Sephardic communities. Andrew Prescott, review of Marranos and Masons: Problem and Possibilities, ed. Gloria Mound, Nicholas Round, and Andrew Prescott, The Casa Shalom Journal 8 (Autumn 2006): 8.

61. Emmanuel and Emmanuel, History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles, 369, 408.

During his residence in New Orleans, Chumaceiro wrote The Evidence of Free-Masonry from Ancient Hebrew Records, published in Augusta, Georgia in 1896, but the Emmanuels clearly state that Chumaceiro was not a member of the Masons.

62. Emmanuel, Precious Stones of the Jews of Curaçao, 428. The Rev. Isaac Touro (ca. 1737-1783), an Amsterdam native who traveled to Newport via Curaçao to serve as rabbi and later led the Jewish community in Jamaica, was himself an active Mason. Morris A. Gutstein, The Story of the Jews of Newport: Two and a Half Centruries of Judaism, 1658-1908 (New York: Bloch, 1936), 72, 169.

63. Hartog, Curaçao, 297.

64. Allen, “Di ki manera?” 158-59.

65. M. D. Latour, Geschiedenis van de R.K. Missie op de Nederlandse Antillen vanaf 1870, (Willemstad, NV: [s.n.], 1952), 21, quoted and translated in Allen, “Di ki manera?” 159.

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Appendix I: Locations of Denominational, Masonic, and Military Cemeteries (as plotted on the map in Fig. 7) 1. Protestant Cemetery, Berg Altena: Northeast corner of the intersection of Berg Altena and Oranjestraat, across from Julianaplein. To visit contact Fortkerk Bureau weekdays 9 a.m.-12 p.m.: 461-1139.

2. Beit Haim, Berg Altena: Northeast corner of the intersection of Berg Altena and Kaya Gutierrez I Gerardina.

3. Catholic Cemetery, Berg Altena: East of Beit Haim, Berg Altena. Bordered to the north by Berg Altena, to the west by Riouwstraat, and to the south by Oosterbeekstraat.

4. Old Protestant Cemetery (demolished), Willemstad: Wilhelminaplein and immediate surroundings.

5. Catholic Cemetery, Otrobanda: North side of Roodeweg in Otrobanda.

Across from the Col贸n shopping center. Bordered to the west by Van Heerdstraat. Northwest of the intersection formed by Roodeweg with J. H. J. Harnelbergweg and Mgr. Niewindstraat. For information phone: 513-2222 6. Protestant Cemetery, Otrobanda: South side of Roodeweg in Otrobanda.

West of the Col贸n shopping center and east of the Masonic Cemetery (with which it shares a common wall). The division between this cemetery and the Masonic Cemetery is denoted by a change in the color of the cemetery wall at the location of the bus stop. To visit contact Fortkerk Bureau weekdays 9 a.m.-12 p.m.: 461-1139.

7. Masonic Cemetery, Otrobanda: South side of Roodeweg in Otrobanda.

West of the Protestant Cemetery (with which it shares a common wall) and east of the Military Cemetery. East of the intersection of Boerhavenstraat and Piet Heinstraat. The division between this cemetery and the Masonic Cemetery is denoted by a change in the color of the cemetery wall at the location of the bus stop.

8. Military Cemetery, Otrobanda: South side of Roodeweg in Otrobanda.

West of the Protestant and Masonic cemeteries on the same street. The Military Cemetery is bordered on the west by the Brandweer firehouse. For information call 736-4290.

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9. Convent Cemetery, Habaai: East side of Schottegatweg West/Weg Naar Welgelegen. Bordered to the north by Fr. Radulphusweg, to the east by Fr. Richardusweg, and to the south by Suenr. Gerardusweg.

10. Beit Haim, Blenheim: Northwest portion of Schottegat bay. Immediately west of the oil refinery. Accessed by Emmanuelstraat off of Schottegatweg West. For group tours (min. 10 persons) contact 465-4141 or 461-1067.

0. Old Catholic Cemetery (demolished), Otrobanda: North of the Catholic Cemetery on Roodeweg, across Sta. Anna Blvd.

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Frontispiece: Rev. Job Cushing, 1760, Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.

AGS

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Eighteenth-Century Gravestone Carvers of the Upper Narragansett Basin: The Real George Allen, Jr. Vincent F. Luti

This investigative paper was inspired by reading the papers of Harriette M. Forbes’ papers many years ago. Mrs. Forbes, author of the seminal work Gravestones of Early New England and the Men Who Made Them, 1653-1800 (originally published in 1927) had identified a single probated gravestone payment notation referring to George Allen Jr. This brief notice led to a lengthy and complex search to identify this carver and his body of work based on the conviction that the study of eighteenth-century New England gravestones must begin with the artists who created them and the culture in which they lived. This paper will close out the third in a series of Markers articles of a remarkable gravestone-carving family, the Allens of Rehoboth, Massachusetts, a father and two sons whose importance, influence, and creativity—along with that of the Stevens family of Newport, Rhode Island— led to establishing a unique regional style that had repercussions in the work of carvers in Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

This regional expression and its particular design repertoire can be called the Narragansett Basin Style after the geologically cohesive area around and to the north of the Narragansett Bay in southern New England. As I described in “Eighteenth-Century Gravestone Carvers of The Upper Narragansett Basin: George Allen,” the Narragansett Basin style displays “an open, pleasurable materialism and tolerance.” While this style reflects the death imagery and common culture of New England in early iconography, featuring winged skulls and effigies, the Narragansett Basin carvers also carved much more secular images such charming cherubs, heraldic designs, garmented ladies and gentlemen, and hearts, and exquisite herbaceous border. 2

This essay is titled “The Real George Allen Jr.” because a body of work, based on signed stones had for decades, from Forbes onward, been attributed to George Allen Jr. when, in fact, the real carver was George’s brother Gabriel, as established in an article in Markers XX. The work of earlier researchers has, in fact, been a tale of many intriguing false starts and unproven theories about the George Allen shop. In addition to not knowing of the existence of Gabriel Allen and his work, for example, Forbes erroneously attributed some of the George Allen shop’s work to the mythical Samuel Tingley carvers.

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Alan Ludwig posited the existence of a George Allen Sr. imitator, and other researchers, who did not understand the collaborative nature of colonial stonecarving, regularly attributed work from the shop of George Allen Sr. to George Allen Jr. because the stones were dated after George Sr.’s death.3 What the real George Allen Jr. carved is now known to be another completely distinct, unresearched, and unattributed body of work, sadly small, as we shall see. George Allen Jr., as did his brother Gabriel, had exceptional carving skills, which he learned from a major stone-carving figure in New England

Fig. 1. Distribution of George, Allen, Jr. gravestones.

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annals, his father George Allen Sr.4 Presumably, an early death prevented George Jr. from developing into an influential figure, and thus he had a limited, as yet unclear, impact on and interaction with carvers both known and unknown from Wrentham to Lancaster in central Massachusetts. Still, his story provides an intriguing glimpse into the workings of an eighteenthcentury stone shop and the amount of loving care and historical knowledge needed to establish the identity of any one stone carver. More importantly, the quest to identify the “real” George Allen Jr. demonstrates the extent to which the work within any particular shop was collaborative and the remarkable way in which carvers must have been bound up in a working and trading networking more extensive than anyone has imagined.

A Theoretical Biography for George Allen Jr.

The Rehoboth, Massachusetts, Town Records show the birth of a son, George, to George and Sarah Allen, March 22, 1742/3.5 The use of the name “George” was common among the various Allen families of southeastern Massachusetts but not in the Allen lines of Rehoboth or nearby Providence, Rhode Island, across the Seekonk River. The only confusion is with another George Allen of Rehoboth, son of Ebenezer Allen, who was born April 6, 1748.6 It is very easy to confuse the records on Ebenezer’s George with those of the carver George Allen Jr. Probably the real George Allen Jr. simply did not live long enough to accumulate much public documentation since the limited evidence suggests he died around the age of twenty-one or two. But how and when? Neither is known. He must have lived at least until February 18, 1764, as there is a general payment of that date to George Allen Jr. from the estate of John Dexter, Providence (to be discussed in full later).

Other than three specific references to George Allen Jr. the rest of his story has to be constructed by inference from bits of circumstantial material.

One piece of information that does not let George Allen Jr. fade away into complete obscurity was found by Forbes, as mentioned above. On March 24, 1762, the estate record of the Reverend Job Cushing of Shrewsbury states that “George Allen Jr.” was paid for gravestones 3-0-0.7 Unfortunately, this original effigy stone for Reverend Cushing was replaced in the 1800s with an uninspired urn and willow. Researchers assumed the original was removed or destroyed. Only in 1992, some one-hundred-ninety years later, did it come to light again to become one of only two documented stones to form the basis of the research on a body of work for George Allen Jr.

The other documented stone was found by the author in Providence Probate Records (which Forbes apparently did not see) in the account of the estate of John Dexter, entered August 1763 to February 18, 1764: “paid George Allen 49-0-0” and “paid George Allen Jr. 28-0-0.”8 These unspecified

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payments must surely have been for gravestones. Indeed, John Dexter’s stone is an elaborate work from the hand of George Allen Sr., stone carver of Rehoboth, Massachusetts. As I had hoped, next to it is a smaller, simpler stone for his son, Augustus. Both Dexters died within a short time of each other in 1763. The Augustus Dexter stone (Figure 1) has an effigy very much like, but sufficiently different from the work of George Allen Sr. to distinguish it decisively, and furthermore, the lettering is not by the hand of George Allen Sr. or any other carver of the time. The conclusion is obvious: father and son, George and George Jr., carved stones for father and son, John and Augustus, the one more elaborate and more expensive than the other: a perfect fit. After this fortuitous find there was no other single piece of verifiable documentation for George Allen Jr. Still, these two stones provided a distinct effigy type and lettering set for determining George Allen Jr.’s work and for establishing collaborations.9 Using stones such as these with established origins as benchmarks illustrates one of the most important scholarly tools for those engaged in carver studies.

Fig. 1. Augustus Dexter, 1763.

Providence, Rhode Island.

Fig. 2. Jonadab Moor, 1760.

Bolton, Massachusetts.

In contrast, the next episode in identifying the work of George Allen Jr. illustrates the amount of sheer luck involved in carver studies.

Curious about a border design on a 1760 stone for Jonadab Moor in Bolton, Massachusetts, northeast of Worcester (Figure 2), Laurel Gabel, Research

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Center Coordinator of the Association for Gravestone Studies, sent me a photocopy for identification, since it struck her that this might be a Narragansett Basin design. Indeed, it was, but most surprisingly of all was the identical, unique lettering of the Augustus Dexter stone! The tympanum design was a skull, to further confound matters, since the Allens were not supposed to have carved skulls, according to my research, except in the short, earliest body of work by George Allen Sr. in the 1720s, forty years earlier.

Using the Dexter effigy and the striking Bolton skull for Jonadab Moor as models, a small body of work began to emerge in the most unexpected, far-flung places, remarkably restricted to the years circa 1760-1764, i.e., just when George Allen Jr. appears and disappears from the records. All of this work was clearly in the Narragansett Basin style, and, in one aspect or another, all of it had the Narragansett Basin design elements and lettering.

It was consistent in the main. However, as work progressed in collecting everything possibly related to the artisan who executed the Dexter and Moor stones, a very odd thing was happening in some cases: other hands than the Dexter/Moor carver were at work on his stones, hands of other recognized carvers. So now two very difficult problems were clearly articulated: finding biographical information about George Allen Jr. and establishing and separating his work from the work of other carvers (and from imitators).

Some of the detective work to establish the identity of George Jr. remains in the area of educated guesses. Although the officially documented biographical evidence for George Allen Jr. is slim, for example, tombstones themselves suggest some connections between Allen and other families in the area. For example, consider a hypothetical deconstruction of an epitaph. Wrentham, Massachusetts, records show for January 27, 1763, the marriage of a George Allen to Molly Man, daughter of Ebenezer and Mary (Gould) Man born November 16, 1745.10 George Allen Jr. would be just short of twenty years of age at this time (Ebenezer Fig. 3. Isia Bacon, 1760. Jacob Allen’s George only fifteen) and Molly Bacon, 1760. Jonathan Bacon, about eighteen. An intriguing stone 1761. Norfolk, Massachusetts. in the Pondville Cemetery in Norfolk, Massachusetts, suggests a connecting link between George Allen Jr. and Molly Man.11 It is for three brothers (Figure 3): Isaiah, Jacob and Jonathan Bacon (1760, 1760 and 1761, respectively). The skull on this stone is identical to

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the Jonadab Moor stone in Bolton. The lettering is identical to the Augustus Dexter stone in Providence. The carver is obviously the Dexter/Moor man, i.e., George Allen Jr. I would guess that the stone was carved just before or just after George Allen’s presumed marriage to Molly Man in 1763. The epitaph is most curious and worth a careful analysis:

Upon this Stone here we may see,

Jacob & Jonathan who are in Eternity,

I have no reason to Complain

Of GOD for what he’s Done

For he’s a right to take a way,

My Friends as well as Sons.

The most significant fact here is that the name of the elder son Isaiah is pointedly omitted in the epitaph. A father or family member writing the epitaph would hardly omit the name of one of his own children. To a modern eye, the word “Friends” might suggest an anachronistic reading since friends today are those with whom one has a close but non-familial relationship. In the eighteenth-century, however, “friends” was often a catchall for any person with whom one was close. Siblings and schoolmates or strangers or Quakers might all come under the rubric of “friends.” But the fact that the epitaph omits the one young man George Allen Jr. was less likely to know well does seem very suggestive. Hence, we might assume that the friends of George Allen Jr. were Jacob and Jonathan only. How else can it be explained?

There is more internal evidence here that the epitaph was chosen and composed not by a family member, but by the carver himself, a choice I have encountered in the work of other carvers. George Allen Jr. carved the design work, and perhaps the carver also composed the epitaph for the two young men he actually knew, Jacob, and Jonathan, but specifically not Isaiah.

George Allen Jr. would be eighteen or nineteen years old at the time of their deaths. Jacob was twenty and Jonathan was sixteen, putting George right in the middle. These three make an appropriate age group for friendship, but Isaiah was twenty-six, a good deal older than the other three young chums, possibly married and/or removed from their sphere of friendship. In fact, since these three Bacon brothers were Molly Man’s first cousins, it would be quite possible that the carver, George Allen Jr., met her through his friendship with the two Bacon brothers or that he met them through his courtship of Molly Man, the less likely of the two suppositions.12 Furthermore, at least three other close relatives of Molly Man in the Bacon family had the same skull design and lettering done by the Dexter/Moor carver on their gravestones as

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well, and three of the children of her cousin, Elijah Bacon, had their stones carved by later Allens.13 Any bit of circumstantial evidence to make a case for an Allen/Man connection cannot be ignored. Isaiah Bacon, the oldest of the three deceased brothers on the Allen stone in question, served under Captain Ebenezer Man’s company of Colonel Miller’s regiment on 27 April 1757 and again under Captain Ebenezer Man on 25 April 1759 and died after serving in Nova Scotia on 1 December 1760 in the French and Indian War. Captain Ebenezer Man was Molly Man’s father.

And there is more. The probable early death of George Allen Jr. would have left a young widow, who, conforming to the expectations of her time, would have remarried as quickly as possible. In fact, the Wrentham, Massachusetts, Vital Records show for November 6, 1766, the marriage of a Molly Allen to Dr. John Fales.14 Unfortunately, the record does not say if she was Mrs. Molly Allen, that is, a widow, or a single daughter of some Allen family. However, the list of children for this Molly and John Fales includes a son in 1785 named Oliver Mann Fales! Molly Man had a younger brother, Oliver. Another son of Molly and John Fales, Daniel, born July 18, 1770, married a Sarah Pratt, and they in turn named one of their sons John Mann Fales! Dr. John Fales’ mother was a Hawes, so the name did not come from there. Daniel’s wife, noted above, was a Pratt, so “Man/Mann” was not her name either. It can only be that it comes from Molly Allen Fales somehow.

Although the evidence is far from conclusive, the use of “Mann” as a given name poses the intriguing possibility that Molly Allen Fales was, indeed the widow of George Allen Jr. Saddled by custom with the widow’s name, “Allen,” (in a time when vital records carried only women’s married names in this part of the country), she revived her own maiden name , Mann, through her descendents. Further emphasizing the probability that George Allen Jr. was Molly Allen Fales’ first husband and, thus, dead by 1766, a search of vital records for Wrentham and all towns in south central Massachusetts shows no other George Allen of the same generation as that of Molly Man available to marry her except the George Allen Jr. of Rehoboth, Ebenezer Allen’s son, George, being only fifteen years old in 1763.

If, then, George Allen Jr. is the one who married Molly Man in 1763, his death must have occurred after February 18, 1764, the date of the probate payment from the Dexter estate, and before November 6, 1766, the date of Molly’s marriage to John Fales. The fact that the Dexter/Moor style in its entirety ends abruptly with the Mary Walker stone in Edenton, North Carolina, dated October 22, 1763, helps support this argument. (Stones at this distance would have a carving date some months later in 1764).15 Furthermore, George Jr. was almost certainly dead by October 14, 1774, when he would have been thirty-one years old. Bristol County Deeds show that Sylvester Allen of Voluntown, Connecticut, his brother, relinquishes

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his part of George Allen Sr.’s estate, which had “descended and come unto me together with Gabriel and William my brothers and my sister Lavinia Allen children of my honored father.”16 There is no mention at all of brother George. It seems reasonable to assume that that was because he was dead already when George Allen Sr.’s estate was probated.

Introduction to the Work of George Allen Jr.

In many cases, researchers can map the work of a single carver on a chronological chart to determine the beginning of a career and the periods of greatest productivity based on the way that death dates on the gravestones cluster. George Allen Jr.’s small body of work is insufficient to allow this kind of analysis. However, given the single probate payment for gravestones in 1762, when he was eighteen and already a skilled carver, for a stone dated August 6, 1760, it would be safe to assume that he began carving by the age of sixteen, which was not uncommon in the eighteenth century. Therefore, stones dating from around 1759 would probably be his earliest work and all prior stones backdated. The other clustering not available from such a small sampling is that which would, in fact, indicate the locus from which his work was radiating. In his particular case, this statistical information is more important than chronological data since his work appears in three rather distinct, if not somewhat distant and disjointed, sites: Providence, R.I./Rehoboth, Massachusetts (adjacent to each other then); old Wrentham, Massachusetts; and east Worcester County, Massachusetts. This wide distribution suggests that George Allen Jr. may have been an itinerant carver.

Interestingly, the two carvers collaborating on Allen Stones, John New and Samuel Fisher, were also from Wrentham, and perhaps it was Allen’s home base.

The repertoire of George Allen Jr. indicates that he had mastered a variety of styles, including effigies, skulls, and borders in order to satisfy a clientele from a variety of religious economic, political, and aesthetic persuasions. Despite a small body of work, the stones demonstrate George Allen Jr.’s facility with these conventional elements and reveal much about what a young carver would have been expected to learn in his earliest years: Effigy Type Stones

I have no difficulty accepting the Augustus Dexter stone, 1763, Providence, as the work of George Allen Jr. as explained earlier. Three elements on this stone become critical for identifying other work as his: 1) the impishly drawn mouth; 2) a bulbous nose, and button, bulging eyes; and 3) the simple foliate border, also derived from his father. The stone for

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Theodore Man, 1761, Norfolk, Massachusetts, with the identical Dexter style lettering has a charming, swept wing and wigged effigy in the tympanum with the very characteristic impish mouth of the Dexter stone (Figure 4). I had always suspected this wigged effigy type was not by George Allen Sr., due to stylistic elements, and chalked it up to someone in his workshop. It also resembles effigies produced in the 1770s by the John and James New shop in North Attleboro, Massachusetts.17 However, it was easy to rule John New out immediately upon discovery of the general probate payment to George Allen Jr. for the neat, simple Dexter effigy that was derived from George Sr.

Fig. 4. Theodore Man, 1761. Norfolk, Massachusetts.

Skull Type Stones

George Allen Jr.’s skulls are carved into a flat surface with no relief modeling other than the outer edges of the designs. They have a light bulb outline. The large, round, eye sockets are placed high and are moderately shallow. A conventional triangular design serves for the nose cavity. Between it and the teeth is what Peter Benes calls the “mouth mark,” a curved line.18 There are two rows of big, square teeth with varyingly pronounced degrees of an undercut crescent below the lower row of teeth and the chin. The wings rise to slightly more than skull height and have three to four simple, coined feathers that curl a bit at the extremities. However, since this wing type is the standard for all skull carvers, it is useless for attribution purposes. The pronounced double outlining of the wing rib around the skull is characteristic but not found on all of his skull stones. Those without the articulated wing rib are called single-edged skulls, those with, double-edged skulls.

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The exemplary Thomas Fisher skull stone, 1760, Wrentham (Figure 5), has lettering identical to that of the Dexter stone but is accompanied by a skillful skull like that for Jonadab Moor. However, in this instance the wing rib articulation creates a double outlining. The single outlining of the 1760 Moor stone is the more commonly found type. Therefore, a mix of the two outline types makes up this body of work.

Fig. 5. Thomas Fisher, 1760.

Wrentham, Massachusetts.

Fig. 6. David Day, 1753, Wrentham, Massachusetts. Rebekah Stearns, 1756, South Attleboro, Massachusetts.

Borders

George Allen Jr.’s border designs were taken from the work of his father, George Sr. Compare, for example, the Patience Read border by George Sr. with that of the Margreat Bacon stone by George Jr. Another stylistically comparable pair would be the inset flower bud by George Sr. and the same element in the Margreat Bacon border by George Jr. John New of Wrentham in the 1750s also took these designs from George Allen Sr. as well, possibly even tracing them from stones placed in Wrentham by the elder carver. George Allen’s David Day stone (1753) in Wrentham shows significant similarities to the Rebekah Stearns monument (1756), in Attleboro, by John New, but the exquisite workmanship of the Allen shop is missing in the New copy (Figure 6). The relationship of all these stones to the workshop of George Allen Sr. becomes dramatically evident in the panels of the skull stone for Margreat (sic) Bacon, 1761, Cranston, Rhode Island (see Borders Chart), which are perfectly elegant copies of a design innovation frequently found on documented stones of George Allen Sr.19 As these examples indicate, carvers learned and borrowed from each other as they learned and refined their craft.

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George Allen Jr. also learned from carvers outside his father’s shop. A handful of verifiable Allen Jr. stones appropriate a descending foliate border type originating in Boston as seen on stones executed by William Codner and Nathaniel Emmes there. On the Codner/Emmes stones, it is done with elegance, and the foliage is always beautifully beveled. Throughout Allen’s version, however, the foliage is a flat and simplified. It is not that Allen Jr. could not bevel because he did, quite handsomely, but only on certain rose finials (some half dozen), not the actual border. A handful of Allen’s Boston foliate borders have “donut” or non-beveled bulls eye finials.

These five, basic stones—Dexter, Fisher, Moor, Bacon and Man— provide a working repertory and near complete cross section of all George Allen Jr. design and lettering elements (see border design and lettering charts). George Allen Jr.’s lettering does not change in the samples. In his short working career, it is consistently neat, well proportioned, and evenly spaced with a certain boxy look to it. He appears almost never to have used italics. The style is not unlike that of other skilled letterers of the period; therefore, a unique, invariant set of signature lettering design elements must function as the criterion that sets him apart from other carvers (see chart). A stone must not waver in the slightest from this set in order to be comfortably attributed to him. Attribution becomes problematic only if the stone surface is very worn or if the stone lacks at least four to six of the lettering elements in the tablature. Other carvers used similar lettering structures, so correct attribution requires strict attention to identifying George Allen Jr.’s invariant design set. His carving is also distinguished by correct punctuation, an attribute often missing in the work of other carvers, John New and Samuel Fisher in particular. George Jr. probably owed his superior punctuation skills to the fact that his father was a well-educated school teacher.

Fig. 7. Probate derived associative lettering set for George Allen, Jr. The common lettering elements necessary for identification include the following: • round bellied “a” with no tear drop • fish hook “J” • slight crescent to down stroke & • bolt upright “6” • over punctuation, but correct modern usage of comma and period

• slant serifs • long tail “e” set inside the “y” of “ye” • fat tail “7” • ovoid, sweeping tails on “3” and “5”

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Fig. 8. George Allen, Jr. border designs.

The Question of Wide Distribution

Before proceeding with an enumeration of George Allen Jr.’s stones by type and by degree of attribution, we should look at a slightly problematic question of wide distribution. George Allen Sr. had a virtual monopoly in the Providence/ Rehoboth area. As an apprentice ready to sell his own wares, George Jr. had to find his own market, the less accessible interior towns,

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which is exactly where his stones most occur. Jeremiah Fisher, a trader, lived not far away in the south precinct of Wrentham and had married a Rehoboth woman.20 An itinerant middleman, Fisher possibly brought orders to George Jr. for finished stones and, at times, ordered design carved blanks, as well, to be filled in with epitaphs by other local carvers, of which there were many as Fisher peddled his wares further north in his travels. This theory would account for the diversity of lettering on Allen-like skull stones or Allen lettering on a diversity of others’ skull stones. After all, he was just at the age of an apprentice/journeyman. Of course, it is also possible that George Jr. was traveling around and taking orders too or selling pre-carved blanks to other carvers to fill in data as needed. Until recent years this aspect of carver networking has not been given all the attention due it. James Blachowicz’s work is a model of this approach.

The wide distribution of George Allen Jr. stones also raises some questions. Only seven of the effigies and skulls appear in the Rehoboth/ Providence area; the bulk are scattered piecemeal in the interior towns north of Providence/ Rehoboth, especially in Worcester County, Massachusetts, in the east central part of the state. At least one is in New Jersey and one in North Carolina. These small numbers are significant because only about thirty-six stones can be unquestionably attributed to George Allen Jr. in their entirety.

The body of work grows to about fifty if collaborative stones are included.

Borderline work and/or imitations form a halo around his coherent, central body of work, creating an even larger casting of the net.21 Fine tuning this documented corpus of work awaits further research on the whole upper Narragansett Basin carving network—and I emphasize network—in which Allen Jr. was enmeshed. This need for this research is becoming more urgent as these priceless treasures deteriorate with age, becoming illegible.

In any case, the distribution question still remains. Fortunately, Forbes had found the probate payment (but not the stone) in Worcester County records to George Allen Jr., which helps in part confirm his presence there. This northern area of central Massachusetts has some local generic Boston-type, round-eyed skulls with a singular border design, possibly by James Wilder and Samuel Fisher or their imitators. Although these stones may appear to be Allen’s work, untangling the differences is beyond the scope of this study.

The densest clustering of authentic George Allen Jr. stones (plus a few tentative ones) radiates out from Wrentham, Massachusetts, to the surrounding towns in this area southwest of Boston. The next density distribution is in the old towns forming an arc northeast of Worcester. Last is Providence, Rhode Island, with only six stones, all authentic. In the towns radiating out from Providence, where George Allen Sr.’s work is dominant, I have found no Allen Jr. stones at all. This distribution pattern leaves a gap between the Providence area and the Wrentham area, and a second gap between the Wrentham area and the Worcester arc. The large number

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around Wrentham suggests he may have been living there, which re-enforces the theory that it was he who married Molly Man of Wrentham.

A further complexity was added to this problem of distribution and attribution when Laurel Gabel drew my attention to a large group of roundeyed skull stones around the periphery of Worcester, Massachusetts, in the towns of Shrewsbury, Boylston, Sterling, Holden and Rutland.22 These are what we call the “yellow lichen stones” because they feature bright yellow lichen on an indeterminate stone material with an odd appearance, a possible result of weathering, that does not photograph well. It has a putty-colored texture of amorphous, metamorphic material. This material was not employed by known resident carvers of the area, nor anywhere else for that matter. All the stones of this material have dates between 1746 and 1774, although the earlier date must be considered a backdating, and many, but not all, have what appear to be elements of George Allen Jr.’s work in varying degrees (or copies thereof), attesting to his influence on some local carver (s). Clearly, a variety of hands was involved, and none has ever been attributed. They make a challenging study in and of themselves. Figure 12 is one of these: the Elisha Maynard (1760) stone in Boylston.

In any event, by 1760 there may have been many carvers creating round-eyed skulls in the interior area towns. Attribution is difficult since little distinguishes one skull series from that of another carver or identifies variations within the body of work of a single carver. The fact that the stone carvers New, Fisher, Farrington and possibly Allen were all related by marriage explains at least part of this interaction found on the skull stones (see Appendix A). The work of James Wilder of Lancaster, Massachusetts, in the Worcester arc is sufficiently similar to the Fisher-Farrington style to confuse matters even further.23 These issues illustrate quite deftly the complexities of carver attribution. More importantly, they suggest the degree to which eighteenth-century artisans borrowed, collaborated, and imitated each other.

The emphasis on originality in artistic endeavors that modern people have come to expect was not yet a factor in artistic production. It would be fueled by the Romantic Movement that was not full-blown in the United States until the middle of the nineteenth century. Evaluating the work of George, Allen Jr. must take into account the artistic expectations of his time, the working culture for artisans of the time, and his status as a novice, if talented, carver.

With these caveats in mind, here is a comprehensive list of George Allen Jr.’s work with educated guesses about possible collaboration: The Winged-Effigy Series

George Allen Jr. carved few effigy stones in their entirety. They all share the quite characteristic face of the Augustus Dexter stone. These heads have an impish charm missing from the heads of George Allen Sr. His son’s faces have distinctively high-placed, goofy mouths; puffy eyes; and,

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less importantly, lumpy noses. The careful drawing and modeling skill place them apart from the effigy face John New developed about the same time.

Border designs range from the simple or non-existent to a very lacy, cyma curve, i.e., leafy vines suspended from rings or rosettes reflecting the same range and usage exhibited on the skull stones (see Figure 8, border design chart). The winged effigies attributable to George, Allen Jr. in chronological order are these:

1739 1759 1759 1760 1760 1760 1761 1761 1761 1761 1763 1763 1763

Thomas Read, Mendon (backdated) Eunice Newton, Shrewsbury John Stevens, Providence Job Cushing, Shrewsbury Joseph Torry, Mendon David Cowell, Trenton, N.J. Richard Davenport, Sutton William Bacon, Norwood Theodore Man, Norfolk (Figure 4) Seth Bennett, Cranston, R.I. Augustus Dexter, Providence (Figure 1) John Spoldin, Providence Mary Walker, Edenton, N.C.

Collaborative stones include:

1761 Luke Thurston, Providence, effigy probably by George Sr.

lettered by George Jr.

1763 Jonathan Billings, Sharon, effigy by George Jr., lettered by

John New (Figure 7)

1765 Pelatiah Man, Wrentham, effigy by George Jr., lettered by

John New

1765 Isaac Temple, Marlboro, effigy by George Jr., lettered by

John New (face damaged) Skull Work

I sort the round-eyed skulls in relation to a central, unambiguous norm, a design with double outlining. That is, the line outlining the lower two thirds of the skull results from a line that double edges the wing ribs where they rise up around the lower two thirds of the skull. Eight good examples of this design are extant, all substantiated by excellent, general probate payment records proving they are Allen Jr.’s lettering. The norm is so distinctive that it cannot be confused with that of any other carver. A telltale feature, ranging from only slight to very pronounced, is the undercut jaw just below the

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Fig. 7. Jonathan Billing, 1763.

Sharon, Massachusetts.

Fig. 8. Jerusha Fisher, 1761.

Wrentham, Massachusetts.

bottom teeth. The skull placement in the tympanum—high, middle or low on the baseline—seems to be of little importance in the analysis and attribution of these round-eyed skull stones.

The double-edged, round-eyed skull series in its entirety comprises the following stones:

1760 1760 1760 1761 1761 1761 1761

Thomas Fisher, Wrentham (Figure 5) Capt. Ezra Morse, Norwood James Gerould, Medfield Hannah Fisher, Wrentham Jerusha Fisher, Wrentham (Figure 8) three sons of James Bacon, Norfolk (Figure 3) Jacob Bacon, Cranston, R. I.

The Allen corpus also includes double-outlined Allen Jr. skulls,lettered by another hand. (The last two are probably leftover design blanks.):

1730 1763

1765 1766

Marcy Guild, Wrentham (Samuel Fisher lettered, backdate) Josiah Fisher, Dedham (Fig. 9, Fisher lettered. Fig. 9a is a typical Fisher lettered skull for comparison.)

Elizabeth Metcalf, Dedham (John New lettered) Ralph Day, Wrentham (John New lettered)

The single-edged, round-eyed skull series of George Allen Jr. is not as clear cut. These stones are too close to the generic round-eyed models of other eastern Massachusetts carvers. Since this group of stones demonstrates

Vincent F. Luti

Fig. 9. Josiah Fisher, 1763.

Dedham, Massachusetts.

Fig. 9a. Esther Adams, 1763.

Franklin, Massachusetts.

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George Allen Jr.’s unique lettering and shows no signs of another hand, it can also, with reasonable assurance, be attributed to him. The Jonadab Moor stone falls in this group. There are sixteen stones altogether. A few others show such sloppy work or are so badly worn that they can only be conditionally attributed to him. They may, in fact, be the design work of someone else. Here is the single-edged, round-eyed skull series of Allen Jr. in its entirety:

1723 John Guild, Wrentham (backdated, see John Guild, 1762)

1750 Jonathan Bacon, Sutton (backdated)

1753 Aaron Dresser, Sterling (Figure 10, backdated)

1754 Jane Haws, Franklin

1759 Elizabeth Barber, Millis

1759 Jonah Holland, Boylston

1760 Jonadab Moor, Bolton (Figure 2)

1760 Melatiah Rayno, Wrentham

1761 Joseph Richards, Dedham

1761 Margreat Bacon, Providence

1761 Jacob Bacon, Providence

1761? Isaac Coolidge, Sherborn

1762 Patience Ellis, Medfield

1762 Elizabeth Davenport, Boylston

1762 John Guild, Wrentham

1763 Daniel Haws, Franklin (Figure 11, note grinning mouth

mark)

A few others in this category that deserve very reserved, conditional attribution due to wear include these:

174? Jeremian Lealand, Sherburn (very bad wear)

1758 Eliakim Morse, Boylston

1760 Elisha Maynard, Boylston (Fig. 12)

1762 Phebe Archer, Franklin

Fortunately, although it may seem capricious to attribute other generic round-eyed skull stones to George Allen Jr., there is weighty support in particular for one of these uncertain, worn stones. The stone for Elisha Maynard, 1760, Boylston, north of Worcester, is in only fair condition and hardly worth a glance (Fig. 12). The skull is the generic round-eyed design with an undercut jaw, and the wings, rendered rather unskillfully, are rather scratchy, perhaps the effect of stone type and weathering. However, the lettering is representative of George Allen Jr. despite the wear. What is most striking about the stone is the borders. It is a unique design never employed

by Fisher, Farrington, New, Metcalf or anyone else. In fact, only one other instance of this design border is extant: a stone for Mary Cole (1738), in

Vincent F. Luti

Fig. 10. Aaron Dresser, 1753.

Sterling, Massachusetts.

Fig. 11. Daniel Hawes, 1763.

Franklin, Massachusetts.

Fig. 12. Elisha Maynard, 1760. Boylston, Massachusetts.

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Kickemuit Cemetery, Warren, Rhode Island, a very isolated place in a town quite distant from Boylston, Massachusetts, that is attributed to George Allen Sr. If the border of this generic skull stone for Elisha Maynard (1760) is a rare Allen Sr. design with the probable lettering of George Allen Jr., who carved the generic skull? Did Allen execute the unique borders and lettering and not the tympanum? Surely, it is highly unlikely that some unknown carver is responsible for this one stone, so we might tentatively conclude that it is the work of George Allen Jr.

The remaining round-eyed skulls that I surveyed are not lettered

by George Allen Jr. but until proven otherwise can, with great caution, be temporarily assigned to him though lettered by other hands. They might also be imitations of George Allen Jr.’s round-eyed skull types lettered by New, Fisher or Farrington. If they are imitations, they show the influence of George Allen Jr., young as he was, on other carvers.

The most striking cases in this group of stones are an identical set of stones for Elizabeth Hinds (1762) and John Holland (1767), both of Boylston, and Daniel Jonson (1763) of Shrewsbury. They have the same stone material, the same high-placed skull, the same “bulb” skull shape, the same undercutting just below the teeth, and, in part, the same simple, Narragansett Basin border design. Though very worn, they are likely the work of George Allen Jr. especially because they have the peculiar Allen Jr. undercut jaw, a crescent indentation just under the lower teeth. Those dated 1766 and following can be assumed to have been completed after Allen’s death. Not infrequently at their death, carvers left prepared design blanks that were later filled in with text by other carvers. The stones below, dated 1766-1770, may be cases in point. The single-outline skull series, possibly by Allen, lettered by another hand include these:

1762 Elizabeth Hinds, Boylston (the “Hear lies” letterer)

1763 John Hill, Wrentham (unknown letterer)

1763 Martha Gerould, Medfield (Samuel Fisher lettered)

1763 Daniel Jonson, Boylston (the “Hear lies” letterer)

1766 Chloe Sherman, Shrewsbury (Samuel Fisher lettered)

1766 Esther Guild, Wrentham (John New lettered)

1766 Mary Temple, Boylston (unknown letterer)

1767 John Holland, Boylston (unknown letterer)

The 1767 Sarah Morse stone in Norwood, Massachusetts, probably belongs in this group, too. It has the undercut jaw with a more elaborate versions of the Narragansett Basin border vine. That is, the skull and borders are much closer to the work of Allen Jr. than to that of anyone else, but the lettering is probably by Daniel Farrington after the presumed death of Allen.

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The Ezra Smith stone (1770) in Foxboro (Figure 13) may be an uncompleted tympanum blank by Allen Jr., the borders and lettering later supplied, possibly

by Daniel Farrington of Wrentham.

Fig. 13. Ezra Smith, 1770. Foxboro, Massachusetts.

The next pair of single-outline stones in the twenty has a unique Allen-originated border and, despite the wear, the suggestion of an undercut jaw as well. The Goddard stone also has a rare crown.

1754, 1755 Nahum and Martha Ward, Shrewsbury (re-lettered)

1763 Hephzibah Goddard, Shrewsbury (John New lettered)

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Lastly, let me present a small group of stones that appear to be lettered

by George Allen Jr. but that do not have skulls carved by him. The early dates may indicate that this work was done by young Allen as a journeyman. This small group includes the following stones:

1756 Joseph Morse, Marlboro

1759 Eunice Raymond, Holden

1760 Catharine Jenison, Shrewsbury

1761 Isaac Metcalf, Wrentham

1761 Joseph Fisher, Franklin (Fig. 14, skull and borders, only, by

Samuel Fisher)

1761 Margret Fisher, Franklin (Fig. 14a, skull and borders, only,

by Fisher)

Having drifted so far from the original “norms” for identifying the work of George Allen Jr., as set forth earlier, let me mention parenthetically a researcher’s nightmare in closing: those completely odd fringe stones that defy explanation. One is for Samuel Read (1764) in East Providence, Rhode Island. It has an unusual finial shape and a continuous border around the stone that is very skillfully done with the design and beveled modeling of a Boston carver. The lettering is a John New type. The skull is a welldone Allen Jr. type without the lower teeth crescent undercutting. And, to complicate matters further, Jeremiah Fisher was paid for these gravestones according to a probate record of 1765. Just as perplexing is the Timothy Morse stone (1765) of West Walpole, which has a rare border identical to that of Samuel Read with John-New-type lettering and a very generic, roundeyed skull. The memorial for Mrs. Mehetabel Morse (1765), in the same cemetery, has a typical George Allen Jr. border, but neither skull nor lettering is his. Similarly, the stone for Abial Ware (1757) of Wrentham also has a typical Allen Jr. border. These show Allen’s influence on other carvers, whose names remain unknown.

Summary

George Allen Jr.’s story was a challenge to unravel, leaving us even now with only a minimal biography and a clear-cut, but small, core body of work with distinctive effigy and skull designs and a characteristic lettering style. He learned his skills from a major colonial carver, his father George Allen, but as a very young apprentice/journeyman he ceded his home territory to his very prolific father and, either as an itinerant or through a middleman, placed stones in disparate areas in central Massachusetts to the north of his birthplace in Rehoboth, Massachusetts. The brief catalogue of his works creates problems of various sorts, particularly his positioning in a

Vincent F. Luti

Fig. 14. Joseph Fisher, 1760.

Franklin, Massachusetts.

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Fig. 14a. Margaret Fisher, 1761.

Franklin, Massachusetts.

network of carvers yet to be researched, and the extent of his influence on other carvers. He certainly was far superior to any of his probable imitators.

His production of skull stones is especially noteworthy because that design had been completely abandoned in the religiously progressive and tolerant Narragansett Basin by the time he started his career. His highly original skulls may demonstrate his graceful adaptation to a general anachronistic preference for skulls that lingered in central Massachusetts from the 1750s right up to the turn of the century, a topic that has never been explored, but might be the result of simple provincialism and the aftershocks of the Great Awakening. Taken as a whole, the skill, variety, and influence of this major stone-carving family, whose influence spanned the last three quarters of the eighteenth century, is enormous. George Allen Jr.’s contribution to this cohesive family network (father and two sons) was almost complete when, one final piece of the puzzle fell into place in 1992.

Postscript: 1992, Shrewsbury, Massachusetts

In Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, Kevin Samara, living in the historic home of the second minister of the Shrewsbury Congregational Church, was concerned about the condition of the eighteenth-century stones in the cemetery across the street. He attended a restoration workshop at the 1991 Association for Gravestone Studies conference and formed and chaired the Shrewsbury Graveyard Restoration Project. Working on that committee was Mrs. Martha Thomas, with her eleven-year-old son, Matthew, assisting.

In the early summer of 1992, Mrs. Thomas and Matthew were probing for

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old buried footstones just visible or buried flat behind standing eighteenthcentury headstones. Matthew struck something behind the Reverend Job Cushings’ urn-and-willow stone (1760), and with his mother’s skeptical assistance, pulled back the sod a bit to find a dirty, goofy angel face peering up at them for the first time in nearly two hundred years. Two weeks later the footstone was found. The head and footstone, assumed gone, of the Reverend Job Cushing’s gravesite, 1760, saw the light of day again, resurrected, as it were (Figure 15).24

Fig. 15. Rev. Job Cushing, 1760. Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.

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Laurel Gabel, who was in the area and had earlier given Mrs. Thomas a list of lost, probated stones to watch for, had her contact me immediately.

It was with great anticipation, and not unfounded relief, that I stood before that “old lost friend” and finally saw the stone for which George Allen Jr. was paid back in 1762. To the last detail it confirmed every element of design and lettering of the 1984 paper I had delivered at an Association for Gravestone Studies conference theorizing that the real “G Allen Jr.” body of work was completely other than what Forbes had mistakenly assumed. The real George Allen Jr. could now proudly stand up on his own in the growing ranks of New England gravestone carvers and claim his recognition. This very stone is the only positive, documented link to that body of work that has been lying scattered and unknown for over two hundred years in the old graveyards of southern New England that we now know, positively, as the skillful, interesting work of a youthful George Allen Jr. The Allen family picture is now complete, and its important place in New England gravestone studies secured. Can anyone still question the value of graveyard restoration and preservation?

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Notes

1. This paper was originally delivered at the 1984 AGS Conference, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, in abbreviated form.

2. Vincent F. Luti, “Eighteenth-Century Gravestone Carvers of The Upper Narragansett Basin: George Allen,” Markers XX (2005): 108-159.

3. Harriette M. Forbes made errors in her brief exposition of the work of the Allen shop: Gravestones of Early New England and the Men Who Made Them 1653-1800 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1967): 98-99. There is the remote but undocumented possibility that Forbes saw some records for the long-lived George Allen, son of Ebenezer Allen of Rehoboth, 1748-1821, and thereby erroneously deduced that the “G. Allen” signature found on many gravestones in the last three decades of the eighteenth century were George Allen Jr.’s work. Alan Ludwig, Graven Images (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1966): 322-25, created a non-existent George Allen Sr. “imitator.” Stones signed “G. Allen” with dates after the death of George Allen (senior), were cavalierly attributed to George Allen Jr. by many authors. Regrettably, when Markers II came out in 1983, the study on Gabriel Allen had not yet been presented at AGS (1984) nor published (2003). An article in Markers II (pp.

74-75) attributes sixteen signed stones to George Allen Jr. They were, in fact, done by his younger brother, Gabriel Allen (see Markers XX, 76-109).

4. Luti, “Eighteenth-Century Gravestone Carvers of The Upper Narragansett Basin: George Allen”

5. James Arnold, Vital Records of Rehoboth (Providence, 1897), 748, and Rehoboth Town Records (Rehoboth Town Hall, ms.), 2:87. His mother was Mrs. Sarah Spring, widow of Ephraim.

6. James Arnold, Vital Records of Rhode Island, Bristol Co.: Warren, vol. 6, part II (Providence, R.I.: Narragansett Historical Publishing Co., 1894): 43.

7. Worcester Co. Probate Records, Worcester, Mass., 7: 444.

8. Providence Probate Records, City Hall, case A818.

9. Gray Williams, James Slater, James Blachowitz and Vincent Luti have shown in their writings the special importance of signature lettering elements and sets for attributing entire stones and collaborations.

10. Vital Records of Wrentham, Mass. to the year 1850 (Boston, 1910).

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11. It should be borne in mind that in this period Norfolk, Franklin, Foxboro and Walpole, MA were part of Wrentham, MA.

12. All the genealogical material for the Man(n), Bacon and Fisher families was taken from: Wrentham Vital Records; a letter from George Messinger, June 7, 1859, to Horace Mann (Massachusetts Historical Society); Thomas Baldwin, The Bacon Genealogy (Cambridge, MA, 1915); Philip A. Fisher, Fisher Genealogy (Everett, MA.: Massachusetts Publishing Co., 1898); G.S. Mann, Mann Memorial: Genealogy of Richard Mann of Scituate, Mass. (Boston: David Clap & Son, 1884). Jacob died November 10, 1760, in Greenbush (which could be present-day East Albany, New York, or a town above Bangor, Maine) and Jonathan August 28, 1761, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I base these parenthetical deductions on the fact that their older brother, Elijah, had served in the campaign of Crown Point, New York, during the French and Indian War (1754-1763) in 1755 (see: Robert E. Mackay, ed., Mass. Soldiers in the French and Indian Wars 1744-1755 (NEHGS, 1978), 16 (compiled from vol. 92-93, of the Massachusetts Archives collection of colonial muster rolls). The two boys were probably also conscripted for the war and died at two known outposts of the war. Elijah Bacon, 1730-1801, carpenter, was the elder brother of the three Bacon sons. In 1760-61 he was probably married and living near Broad St. in Providence, RI, He founded the Association of Mechanics and Manufacturers. His sister-in-law’s and son’s stones are by George Allen Jr., and in the same Cranston cemetery (all moved there from the West Cemetery in Providence) as is his own (carved by Borden Thornton).

13. Ibid. (See also Appendix A) George Allen Jr. would have carved stones only for those related families in which members died in the 1759-1763 period of his work or for a few backdated stones if one might not have existed or needed replacement.

14. Ibid., and from Ellery B. Crane, ed., Genealogy and Personal Memoirs of Worcester County, Mass., vol. III (N. Y., 1907): 257. The family records for John Fales4 [m. Molly Allen], son of John3, born in Wrentham, c. 1740, are wanting; Capt. Daniel Fales, son of John 4 [and Molly Allen], born in Wrentham ca. 1770, removed to Newton, then Shrewsbury, where he settled in 1802. He married in Needham, Sarah Pratt, June 10, 1798. Both Daniel and Sarah were from Needham. (This information is followed by a long biography of John Mann Fales).

A.H. Ward’s History of Shrewsbury, 1829, is supposed to have information on John and Daniel Fales. (See copy at the Massachusetts Historical Society.) There is no will listed for Daniel in Worcester probates. Also, Church Handbook for the Congregational Church in Shrewsbury, 1850, lists the admission of Daniel Fales, April 1831, and Sarah Fales, February, 1831. Copy at NEGHS.

15. This stone turned up by chance in examining xeroxes of Farber Collection photographs sent me by Laurel Gabel for attribution.

16. Bristol Co. Deeds (County Courthouse, Taunton, Mass.), 60:320.

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18. The Daniel Haws stone, 1763, Franklin, Mass., has the singular, pronounced “grinning mouth mark” discussed by Peter Benes in The Masks of Orthodoxy (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977): 68-75.

19. The Margreat Bacon stone is one of a group of stones removed from the abolished West Providence Cemetery to the Oakland Cemetery, Cranston, R.I. See also the Border Design Chart for comparison of father and son and the appendix on documented George Allen stones in Vincent. F. Luti, “Eighteenth-Century Gravestone Carvers of the Upper Narragansett Basin: George Allen,” Markers XXII (2003): 109-159.

20. Jeremiah Fisher, 1711, Wrentham, is listed in Forbes, et al. as a carver on the basis of some gravestone and general payments listed to him in probate records of eastern Massachusetts.The fact that many documented payments to him, specific and general, are for work by John New, and others of Fisher/Farrington and Gabriel Allen, led to a supposition that he was just a middleman, a view I held for many years. He married Mrs. Constance Mason of Rehoboth and is mentioned as a “trader” in Bristol Co. Deeds, Taunton, Mass., 86:130. He also dealt widely in real estate. He was a town schoolteacher, and the Wrentham Town Records documents a case against him for misappropriation of school funds (Selectmen and Freeholders Records, 1760-1781, vol. 4:113). A bastardy case against him is found in Suffolk Co. Court Files (New Courthouse, Boston, MA), 307:54, 98; and 315:124. (See also Appendix A and the Genealogy Chart for his relationship to John New and Samuel Fisher.)

In 1998, through chance discoveries by James Blachowicz and then of another by me, two separate documents of the 1780’s came to light in which a Jeremiah Fisher is called “Stone Cutter”: September 1785 “of Swanzey now resident at Mendin”(sic) and April 1786 “now resident in Rehoboth.”

A body of work by Jeremiah Fisher may be embedded in that fringe of work that surrounds other carvers like a nebulous halo, those “iffy” attributions. That is, for lack of steady engagement in gravestone carving (or any other trade for that matter), he never developed his own “language” or signature elements, merely working with, or copying from other carvers in his circle of relatives. Quite frankly, it will take a profound analytical study to put together a body of work for Jeremiah Fisher, but I believe it might be discovered embedded in the work of John New, Samuel Fisher, and even George Allen Jr. Since some of the stones in this present paper cannot be attributed to a Boston area or Narragansett Basin carver and not always even to George Allen Jr., we must raise the possibility that some of the questionable stones in this study could bear the imprint of Jeremiah Fisher’s hand.

21. Some sixty stones over five years averages out to ten a year, and one would expect that there are more extant (or gone) than were used to research this report.

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22. I have not been able to find the direct connection of George Allen Jr. to this area.

However, there are some tantalizing bits of information that reinforce the notion that there was one. Allen’s presumed father-in-law, Ebenezer Man, and his wife, Mary Gould, moved to Shrewsbury where Ebenezer’s will is recorded in Worcester County probates, vol. 18:212 (1782). But when they moved there is unclear. A deed of September 8, 1757 (Suffolk Co. Deeds 91:59), for land in Wrentham mentions “the road leading from Capt. Ebenezer Man’s.”

Suffolk Co. Deeds, 100:48, 51, June 21, 1763, show Ebenezer Man,Wrentham, gentleman, selling off one quarter of his varied possession, and in 113:130, September 20, 1768, it is recorded that he had sold off his extensive possession entirely: his homestead farm, other lands, beds of iron, coal house, etc. for the sum of £800. It can only be conjectured that it was in this time frame that he moved to Shrewsbury, possibly becoming, in the early 1760’s, the contact person for the many George Allen Jr. stones that are found there and about.

23. Theodore Chase and Laurel Gabel, Gravestone Chronicles (Boston: New England Historical and Genealogical Society, 1990) 199-201. On page 193 they note that some of Wilder’s early round-eyed skulls (i.e., 1760’s) “are questionable attributions and therefore not included in our statistics.” A few of these may be mixed in with some of the cautionary attributions to George Allen Jr. in this paper.

24. Elizabeth Ward in Old Times in Shrewsbury (N.Y., 1892) reports of Rev. Job Cushing that “in the heat of an August day, while he was binding sheaves in the field, he suddenly fell to earth and died before air could reach him.”

Appendix A

A simplified genealogy showing a theoretical placement of George Allen Jr. in the Fisher-Farrington-Bacon-Man network of families

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Frontispiece: A marker from the Aspen Grove Cemetery.

April, 2006. Aspen, Colorado.

The marker is legible and embedded in the ground.

AGS

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Wooden Artifacts in Cemeteries Kimberly D. Dugan and Ronald W. Anthony

In every cemetery across the country, stone monuments and other artifacts are constantly under assault from the forces of sun, wind, rain, snow, ground water, pollution, and vandalism. For wooden grave markers and enclosures, the situation is particularly dire, and these unique monuments are in danger of being lost to the effects of time. For cemetery stewards, this constant assault creates a tremendous challenge—to forestall the deterioration of irreplaceable civic and personal historic resources. This article is intended to provide cemetery stewards with the fundamental information and tools needed to assess the conditions and facilitate the conservation needs of wooden artifacts in cemeteries.

Because many cemetery organizations have limited funds for maintenance and preservation, this article focuses on low-cost practices and preventive maintenance procedures that can be conducted by laypersons with minimal technical training. Other preservation options that require higher levels of maintenance are also discussed; however the goal of this article is to provide a foundation for understanding wooden artifacts in cemeteries based on current knowledge and readily available practices, and to offer realistic preservation options for cemetery stewards with limited financial resources.

Understanding Wood in Cemeteries and Implications for Historic Preservation

Wooden artifacts in cemeteries experience more harsh environmental conditions than wood used in the construction of homes and buildings. They are smaller than buildings, are often exposed to the elements with minimal maintenance, and typically develop a desirable “historic� appearance over time that is as much a part of the artifact as the original artifact itself. As such, commonly-used procedures for repairing, painting, or replacing damaged or missing components may not be appropriate. Preservation and treatment options for wooden artifacts are limited because of these factors, as well as by their status as significant historical and cultural relics.

Much of the research for this article was based on an assessment of wooden markers and grave enclosures within Aspen Grove Cemetery in

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Aspen, Colorado. Markers published an article in 1980, “Colorado Wooden Markers,� by James Milmoe. In the article were two photographs, taken in 1966, of wooden markers from Aspen Grove Cemetery; these markers were not located during surveys conducted in April, 2006, or July, 2008. These two markers have probably succumbed to the elements in the fifty years since they were photographed, given the change in condition Anthony & Associates, Inc. staff noted for an extant marker within Aspen Grove Cemetery that occurred within a single year (Frontispiece and Fig. 2). This swift alteration in condition indicates that wooden grave markers and other cemetery artifacts are subject to rapid changes in the rate of deterioration due to changes in the moisture and vegetation environments (e.g., the addition of sprinklers and overgrowth of vegetation). Such artifacts are in dire need of preservation attention.

Fig. 2. The same marker found in the Frontispiece in July, 2008.

The marker has now failed at the base and is no longer legible.

Aspen Grove Cemetery, Aspen, Colorado.

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Many markers and grave fences were hastily constructed from milled lumber that was not allowed to season (dry) before being erected as grave monuments, and thus may exhibit distortions such as cupping, twisting, bowing, checking, and splitting. Numerous wood species have been used for cemetery artifacts, typically based on local availability rather than natural durability and long-term serviceability. The species of tree from which the lumber came and the manner in which a wooden grave artifact was milled will affect its durability when exposed to wood-deteriorating conditions such as ultraviolet light and cyclic moisture and/or freeze-thaw episodes.

Wooden artifacts in cemeteries include head and foot markers, crosses, plaques, sculptures, grave curbs, grave fences, grave houses, and plot enclosures, as well as historic perimeter fences. Unlike wood used in the construction of a house or building that is typically periodically maintained, wooden cemetery artifacts are continuously exposed to the elements, which hasten wood deterioration. Most wooden markers and grave fence posts are installed with the end grain buried in the ground; because wood cut perpendicular to the grain exposes the long tubular cells that once served to transport moisture and nutrients in a living tree, a wooden artifact installed with the end grain in contact with the ground is continually wicking moisture from the soil. Additionally, the exposed end grain at the top of the artifact is subjected to precipitation from above, which makes it further susceptible to deterioration. Because of this phenomenon and the continual exposure to ultraviolet light, rain, wind, and freeze/thaw cycles that most wooden artifacts in cemeteries undergo, conditions are generally too extreme for the intermittent application of water repellents, water repellent preservatives, penetrating oils, paints, and other wood treatments to be effective. However, finishes and treatments may extend some benefit with frequent, routine maintenance, and those treatment options will be briefly discussed.

Prior to conducting any preservation work within a cemetery, the preservationist should be familiar with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties, which require that the historic character of a property be retained and preserved and prohibit the replacement of intact or repairable historic materials. This includes character-defining features of a property, such as the wooden grave markers and enclosures of a cemetery. All work, including protective coatings, preservative treatments, and repairs, conducted on wooden artifacts within cemeteries should, therefore, be compatible both physically and visually with the artifact and the cemetery as a whole, as well as documented and identifiable (upon close inspection) for future research and preservation efforts.

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Mechanisms of Wood Deterioration

Several mechanisms of wood deterioration can affect wooden artifacts in cemeteries. These mechanisms, described below, include weathering; moisture; mold and mildew; lichens and moss; decay fungi; insects; and mechanical damage.

Weathering

Weathering is the result of cyclic wetting and drying and associated distortion of the wood, coupled with exposure to ultraviolet light and erosion by wind-blown debris. Weathering is an extremely slow process but a significant factor in the loss of inscription legibility. The weathering process also changes the appearance of wood and gradually erodes the wood fibers. The erosion of wood fibers due to wind-blown debris (e.g., sand and grit) will vary with height above ground, particle size, and wind velocity, with maximum physical erosion typically occurring less than a foot above the ground. On average, due to the effects of weathering, wooden artifacts can lose up to a quarter-inch of thickness per century of exposure, depending on the wood species. The rate of weathering is greatly influenced by environmental exposure, wood density, climate, and soil condition. We typically think of weathered wood as aesthetically pleasing because it adds an air of authenticity to historic sites, and, unlike decay or insect attack, it seldom damages the wood enough to require replacement (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. A grave marker with the gray wood typical from UV exposure and weather-caused cracks and checks that allow moisture penetration.

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Moisture

Moisture is not a mechanism of deterioration, but it supports many forms of deterioration and is an integral component of weathering, decay, and insect attack. Moisture contributes to the weathering process by causing wood to swell or shrink, thus generating checks and splits as the wood fibers expand and contract. Wood that is not exposed to environmental weathering or in contact with a source of moisture can remain stable for decades or centuries. Wood that reaches a moisture content of twenty percent or more is at risk for decay fungi and insect attack. Wood with a moisture content higher than thirty percent has a high probability of decay and insect infestation.

Mold and Mildew

Molds and mildews are types of fungi that do not deteriorate wood but can cause surface discoloration (Fig. 4). Most molds and mildews are white, green, orange, or black and are powdery in appearance.1 If spores are present, they can grow very quickly on moist wood or wood in very humid conditions. Since the conditions that are favorable for growth of molds and mildews are the same as for more destructive decay fungi, the wood discoloring organisms should be considered as warning signs of potential problems.

Fig. 4. The back of a painted wooden grave marker with green mold or mildew growth.

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Lichens and Moss

Lichens tend to grow very slowly. They need an undisturbed surface, indirect sunlight, and moisture to develop. The fungal components of the lichen do not parasitize living plant cells, break down wood cells, or provide gateways for other pathogens to enter wood fibers.2 Because most lichens are extremely firmly embedded in their substrates, forcible removal of lichens can cause significant surface damage to wooden artifacts and is not recommended. Lichens on wooden artifacts, therefore, should be left in place and should not be considered as harmful to the long-term preservation of wooden artifacts (Fig. 5).

Mosses can thrive on a variety of porous, moisture-retentive surfaces and are generally found in damp, low-light conditions. Mosses do not damage wood fibers; however, the presence of moss is an indication of a continuously high moisture environment, and the sponge-like composition of the moss plant traps moisture at the wood surface. If mosses are present on grave markers or enclosures, moisture levels are likely to be very high and decay fungi are probable. Moss can be easily removed from cemetery artifacts with natural bristle brushes and careful cleaning, but unless underlying conditions are altered, the moss will likely return.

Fig. 5. Lichens growing on the top rail of a grave enclosure.

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Decay Fungi

Wood-decay fungi excrete enzymes that break down wood fibers, which can ultimately lead to the collapse of the artifact. Deterioration through decay is a particular concern where wood is in contact with the ground or other materials that facilitate moisture absorption. Most wood-decay fungi are only able to grow on wood with a moisture content greater than twenty percent and are unable to damage adjacent dry wood.3 White-rot, soft-rot, and brown-rot fungi are the typical causes of wood deterioration. Both white-rot and brown-rot fungi can produce a cottony white growth on the surface of the wood (Fig. 6 and 7). Wood that has white or brown-rot decay fungi will tend to be soft, friable, and easily penetrated by a blunt probing instrument such as an awl.

Fig. 6. An extremely deterioratead marker with white, cottony fungal growth.

Fig. 7. A close -up image of the fungal body visible in Fig. 6.

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Decay fungi break down wood components over time. The early stage of decay (incipient decay) is characterized by discoloration and the presence of “punky� wood fibers. Punky wood is spongy wood that has experienced a loss of strength and structural integrity due to the decomposition of connective fibers. As the decay progresses, the cellular integrity of the wood deteriorates until small voids develop. Larger voids can develop where the decay started, and the boundaries of the incipient decay will continue to extend, reducing the integrity of the wood and, potentially, compromising the ability of the wood to provide the structural support required (Fig. 8). Advanced decay, the ultimate result of moisture absorbed into the wood through either ground contact or small cracks and drying checks on the wood above ground, is a severe threat to the long-term viability of wooden artifacts.

Fig. 8. Evidence of advanced decay .

The below-ground portion of this marker is punky and easily breaks apart.

Insects

Insect attack is generally a minor contributing factor to the deterioration of wooden artifacts, as most insects seek out wood that has already been compromised by high moisture content levels. However, a number of wood-boring insect species can cause significant damage to wooden artifacts. In the southeastern U.S. and other humid coastal regions in particular, insects are more likely to be an issue for wooden artifacts than in other parts of the country.

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Insect attack by termites or other wood borers will reduce the cross section of a wood member by either digesting or tunneling through the wood.

The mechanism of wood deterioration is different for insect attack but, as with decay fungi, moisture is generally required and the result is a loss of integrity of the wood. The diversity of insect species that can damage wood is quite broad, but the most common and most damaging of these insect pests are termites, carpenter ants, and carpenter bees. In general, wood that has been damaged by wood-destroying insects will have noticeable exit and entry holes. These holes tend to be round or oval and vary in size from one-fiftieth of an inch to one-half inch, depending on the insect species.

Wooden artifacts should be closely inspected, particularly near the groundline for evidence of insect activity. Often, frass (wood substance) and fecal pellets can be seen near or within the holes. Proper species identification and mitigation options may be difficult to determine and may be a task for skilled entomologists and/or exterminators familiar with cultural resource management and historic preservation requirements.

Mechanical Damage

In addition to wood deterioration through decay fungi, weathering, and insect attack, wooden artifacts frequently get damaged by people, animals, tree roots, falling trees, ground maintenance equipment, and fire.

People can inadvertently knock over or move grave markers or intentionally steal or vandalize them. Animals can knock markers down, scratch the surfaces, or even chew on surfaces and in-ground portions. Tree roots and ornamental plantings that are no longer maintained can damage markers by dislodging them or growing through them. In cemeteries within wooded areas, falling trees can crush or break wooden markers and grave enclosures (Fig. 9). Grass trimmers and lawnmowers can nick the sides of fragile wooden markers and fences. Additionally, fires, either controlled burns or wildfires, can damage or destroy wooden markers and grave enclosures. As inherently fragile resources, wooden artifacts should be protected from mechanical damage through careful vegetation management, public education, and proper landscape maintenance. Fences may inhibit vandalism and animal damage, and careful hand-trimming of vegetation around wooden markers can reduce incidences of accidental human, fire, and mechanical damage.

Methods for Identifying and Monitoring Problems

Effectively identifying and monitoring problems begins with a basic condition assessment and thorough documentation. A simple condition assessment of wooden artifacts should include a visual inspection, probing in likely problem areas, and moisture content readings. Experts should be called following visual inspections that determine there may be a problem with no

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easily identifiable solution. The tools necessary for a condition assessment survey, other than visual acuity and tactile senses, include a blunt awl and a moisture meter. Awls and moisture meters are inexpensive, easy to use, and exceptionally useful for identifying potential problems. Assessment findings should be recorded on an appropriate condition survey form. (An example of a condition assessment survey form can be found in the appendix.)

Fig. 9. A fallen tree grazed this marker on the way down, damaging the top of the marker and pushing it partially out of the ground.

Visual Inspection

Visual inspection should be the first step in assessing wood conditions. Visual examination of wooden artifacts allows for identifying components that are missing, broken, under insect attack, or in an advanced state of deterioration. Components that have fallen away due to damage can frequently be found nearby; broken or separated elements should be collected and placed near the source artifact until repairs can be made. If missing components were intended to provide structural support, such as corner posts for a grave enclosure, their replacement may be essential to prevent long-term damage to the structure. Missing or broken elements should be recorded on a condition assessment survey form.

Visual inspection also allows for the detection of current moisture problems above ground, as evidenced by wood that appears wet or feels moist to the touch. Through visual inspection, external wood decay fungi can be identified by the presence of decay fruiting bodies such as mushrooms or cottony fungal bodies. The presence of mold, mildew, or moss should also be noted, as these organisms tend to thrive in environmental conditions that are suitable for wood decay fungi. Insect activity can also be identified through the presence of insects, insect bore holes, or frass removed by wood-

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destroying insects.

Probing

Probing the wood with a blunt awl enables the detection of voids just below the surface in wood that may not be detectable by visual inspection alone. A sharp object, such as an ice pick, may easily penetrate even completely sound wood, so it is important to ensure the tip of the probing instrument is rounded and blunt. Probing should be conducted judiciously and only in suspect areas at ground level and within or near wood joints and connections (Fig. 10). Sound wood will feel firm and offer considerable resistance to penetration. Unsound wood or wood with internal voids may sound hollow or dull when tapped with the awl handle, and wood with significant insect damage or decay below the surface will be easily penetrated.

Fig. 10. An awl used to investigate wood condition at teh base of a grave marker.

Based on the length of penetration, this marker has approximately 1/2-inch of punky wood below the ground surface.

Moisture Detection

Moisture content measurements identify wood with moisture levels favorable to the growth of wood-decay fungi. Moisture-content measurements can be taken at locations where decay typically manifests, such as near or just above the ground-line. Additional readings can be taken near the top of the element to determine whether the moisture is uniformly distributed or concentrated around the ground-line (Fig. 11). Generally, if the moisture

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content is less than twenty percent, wood-decay fungi cannot grow. While fungi may be present at lower moisture contents, they are unable to continue deteriorating the wood without additional moisture. Moisture contents from twenty to thirty percent indicate areas of concern where moisture is sufficient for fungi to grow but not sufficient to indicate advanced decay. Moisture contents above thirty percent are often an indication of advanced decay with internal voids and/or surface deterioration. Recent precipitation or watering may affect the reading by artificially raising the moisture content, which can obscure the actual long-term conditions. Although wood species can affect the moisture reading displayed by commercially available moisture meters, the variation is typically not significant enough to require adjustment for cemetery artifacts. However, the presence of high levels of salt (absorbed from the soil or in marine environments) can greatly increase the reading displayed on moisture meters and an adjustment may be required to provide the actual moisture content.

Fig. 11. Taking moisture readings on a grave marker.

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Documentation

A very essential component to any condition assessment is good documentation. At a minimum, a condition assessment should record the following:

• A description of the marker, including the inscription (if legible), and the general shape and dimensions.

• The location of the marker relative to other artifacts such as stone markers with clear inscriptions.

• Some description of the condition of the artifact that includes any identified decay, loose connections or failures, insect damage, excessive vegetation, mechanical damage, etc.

• A brief description of the soil and drainage conditions.

Artifacts should not be removed from the ground, as removal may damage the in-ground portion and make artifacts more susceptible to damage, theft, leaning, and collapse. It is not necessary to remove artifacts to identify potential problems.

When to Call an Expert

Expert advice should be sought for moisture problems if the source of moisture cannot be identified or mitigated, for insect infestation, and for advanced decay that has damaged or destroyed elements. Experts, through the use of advanced assessment methods, can help to define the scope of the damage and provide guidance on appropriate levels of intervention. State Historic Preservation Offices and online resources are good places to start when looking for a wood expert with cultural resource expertise.

Corrective Measures

Numerous reference works on the weathering and maintenance of stone and metal artifacts exist to aid cemetery stewards.4 However, wooden artifacts present a particularly dire problem. Not only do they deteriorate more rapidly than stone or metal artifacts, but there is also very little information available to facilitate informed treatment decisions.

The two most cost-effective measures for extending the life of wooden cemetery artifacts are controlling water and vegetation. Clearing organic debris and vegetation from around the bases of wooden markers, enclosures, and other artifacts and minimizing the artifacts’ exposure to

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moisture typically slows the rate of deterioration due to decay fungi. These corrective measures effectively extend the life of wooden artifacts without costly or time-consuming treatments.

Controlling Water

Because moisture is the primary means through which weathering, decay fungi, and insect infestation cause wood deterioration, the key to preserving and extending the life of wooden artifacts is to control moisture levels as much as possible. This means inspecting irrigation systems for leaks and moving or carefully monitoring water spigots and sprinkler heads that are located near wooden artifacts (Fig. 12). The direction of spray from water sprinklers should be assessed and alterations to the direction and intensity of flow made if necessary. If the ground surrounding the wooden artifact(s) is low-lying or consistently damp, it may be possible to excavate carefully around the artifact and replace the soil with pea-gravel or another quickdraining material to help prevent water from pooling around the base of the artifact. Altering the slope or drainage must be done with care to minimize the overall impact to the historic landscape. Prior to altering the ground profile, the SHPO should be contacted for advice and regulations.

Fig. 12. A water sprinkler located directly next to a wooden marker that is showing signs of decay at its base.

Vegetation Management

Often, wooden artifacts get lost in volunteer vegetation or untended ornamental plants (Fig. 13). This overgrowth creates a moist microclimate conducive to decay fungi; increases the likelihood of inadvertent damage by

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cemetery visitors or maintenance crews; attracts insects, rodents, and larger animals that can damage wooden artifacts; and increases the risk of fire. A vegetation-management plan should be established to routinely inspect the cemetery grounds for overgrowth and trees that need pruning. Hand tools should be used to carefully prune plants and trees if they pose a risk to nearby markers or artifacts.

Fig. 13. The vegetation in this cemetery is so dense that a rake must be used to search the ground for markers.

Additional Treatments

A number of other means have been used on wooden artifacts to try to extend their service lives. Most of these measures alter the appearance of the artifact, require regular maintenance, and necessitate some level of investment of time and money. These measures include the application of

• Film-forming coatings such as paints or whitewash (when known to be historically appropriate).

• Ultraviolet light blockers.

• Water repellents and water-repellent preservatives.

• Epoxy consolidants.

• Oil finishes.

These treatments should be applied under the direction of a conservator or preservation specialist with a background in wood preservation and must

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be part of a regular maintenance program. It is important to note that none of these treatments can withstand the extreme moisture and environmental conditions of wood that is below ground level or in constant contact with a source of moisture.5 While some of these treatments may temporarily protect an artifact from UV degradation, moisture intrusion, insects, and/or wood decay fungi, they will only be effective in extending the service life of aboveground portions of wooden artifacts with regular maintenance. However, all of the treatments described above will change the appearance of the artifacts, a potentially undesirable side-effect: visitors may protest the “newness� of the finishes, and alterations in the appearance of artifacts change the historic visual relationship between the artifacts and the surrounding cultural landscape, negatively impacting the historical significance of the cemetery.

Varnishes, Polyurethanes, Lacquer, and Shellac

Transparent film-forming finishes such as varnishes, polyurethanes, lacquer and shellac and are generally not recommended for exterior wood because ultraviolet light readily penetrates the finish and degrades the wood underneath.6 Varnishes and polyurethane finishes will eventually become brittle, crack, and peel as a result of UV exposure (Fig. 14). Lacquer and shellac have very little to no moisture resistance and are extremely brittle, making them unsuitable for long-term protection of wood in exterior conditions.7

Fig. 14. Failure of a transparent, film-forming finish, likely varnish or polyurethane.

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Borate Rods

For protection against insect damage and decay fungi, borate rods can be inserted into holes drilled into the wood where moisture penetration is likely. Borates are low-level toxicity preservatives that are used to improve the durability of both new and in-service wood products. Borates effectively control termites, carpenter ants, a variety of beetles, and other wood boring insects. Topical borate treatments (liquids) applied to the surface offer no protection to the more vulnerable interior of wooden artifacts and are not recommended.

Although not ideal in all situations because installation requires limited invasive drilling to insert the rod, borate-rod installation is not complicated and can be completed by anyone with basic carpentry skills and appropriate tools. To install borate rods, holes are drilled on the bottom or below-grade lateral face of markers or enclosure posts, the rods are inserted, and the holes are filled with either a pressure-treated wood plug or a plastic threaded plug (to aid in inserting additional rods during future inspection cycles). These rods are typically effective for three to ten years, depending on environmental conditions, but they should be regularly inspected and used as part of a long-term maintenance program.

Repairs

Wooden artifacts in cemeteries, regardless of their condition, are valuable cultural and historic artifacts and that every effort should be made to preserve such artifacts without altering the original materials. However, when repairs need to be made in order to protect the artifact—such as when a wooden grave marker can no longer stand upright due to complete failure of the in-ground portion or in the case of a grave enclosure where the structure has collapsed due to failure of one or more of the corner posts—repairs to the original artifact are necessary to protect it from further deterioration.

A professional carpenter or conservator should be used to make any repairs to the wood. Prior to any repair work, however, the conditions that led to the artifact’s failure should be mitigated to prevent repeat failure or further damage. When repairing a deteriorated marker, fence, enclosure, or other artifact, efforts should be made to retain as much original material as possible.

Despite a variety of possible repairs for wooden markers and other wooden artifacts, typically, the wood that is below ground will degrade long before the rest of the element. In some cases, it may be desirable to repair the marker or post by removing the damaged portion and attaching a new below-ground piece. The repair should not impair the aesthetic effect of the

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original artifact, and the replacement wood should be reclaimed material of the same species, density, and type of cut.

Determining Wood Species

To determine the appropriate species for repairs, a sample of the original artifact must be removed and sent for analysis. Samples can be sent to a number of private consultants for a fee or to a public or government institution such as the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory Center for Wood Anatomy Research that can provide species analysis free of charge. Samples should be taken from sound wood and should measure a minimum of onequarter of an inch wide by one quarter of an inch deep and one half-inch in length. The soundness of the wood sample can be determined by rolling it between the fingers; if the wood breaks apart, it should not be submitted, and a new sample will need to be taken. One should take all samples from an inconspicuous spot or from the area that is being repaired and each sample should be recorded, labeled, and separately bagged prior to shipment for analysis.

Repairs and Replacement

Repairs may be spliced to remaining sound wood using a variety of wood joints and/or wooden dowels. An epoxy resin can be used to insure adhesion between the pieces; however, epoxies tend to inhibit moisture flow through the member and may cause the repair to fail at a much faster rate than if no adhesive is applied. Additional research needs to be conducted to determine alternatives to epoxies for this type of application.

Sometimes it is not possible or desirable to repair an artifact, and the choice is made to create a replacement of the original. The choice to replace an original artifact or portions of an original artifact should always be made judiciously. When creating a replacement, use reclaimed wood of the same species that matches as closely as possible the original wood’s density and type of cut. Dimensions and detailing should match the original dimensions and profile. The replacement member should be dated in an inconspicuous spot to aid future preservationists in determining historic fabric. Borate rods may be inserted into the end grain or in a lateral face that will be below the ground surface, using the techniques described above, to extend the service life of the replacement artifact.

Alternative Materials

Because wood exposed to moisture is not exceedingly durable, it often seems illogical to replace deteriorated wood with wood of the same species, or even with wood at all. Often, replacing wooden artifacts with

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a more durable material seems the most economical and logical approach.

According to the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Preservation, however, “the preferred treatment is always replacement in kind, that is, with the same material.”8 Because this approach is not always possible, the use of a compatible substitute material may be considered if the “form, detailing, and overall appearance of the substitute material convey the visual appearance of the historic material, and the application of the substitute material does not damage, destroy or obscure historic features.”9 However, the use of a substitute material, such as replacing a wooden grave enclosure with one made out of vinyl, changes the character-defining features of a cemetery, alters the “historic visual relationship” between the grave markers and the cemetery, and damages the historic character of the cemetery (Fig. 15). Wooden artifacts in cemeteries are historically significant because “the materials and craftsmanship reflected in their construction are tangible and irreplaceable evidence of our cultural heritage. To the degree that substitute materials destroy and/or conceal the historic fabric, they will always subtract from the basic integrity” of historically significant artifacts.10 The use of alternative materials is not recommended, therefore, for complete replacement of fragile wooden artifacts. However, there may be situations when the use of alternative materials as replacements for select artifactual elements with limited visual impact is the best option for the long-term preservation of the artifact as a whole.

Fig. 15. Historic wrought iron and wooden grave enclosures flanking an out-of-place grave enclosure made out of vinyl.

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Considerations for Repair and Treatment

Very little research has been conducted on the long-term success of repairs made to wooden markers and other cemetery artifacts. For this reason, any repairs will need regular inspection and maintenance to monitor conditions for signs of problems or failures. Additionally, prior to conducting repairs the following issues need to be considered:

• Documentation.

• Long-term planning and budgeting.

• Assessment of soil conditions and microclimates.

Repairing Elements with In-Kind Materials

The long-term success of repairing cemetery artifacts by removing the decayed, below-ground portion and attaching a new wooden base has not been documented through any scientific study, and the failure rate for this type of repair is not known. Nor has there been any scientific assessment of the success of borate rods within a cemetery application; however, the known benefits of borate rods indicate considerable potential in historic preservation efforts in cemeteries.

Repairing with Alternative Materials

In many cases, the portion of the artifact that is in contact with the ground has been completely destroyed by decay or insects, and repairing the artifact with the same materials simply is not a feasible solution. While this approach is not the preferred method when attempting to adhere to the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties, it may be worthwhile to consider alternatives for objects that simply cannot be repaired with in-kind material. Consider a marker in Beaufort, North Carolina, where the below-grade portion of the marker had deteriorated.

In order to keep the grave marker on display, an alternative base was built utilizing copper tubes (Fig. 16). The unfortunate consequence of this repair was that screws were placed on the front face of the marker; they are easily visible and may have contributed to a check that runs along the face (Fig. 17). If such a repair is necessary, fasteners should be placed judiciously so as to have the least visual and physical impact on the artifact. Simply installing the screw from the other side would have kept the face of the marker in more pristine condition. Despite these drawbacks, however, the marker remains on display and is somewhat protected from further degradation because it is no longer in contact with the ground.

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Similar—and more successful—repair attempts can be seen in a number of other cemeteries. At Mount Pisgah Cemetery in Cripple Creek, Colorado, a maintenance plan has been in place for the past several years that includes painting and repairing wooden markers and enclosures. Bases of grave enclosure corner posts that are deteriorated below ground are typically replaced with channeled steel rods. Alternatively or in addition to repairs with steel rods, bases of natural rock are placed under the deteriorated posts to prevent structure collapse and moisture absorption into the failed element (Fig. 18). The maintenance and repair program at Mount Pisgah has kept the vast majority of wooden artifacts from extensive deterioration. Minor adjustments to their maintenance procedures, such as boring insertion holes for the metal rods into the end grain of the corner posts rather than attaching the rods to the exterior and leaving stones used as supports unpainted, can help to reduce the visual impact of the repairs and improve the historic character of the cemetery.

Fig. 16. Grave marker of a little girl in Beaufort, North Carolina, with an alternative support base of copper tubes.

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Fig. 17. A close-up of the copper support tubes and a screw in the face of the marker of a little girl in Beaufort, North Carolina.

Fig. 18. The deteriorated base of a grave enclosure corner post has been replaced by a channeled metal rod and natural stones, painted white.

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Summary

Wooden artifacts are disappearing from our cultural landscapes.

The methods of deterioration are well-known and methods for identifying and monitoring problems exist for both cemetery stewards and preservation professionals, but the means to retard those methods of deterioration are not without drawbacks, nor are they fail-proof. The benefits and consequences of the corrective measures identified here should be discussed and understood before selecting a particular corrective measure or treatment option.

It can be discouraging to learn that nothing is currently available to entirely stop the weathering and decay processes on cemetery artifacts.

Over time, they will succumb to the elements. However, through regular maintenance and routine inspections and assessments, the decay of wooden artifacts can be slowed substantially and their service lives can be extended.

More importantly, the unique history and cultural significance of wooden markers, grave enclosures, and other artifacts can be preserved for future generations to experience.

Acknowledgements

Anthony & Associates Inc. would like to thank the many people who were willing to volunteer their time and knowledge for the completion of this project. In particular, we would like to thank Dean Reudrich with Historic North Carolina, Patricia Suggs of the Beaufort Historical Association, Kathy Stockton of the City of Cripple Creek’s Historic Preservation and Planning Department, Steve White and Art Tremayne of the Cripple Creek Maintenance Department, Nancy McDonald, a Cripple Creek Historic Preservation Commissioner, and Amy Guthrie and Sara Adams, historic preservation staff for the City of Aspen, Colorado. We also acknowledge the administrative support of the Association for Preservation Technology International and the financial support of the National Center for Technology and Training that made this work possible.

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Notes

1. Michael P. Levy, A Guide to the Inspection of Existing Homes for Wood-Inhabiting Fungi and Insects (Washington DC: Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research, 1979).

2. David J. Goerig and James A. Chatfield, “10 Things You Should Know about Lichens,” in Ornamental Plants Annual Reports and Research Reviews 2004, Special Circular 195, The Ohio State University Bulletin, Extension Research, http://ohioline.osu.edu/sc195/029. html.

3. Levy, Inspection of Existing Homes.

4. Frank G. Matero et al., St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 Guidelines for Preservation & Restoration, http://cml.upenn.edu/nola/pdfs/GuidelinesEnd.pdf.

5. R.S. Williams et al., Finishes for Exterior Wood: A Comprehensive Guide to the Painting/Staining and Maintenance of Homes, Decks, Log Structures and More, (Madison, WI: U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory, 1996). R.S. Williams and William C. Feist, Selection and Application of Exterior Stains for Wood, (Madison, WI: U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory 1999).

6. William C. Feist, “Outdoor Wood Weathering and Protection,” in Archaeological Wood: Properties, Chemistry, and Preservation, ed. Roger M. Rowell and R. James Barbour (Washington DC: Advances in Chemistry Series 225, Symposium papers from the 196th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Los Angeles, California, September 2530, 1988. American Chemical Society, 1990): 263-300.

7. Williams et al., Finishes for Exterior Wood.

8. John H. Myers, Preservation Brief No. 8: Aluminum and Vinyl Siding on Historic Buildings:The Appropriateness of Substitute Materials for Resurfacing Historic Wood Frame Buildings, rev. Gary L. Hume (National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1979, revised 1984).

9. Myers, Preservation Brief No. 8.

10. Myers, Preservation Brief No. 8.

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The Year’s Work in Cemetery and Gravestone Studies: an International Bibliography compiled by Joy M. Giguere This annual feature of Markers, inaugurated in 1995, is intended to serve as an ongoing, working bibliography of relevant scholarship in the interdisciplinary field of Cemetery and Gravemarker Studies, including relevant works dealing with cenotaphs and public monuments and/or memorials. With significant exceptions, since 2004, it has restricted itself to English-language works in the modern era (i.e. post-1500), consisting of books, scholarly articles, and theses/dissertations. This year’s bibliography includes a new section: Book Reprints. This section includes a number of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century monographs and pamphlets that, during 2009 or 2010, were digitally reprinted, either by university libraries or print-on-demand presses (such as General Books and Nabu Press). These texts, often hard to find, may serve as useful primary sources for researchers, and given their new availability, are listed here.

Excluded from the bibliography are conference presentations, audio-visual materials, newspaper articles, book reviews, items in trade and popular magazines, compilations of gravemarker inscriptions, and a number of non-scholarly items of varying sorts. Also not included are articles found in Markers or in the AGS Quarterly. Bracketed notations in [bold] occur when possible where geographical locale is unclear. This year’s bibliography features materials published in 2008 but not covered in Markers XXVI, as well as work from 2009 and 2010; items published in 2010 after this listing was compiled will be included in next year’s edition.

Books, Monographs, Pamphlets, Etc. Agstner, Rudolf. One Week in Ethiopia, Forever with God: Guidebook to the

Foreigners’ Cemeteries in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2010.

Andersen, Soren Fredslund, and Mustafa Ibrahim Salman. Tylos Period Burials

in Bahrain. Vol 2, Hamad Town DS 3 & Shakhoura Cemeteries.

Copenhagen, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2009.

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Anderson, Sue, and Heather Wallis. A Medieval Cemetery at Mill Lane, Ormesby

St. Margaret, Norfolk. East Anglian Archaeology Monograph. Oxford, UK:

Oxbow Books, 2009.

Annable, F.K., and B.N. Eagles. The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Blacknall Field,

Pewsey, Wiltshire. Wiltshire, UK: Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural

History Society, 2010.

Arbuthnot, Nancy Prothro. Guiding Lights: United States Naval Academy

Monuments and Memorials. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2009.

Archer, Geoffrey. The Glorious Dead: Figurative Sculpture of British First World

War Memorials. N.p.: Frontier Publishing Ltd., 2009.

Arnold, Walter S. Staglieno: The Art of the Marble Carver. Cincinnati, OH:

Edgecliff Press, 2009.

Aston, David. Burial Assemblages of Dynasty 21-25: Chronology—Typology—

Developments. Denkschriften der Gesamtakademie. Vienna: Austrian

Academy of Sciences, 2009.

Atkinson, Rick. Where Valor Rests: Arlington National Cemetery. Washington,

D.C.: National Geographic: 2009.

Baker, Shane A. At Rest in Zion: The Archaeology of Salt Lake City’s First Pioneer

Cemetery. Salt Lake City: Museum of Peoples & Cultures, 2009.

Barber, Paul. Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality [with a new

preface]. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.

Barrett, John, et al., eds. Landscape, Monuments and Society: The Prehistory of

Cranborne Chase. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Barry, Thomas Michael. Final Resting Places: Orange County’s Dead and Famous.

Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2010.

Best, Janice. Les Monuments de Paris Sous la Troisième République: Contestation

et Commémoration du Passé. Paris: Harmattan, 2010.

Bills, Mark. Watts Cemetery Chapel: A Guide to the Symbols of Mary Watts’ Arts

and Crafts Masterpiece. London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2010.

Blatt, Martin Henry, et al. Hope & Glory: Essays on the Legacy of the Fifty-Fourth

Massachusetts Regiment. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts

Press, 2009.

Branigan, Keith, and Andonis Vasilakis. MoniOdigitria: A Prepalatial Cemetery

and its Environs in the Asterousia, Southern Crete. Prehistory

Monographs. Philadelphia: INSTAP Academic Press, 2010.

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157

Brawn, Dale. Every Stone a Story II: Manitoba’s Buried History. Winnipeg: Great

Plains Publications, 2009.

Breisacher, E.H. Last Resting Places: Being a Compendium of Fact Pertaining to the

Mortal Remains of the Famous and Infamous. Princeton, NJ: Darwin

Press, Inc., 2010.

Brodeur, Mario. Une presence symbolique: le monument aux Patriotes du cimetière

Notre-Dame-des-Neiges. Montreal: Éditions de la Fabrique de la paroisse

Notre-Dame de Montreal, 2009.

Brodrick, Louis. Shady Grove Cemetery Since 1864: Located on the Corner of Golf

Links Road and Fontanna Road in Hot Springs, Garland County,

Arkansas. Hot Springs, AK: L. Brodrick, 2010.

Brugmann, Birte, and Kenneth Penn. Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Inhumation Burial.

East Anglian Archaeology. Oxford, UK: Oxbow Press, 2009.

Buckberry, Jo, and Annia Cherryson. Later Anglo-Saxon Burial, c.650-1100 AD.

Studies in Funerary Archaeology. Oxford, UK: Oxbow Press, 2010.

Bucur, Maria. Heroes and Victims: Remembering War in Twentieth-Century

Romania. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.

Budreau, Lisa. Bodies of War: World War I and the Politics of Commemoration in

America, 1919-1933. New York: New York University Press, 2009.

Bundy, Robert F. Capitol Park’s Civil War Memorial Grove. Scotts Valley, CA:

CreateSpace, 2010.

Bundy, Robert F., Charles A. Davis, and David Smoot. Sacramento Remembers The

Civil War. Scotts Valley, CA: CreateSpace, 2010.

Burk, Adrienne L. Speaking for a Long Time: Public Space and Social Memory in

Vancouver. Vancouver, B.C.: University of British Columbia Press, 2010.

Burns, Rebecca. Burial for a King: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Funeral and the Week

that Transformed Atlanta and Rocked the Nation. New York: Scribner,

2011.

Byers, A. Martin and DeeAnne Wymer. Hopewell Settlement Patterns, Subsistence,

and Symbolic Landscapes. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010.

Callihan, David L. With Full Military Honors: Civil War Generals Buried at

Arlington National Cemetery. Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2009.

Carroll, Maureen, and Jane Rempel, eds. Living through the Dead: Burial and

Commemoration in the Classical World. Studies in Funerary

Archaeology. Oxford, UK: Oxbow Books, 2010.

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Chin, Mun, et al. Chinese in the Creswick Cemetery: Headstones and

Transcriptions, a Cultural Interpretation. Blackburn South, Victoria:

Chinese Heritage Interest Network, 2009.

Christie, N.M. Sacred Places: Canadian Cemeteries of the Great War. Ottawa: CEF

Books, 2009.

Clark, Dido, and Sue Hirst. Excavations at Mucking. Vol. 3, The Anglo-Saxon

Cemeteries. London: Museum of London Archaeological Service, 2009.

Connell, Brian, and Adrian Miles. The City Bunhill Burial Ground, Golden Lane,

London: Excavations at South Islington Schools, 2006. MoLAS

Archaeology Studies Series. London: Museum of London Archaeological

Services, 2010.

Cooper, Gaylord. Stories Told In Stone: Cemetery Iconology. Louisville, KY: Motes

Books, 2009.

Curran, Brian A., et al. Obelisk: A History. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009.

Davaras, Costis, and Jeffrey S. Soles, eds. Mochlos IIC, Period IV: The Mycenaean

Settlement and Cemetery—The Human Remains and Other Finds.

Prehistory Monographs. Philadelphia: INSTAP Academic Press, 2010.

Davenport, Daniel. The Sexton’s Monitor, and Dorchester Cemetery Memorial.

Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2009.

Deed, Stephen. Unearthly Landscapes: New Zealand’s Old Cemeteries. Dunedin,

NZ: Otago University Press, 2010.

Dennis, George. The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, Vol 1. New York: Cambridge

University Press, 2010. ____________. The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, Vol. 2. New York: Cambridge

University Press, 2010.

Dickens, Alison, et al. The Anglo-Saxon Settlement and Cemetery at Bloodmore

Hill, Carlton Colville, Suffolk. East Anglian Archaeology Monograph.

Oxford, UK: Oxbow Books, 2010.

Dickinson, Greg. Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and

Memorials. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010.

Doss, Erika. Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 2010.

Edmonds, John G. Union Cemetery, Redwood City, California: The People, Their

Lives, Their Communities. Star Publishing Co., 2009.

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159

Eggener, Keith. Cemeteries. Library of Congress Visual Sourcebooks. New York:

W.W. Norton & Company, 2010.

Eriquez, Christina. Our History In Stone: The New England Cemetery Dictionary.

Brookfield, CT: Sinematix, 2009.

Esposito, Matthew D. Funerals, Festivals, and Cultural Politics in Porfirian Mexico.

Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010.

Estes, Don. Legends of the Natchez City Cemetery: The Most Interesting Cemetery

in the South. N.p.: GraveDigger Publishing, 2009.

Finkbeiner, Uwe, and Ferhan Sakal. Emar After the Closure of the Tabqa Dam.

The Syrian-German Excavations, 1996-2002. Vol. 1, Late Roman and

Medieval Cemeteries and Environmental Studies (Subartu). Turnhout,

Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2010.

Fleishman, Thelma. Newton’s Garden Cemetery, est. 1855. Newton, MA: Newton

Historical Society, 2010.

Galland, China. Love Cemetery: Unburying the Secret History of Slaves. New York:

HarperOne, 2008.

Great Britain Ministry of Justice. Managing the Safety of Burial Ground Memorials:

Practical Advice for Dealing with Unstable Memorials. London: Ministry

of Justice, 2009.

Halsall, Guy. Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul: Selected Studies in

History and Archaeology, 1992-2009. Boston: BRILL, 2009.

Hemmings, David F. Disappearing History of Niagara: The Graveyards of a Frontier

Township. Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON: Bygones Publishing, 2010.

Hester, Paul. Glenwood Cemetery: Houston’s Historic Garden Cemetery. Houston,

TX: Glenwood Cemetery, 2009.

Hettinga, Kathy T. Graven Images: San Luis Valley. Santa Fe: Museum of New

Mexico Press, 2009.

Holdorf, Paul S., Jesse C. Long, Glen Peterman, and Suzanne Richard, eds. Khirbat

Iskandar: Final Report on the Early Bronze IV Area C ‘Gateway’ and

Cemeteries. ASOR Archaeological Reports. Boston: American Schools of

Oriental Research, 2010.

Holt, Dean W. American Military Cemeteries. 2nd ed. Jefferson, NC: McFarland

Press, 2009.

Hotz, Mary Elizabeth. Literary Remains: Representations of Death and Burial in

Victorian England. SUNY Series, Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century.

Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010.

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Hung, Wu. The Art of Yellow Springs: Understanding Chinese Tombs. Honolulu:

University of Hawaii Press, 2010.

Ingalls, Anita M. Guide to Madison County Cemeteries. Oneida, NY: Madison

County Historical Society, 2009.

Jabbour, Alan, and Karen Jabbour. Decoration Day in the Mountains: Traditions of

Cemetery Decoration in the Southern Appalachians. Durham: University

of North Carolina Press, 2010.

Jarvis, Jonathan. Cemetery, Cementerio: Necrogeography at the Merreltown

Cemetery and Cementario Guadalupe, Travis and Caldwell Counties,

Texas. Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag, 2009.

Jugie, Sophie. The Mourners: Tomb Sculpture from the Court of Burgundy. New

Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.

Kammen, Michael. Digging Up the Dead: A History of Notable American

Reburials. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Kanawati, Naguib. The Teti Cemetery at Saqqara. Vol. 9, The Tomb of Remni. ACE

Reports. Sydney, Australia: Australian Centre for Egyptology, 2009.

Kappel, Kai. Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site: Religious Memorials.

Barrington, IL: Art Stock Books Ltd., 2010.

Kasing, Petr. Ostravské hrbitovy, aneb, Zahrady vecnosti nejsou vzdy vecné

[Ostravské cemeteries, or, Garden of Eternity is not always eternal].

Ostrava, Czech Republic: Repronis, 2009.

Keister, Douglas. Forever L.A.: A Field Guide To Los Angeles Area Cemeteries &

Their Residents. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 2010.

Kerr, James Semple, and Ken Inglis. Death and Glory: A Guide to Monuments in a

Christian Society. Cremorne, N.S.W.: James Semple Kerr, 2009.

Knight, Vernon James, Jr. Mound Excavations at Moundville: Architecture, Elites

and Social Order. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010.

Kulakov, V.I. Dollkeim-Kovrovo, Kaliningrad Region, Russia: Research on the

Cemetery Conducted in 1879 and 1992-2002. Oxford: Archaeopress,

2009.

Lamb, Brian. Who’s Buried in Grant’s Tomb?: A Tour of Presidential Gravesites.

New York: PublicAffairs, 2010.

Lohwasser, Anglika. The Kushite Cemetery of Sanam: A Non-Royal Burial Ground

of the Nubian Capital, c. 800-600 BC. London: Golden House

Publications, 2010.

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161

Low, Polly, et al. Cultures of Commemoration: War Memorials, Ancient and

Modern. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Lowe, Bill, et al. Jackson, Michigan and the Civil War: The “Lost” Camp Blair and

the “Unknown” Soldiers Cemetery. Jackson, MI: Jackson County

Historical Society, 2009.

Macgill, Lynn. A Spectacle of the Respectable?: A Case Study: Keighley Cemetery

and Memorialisation. Saarbrücken, Germany:VDM Verlag Dr. Müller,

2009.

Manuelian, Peter Der. Giza Mastabas VIII: Mastabas of Nucleus Cemetery G 2100,

Major Mastabas G 2100-2220. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 2009.

Mays, Simon. The Archaeology of Human Bones. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge,

2010.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe: Guide to the Information Centre.

Barrington, IL: Art Stock Books Ltd., 2010.

Mortensen, Inge Demant. Luristani Pictorial Tombstones: Studies in Nomadic

Cemeteries from Northern Luristan, Iran. Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2010.

Murland, Jerry. Aristocrats Go To War: Uncovering the Zillebeke Churchyard

Cemetery. Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword, 2010.

Nicolson, Ken. The Happy Valley: A History and Tour of the Hong Kong Cemetery.

Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010.

Niven, Bill, and Chloe Paver, eds. Memorialization in Germany since 1945. New

York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Nuxhall, Phil. Beauty in the Grove: Spring Grove Cemetery & Arboretum.

Wilmington, OH: Orange Frazer Press, 2010.

Oakes, Lorna. Pyramids & Tombs of Ancient Egypt: An In Depth Guide to the

Burial Sites of an Ancient Civilization. West Sussex, UK: Southwater, 2010.

Orsillo, Stephen. Ol’ Boston Burial Grounds In Black & White. Bonito Springs, FL:

SAO Photo, 2009.

Parzych, Cynthia. Arlington National Cemetery: A Guided Tour Through History.

Guildford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 2009.

Pederson, Jane Hjarl. Cultural Interactions and Social Strategies on the Pontic

Shores: Burial Customs in the Northern Black Sea Area c.550-270 BC.

Black Sea Studies. Copenhagen, Denmark. Aarhus University Press, 2010.

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Pelletier, Jean Yves. Le cimetière Notre-Dame d’Ottawa: cimitière historique

d’importance national créé en 1872. Quebec: Éditions GID, 2009.

Pettitt, Paul. The Palaeolithic Origins of Human Burial. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Phillips, Ted Ashton, Jr. City of the Silent: The Charlestonians of Magnolia

Cemetery. Charleston: University of South Carolina Press, 2010.

Pierard, Marie-Laure. Le Cimetière Montparnasse: Son Histoire, Ses Promenades,

Ses Secrets. N.p.: De Borée, 2009.

Place Apart: A Search for the Pioneer Cemeteries of the Lower Gatineau Valley:

A Brief History of Traditional Cemeteries from Hull to Lac Ste-Marie,

Quebec. Gatineau Valley, Quebec: Gatineau Valley Historical Society,

2009.

Poole, Robert M. On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery.

New York: Walker & Company, 2009.

Powers-Douglas, Minda. Chippiannock Cemetery [Rock Island, Ill.]. Images of

America. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2010.

Propst, Matthew, and Susan Varner Houck. Savannah Cemeteries. Atglen, PA:

Schiffer Publishing, 2009.

Raymo, Elaine Walters. Detroit’s Holy Cross Cemetery. Images of America.

Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2009.

Reardon, Wendy J. The Deaths of the Popes: Comprehensive Accounts, Including

Funerals, Burial Places and Epitaphs. Jefferson, NC: McFarland &

Company, 2010.

Reyher, Ken. Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death: Death & Dying in Early

Western Colorado. Lake City, CO: Western Reflections Pub., 2009.

Rice, Alan. Creating Memorials, Building Identities: The Politics of Memory in the

Black Atlantic. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2010.

Richards, Janet. Society and Death in Ancient Egypt: Mortuary Landscapes of the

Middle Kingdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Russo, Edward J., et al. Oak Ridge Cemetery [Springfield, Ill.]. Images of America.

Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2009.

Rylke, Jan, and Malgorzata Kczynska. Green Worlds: Monumental Cultural

Landscape, Parks, Gardens, Cemeteries and Other Forms of Designed

Green Spaces: Their Protection, Conservation, Restoration and Public

Promotion. Warsaw, Poland: Warsaw University of Life Sciences Press, 2009.

The Year’s Work

163

Sammarco, Anthony Mitchell. Forest Hills Cemetery [MA]. Images of America.

Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2009.

Sayer, Duncan. Ethics and Burial Archaeology. Debates in Archaeology. London:

Duckworth Publishers, 2010.

Scott, Michael. The Ypres Salient: A Guide To The Cemeteries And Memorials Of

The Salient. Naval and Military Press, 2009.

Scull, Christopher. Early Medieval (Late 5th-Early 8th Centuries AD) Cemeteries at

Boss Hall and Buttermarket, Ipswich, Suffolk. Society for Medieval

Archaeology Monograph. London: Maney Publishing, 2009.

Seeman, Erik R. Death in the New World: Cross-Cultural Encounters, 1492-1800.

Early American Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,

2010.

Segal, Joshua L. The Jewish Cemeteries of New Hampshire. Nashua, NH: Jewish

Cemetery Publishing LLC, 2010. ____________. For an Eternal Memory: Ordinary and Unusual Jewish Cemetery

Monuments and How to Create Them. Nashua, NH: Jewish Cemetery

Publishing LLC, 2009.

Smith, R. Angus K. Mochlos IIB: Period IV. The Mycenaean Settlement and

Cemetery: The Pottery. Prehistory Monographs. Philadelphia: INSTAP

Academic Press, 2010.

Stevenson, A. Predynastic Egyptian Cemetery of El-Gerzeh: Social Identities and

Mortuary Practices Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta. Leuven, Belgium:

Peeters Publishers, 2009.

Stirland, Ann. Criminals and Paupers: The Graveyard of St. Margaret Fyebriggate

in Combusto, Norwich. Dereham, Norfolk: Norfolk Museums and

Archaeology Service, 2009.

Suchan, Laura. Memento Mori: Classifying Nineteenth Century Ontario

Gravestones. Raleigh, NC: Lulu.com, 2009.

Sullivan, Lynne P., and Robert C. Mainfort. Mississippian Mortuary Practices:

Beyond Hierarchy and the Representationist Perspective. Gainesville:

University Press of Florida, 2010.

Summers, Julie. British and Commonwealth War Cemeteries. Essex, UK: Shire

Library, 2010.

Thomson, George. Inscribed in Remembrance: Gravemarker Lettering: Form,

Function and Recording. Dublin, Ireland: Wordwell, 2009.

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Trinkley, Michael, et al. The Silence of the Dead: Giving Charleston Cemeteries a

Voice. Columbia, SC: Chicora Foundation, Inc., 2010. ____________. Preservation Assessment for Three Suwanee, Georgia Cemeteries.

Columbia, SC: Chicora Foundation, Inc., 2009.

Turner, Suzanne, and Joanne Seale Wilson. Houston’s Silent Garden: Glenwood

Cemetery, 1871-2009. Sara and John Lindsey Series in the Arts and

Humanities. College Station, TX: TAMU Press, 2010.

United States National Park Service. African Burial Ground: African Burial Ground

National Monument, New York. Washington, D.C.: National Park Service,

U.S. Department of the Interior, 2010.

Vinitzky-Seroussi, Vered. Yitzhak Rabin’s Assassination and the Dilemmas of

Commemoration. SUNY series in Anthropology and Judaic Studies.

Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009.

Vincent, W.T. In Search of Gravestones Old and Curious. London: Echo Library,

2010.

Volk, Lucia. Memorials and Martyrs in Modern Lebanon. Public Cultures of the

Middle East and North Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

2010.

Wilton, Janis. Maitland Jewish Cemetery: A Monument to Dreams and Deeds.

Maitland, N.S.W.: Maitland Regional Art Gallery, 2010.

Yorke, Trevor. Gravestones, Tombs and Memorials. England’s Living History.

Newbury, UK: Countryside Books, 2010.

Yurdan, Marilyn. Oxfordshire Graves and Gravestones. London: The History Press

Ltd, 2010.

Book Reprints Bartlett, John Russell. The Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg; With the

Proceedings at Its Consecration, at the Laying of the Corner-Stone of the

Monument, and at Its Dedication. N.p.: General Books LLC, 2010.

Bigelow, Jacob. A History of the Cemetery of Mount Auburn. N.p.: Nabu Press, 2010.

Bliss, Harry Augustus. Memorial Art, Ancient and Modern: Illustrations and

Descriptions of the World’s Most Notable Examples of Cemetery

Memorials. N.p.: Nabu Press, 2010.

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1165

Boutell, Charles. Christian Monuments in England and Wales; An Historical and

Descriptive Sketch of the Various Classes of Sepulchral Monuments

Which Have Been. 1858. N.p.: General Books LLC, 2010.

Brownlow, William R. Roma Sotterranea; Or, an Account of the Roman Catacombs,

Especially of the Cemetery of San Callisto. Vol. 1. 1879. N.p.: General

Books LLC, 2010.

Bushnell, David Ives. Native Cemeteries and Forms of Burial East of the Mississippi

(no.71). N.p.: General Books LLC, 2009.

Call, Lewis Wellington. United States Military Reservations, National Cemeteries,

and Military Parks. N.p.: Nabu Press, 2010.

Cedar Hill Cemetery. Cedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford, Connecticut, 1863-1903.

N.p.: Nabu Press, 2010.

Chapman, Silas. The Forest Home Cemetery, Milwaukee, Wis., With a Map of the

Grounds. N.p.: General Books LLC, 2010.

Croft, H.J. Guide to Kensal Green Cemetery. N.p.: Nabu Press, 2010.

Daninos, A. Sepulchral Monuments of Ancient Egypt (1908). N.p.: General Books

LLC, 2009.

Dearborn, Nathaniel. A Concise History Of, and Guide Through Mount Auburn:

With a Catalogue of Lots Laid Out in That Cemetery; a Map of the

Grounds, and Terms of Subscription, Regulations Concerning Visitors,

Interments, &c., &c. N.p.: Nabu Press, 2010.

Elliott, Huger. Memorial Art. 1923. N.p.: General Books LLC, 2010.

Fisher, Payne. The Tombes, Monuments, and Sepulchral Inscriptions, Lately

Visible in St. Pauls Cathedral, Completely Rendred in Latin and English [2

Imperf. Copies]. (1684). N.p.: Nabu Press, 2010.

Fitzgerald, Edward. A Hand Book for the Albany Rural Cemetery. N.p.: General

Books LLC, 2009.

Foster, William L. Religious Services and Address of William L. Foster: At the

Consecration Of Blossom Hill Cemetery, Concord, New Hampshire. 1860.

Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing LLC, 2010.

Graves, Frank Pierrepont. The Burial Customs of the Ancient Greeks. N.p.: Nabu

Press, 2010.

A Handbook for the Albany Rural Cemetery [NY]; With an Appendix on Emblems.

1871. N.p.: General Books LLC, 2010.

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Hartshorne, Charles Henry. An Endeavor to Classify the Sepulchral Remains in

Northamptonshire; Or, a Discourse On Funeral Monuments in That

County. N.p.: Nabu Press, 2010.

Hurst, Sidney C. The Silent Cities: An Illustrated Guide to the War Cemeteries &

Memorials To The Missing in France & Flanders, 1914-1918. London:

Methuen & Co., 2009.

Jewitt, Llewellynn Frederick William. Grave-Mounds and Their Contents: A

Manual of Archaeology, as Exemplified in the Burials of the Celtic, the

Romano-British, and the Anglo-Saxon Periods. N.p.: Nabu Press, 2010.

Justyne, William. Guide to Highgate Cemetery. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan

Library, 2009.

Loudon, John Claudius. On the Laying Out, Planting, and Managing of Cemeteries:

And on the Improvement of Churchyards. N.p.: Nabu Press, 2010.

McCandliss, Wilson. Allegheny Cemetery: Historical Account of Incidents and

Events Connected With Its Establishment, Charter and Supplemental Acts

of Legislation; Reports of 1848 and 1857; Proceedings of Corporators,

June 21, 1873; Rules, Regulations, &c.; List of Officers. N.p.: Nabu Press,

2010.

Mount Auburn Cemetery. Catalogue of the Lots in Mount Auburn Cemetery: With

Names of the Proprietors and Representatives of Deceased Proprietors; the

Charter, By-Laws, Etc. N.p.: Nabu Press, 2010.

Northcote, James Spencer. Roma Sotterrane Or an Account of the Roman

Catacombs Especially of the Cemetery of St. Callixtus. Part 2. N.p.: Nabu

Press, 2010.

O’Duffy, R.J. Historic Graves In Glasnevin Cemetery. Charleston, SC: BiblioLife, 2010.

Proceedings of the Bunker Hill Monument Association at the Annual Meeting.

N.p.: General Books LLC, 2010.

Randall-MacIver, David, and Leonard Woolley. Karanòg: The Romano-Nubian

Cemetery. N.p.: Nabu Press, 2010.

Riverside Cemetery Association. Historical Review of Riverside Cemetery

Association, Cleveland, Ohio. Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar, 2009.

Robert Clarke and Co. Cemetery: Its History and Improvements, with

Observations on Ancient and Modern Places of Sepulture. Charleston, SC:

BiblioLife, 2010.

Robinson, William. God’s Acre Beautiful; Or, the Cemeteries of the Future. 1883.

N.p.: Nabu Press, 2010.

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____________. Cremation and Urn-Burial; Or, the Cemeteries of the Future. 1889.

N.p.: General Books LLC, 2009.

Rolleston, George. Researches and Excavations Carried on in an Ancient Cemetery

at Frilford. N.p.: Nabu Press, 2010.

Rules and Regulations of the Green-Wood Cemetery [NY]. Charleston, SC:

BiblioLife, 2010.

Rules and Regulations of the Utica Cemetery Association [NY]. Charleston, SC:

BiblioBazaar, 2009.

Seager, Richard B. The Cemetery of Pachyammos, Crete. N.p.: Nabu Press, 2010.

Sherman, Conger. Guide to Laurel Hill Cemetery, near Philadelphia. 1847. N.p.:

General Books LLC, 2009.

Simon, Andreas. Chicago, the Garden City. Its Magnificent Parks, Boulevards and

Cemeteries. Together with Other Descriptive Views and Sketches. N.p.:

General Books LLC, 2010.

Smith, R.A. Smith’s Illustrated Guide to and through Laurel Hill Cemetery.

Charleston, SC: BiblioLife, 2010.

Spencer, William V. A Handbook for Passengers over the Cambridge Railroad with

a Description of Mount Auburn Cemetery. Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar,

2009.

Stanley, J.F. Concerning Memorials: Their Historic Origin and Present Day

Adaptations. 1911. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Library, 2009.

The Mission Cemetery and the Fallen Missionaries of Fuh Chau, China with an

Introduction Notice of Fuh Chau and Its Missions. 1858. Ithaca, NY:

Cornell University Library, 2009.

The Stranger’s Guide in Philadelphia and Its Environs: Including Laurel

Hill, Woodlands, Monument, Odd Fellows and Glenwood Cemeteries:

With Illustrations. N.p.: Nabu Press, 2010.

Strauch, Adolphus. Spring Grove Cemetery; Its History and Improvements, With

Observations on Ancient and Modern Places of Sepulture. N.p.: General

Books LLC, 2010.

Weaver, Sir Lawrence. Memorials & Monuments, Old and New: Two Hundred

Subjects Chosen from Seven Centuries. 1915. Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Library, 2009.

Webster, Daniel. Orations on Bunker Hill Monument: The Character of

Washington and the Landing at Plymouth. N.p.: General Books LLC,

2010.

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Articles in Scholarly Journals, Edited Collections, Etc. Adams, Richmond. “Making Biscuits in the Morning: The Evangelical Sounds and

Ambiguous Furies of Confederate War Memorials.” Arkansas Review: A

Journal of Delta Studies 40, no.3 (2009), 215-225.

“Alabama Mass Grave Hints at 1870’s Epidemic.” Medical Laboratory Observer 41,

no.5 (2009), 12.

Alon-Mozes, Tal. “The Poetics and the Politics of the Contemporary Sacred Place:

Baba Sali’s Grave Estate in Netivot, Israel.” Buildings & Landscapes:

Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 16, no.2 (2009), 73-85.

Apel, Dora. “Memorialization and Its Discontents: America’s First Lynching

Memorial.” The Mississippi Quarterly 61, no.1-2 (2010), 217-219.

Ascari, Maurizio. “‘Not in a Christian Church’: Westminster Abbey and the

Memorialisation of Byron.” The Byron Journal 37, no.2 (2009), 141-150.

Astrov, Alexander. “States of Sovereignty: “Nature,” “Emergency,” and “Exception”

in the “Bronze Soldiers” Crisis.” Russian Politics & Law 47, no.5 (2009),

66-79.

Ater, Renée. “Slavery and Its Memory in Public Monuments.” American Art 24, no.1

(2010), 20-23.

Aytberov, Temur. “The Newly Found Tomb-Stone of Sheikh Haydar the Safavid in

Dagestan.” Iran & The Caucasus 13, no.2 (2010), 281-284.

Beasley, Myron M. “Vodou, Penises and Bones Ritual Performances of Death and

Eroticism in the Cemetery and the Junk Yard of Port-au-Prince.”

Performance Research 15, no.1 (2010), 41-47.

Becker, Felicitas. “Islamic Reform and Historical Change in the Care of the Dead:

Conflicts over Funerary Practice Among Tanzanian Muslims.” Africa: The

Journal of the International African Institute 79, no.3 (2009), 416-434.

Belco, Michelle, and Brandon Rottinghaus. “The Law: Presidential Proclamation

6920: Using Executive Power to Set a New Direction for the Management

of National Monuments.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 39, no.3 (2009),

605-618.

Bishir, Catherine W. “Memorial Observances.” Southern Cultures 15, no.2 (2009),

61-85.

Branting, Steven D. “Digitizing a Heritage of Faded Memories: A Case Study on

Extending Historical Research Capabilities.” History Teacher 42, no.4

(2009), 457-475.

The Year’s Work

169

Bremner, G. Alex. “The “Great Obelisk” and Other Schemes: The Origins and

Limits of Nationalist Sentiment in the Making of the Albert Memorial.”

Nineteenth-Century Contexts 31, no.3 (2009), 225-249.

Brophy, Thomas J. “On Church Grounds: Political Funerals and the Contest to Lead

Catholic Ireland.” The Catholic Historical Review 95, no.3 (2009), 491-514.

Broughton, Trev Lynn. “The Bengal Obituary: Reading and Writing Calcutta

Graves in the Mid Nineteenth Century.” Journal of Victorian Culture 15,

no.1 (2010), 39-59.

Burg, Steven B. “The North Queen Street Cemetery and the African-American

Experience in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.” Pennsylvania History: A

Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 77, no.1 (2010), 1-36.

Calderwood, Eric. “The Living and the Dead.” American Scholar 78, no.4 (2009),

7-11.

Christys, Ann. “Communities of the Dead in Umayyad Cordoba.” Al-Masaq: Islam

& the Medieval Mediterranean 21, no.3 (2009), 289-299.

Civin, Joshua. “Civil Rights Memorials and the Geography of Memory.” Public

Historian 31, no.4 (2009), 136-138.

Clouser, Rebecca. “Remnants of Terror: Landscapes of Fear in Post-Conflict

Guatemala.” Journal of Latin American Geography 8, no.2 (2009), 7-22.

Cockerham, Paul. “‘My Body to be Buried in My Owne Monument’: The Social and

Religious Context of Co. Kilkenny Funeral Monuments, 1600-1700.”

Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Section C 109 (2009), 239-365.

Cuthbertson, Brian. “‘Symbolizing in Stone’ an Event of ‘Imperishable Importance:’

Halifax’s Memorial Tower and Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of

Representative Government.” Journal of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical

Society 12 (2009), 19-53.

Dacres, Petrina. “‘But Bogle Was a Bold Man’: Vision, History, and Power for a New

Jamaica.” Small Axe 13, no.1 (2009), 112-134.

Dalrymple, Theodore. “Death Shall Have No Dignity.” British Medical Journal 339,

no.7722 (2009), 699.

Denson, Andrew. “Gatlinburg’s Cherokee Monument: Public Memory in the

Shadow of a National Park.” Appalachian Journal 37, no.1/2 (2009/2010),

28-43.

Duffy, Dennis. “Among the Missing: Mass Death and Canadian Nationalism at the

Vimy Memorial.” Disclosure 18 (2009), 159-180.

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Fiedler, Sabine, et al. “The Effectiveness of Ground-Penetrating Radar Surveys in

the Location of Unmarked Burial Sites in Modern Cemeteries.” Journal of

Applied Geophysics 68, no.3 (2009), 380-385.

Geiser, John III. “Burials in the Tomb of the Swiss-American Society of New

Orleans.” Swiss-American Historical Society 45, no.1 (2009), 51-58.

Ghamari-Tabrizi, Behrooz. “Memory, Mourning, Memorializing.” Radical History

Review 105 (2009), 106-121.

Goodwin, George M. “The Gateway to Newport’s Jewish Cemetery.” Rhode Island

History 67, no.2 (2009), 61-74.

Green, James, and Elizabeth Jameson. “Marking Labor History on the National

Landscape: The Restored Ludlow Memorial and its Significance.”

International Labor & Working-Class History 76 (2009), 6-25.

Green, Louise, and Noëleen Murray. “Notes for a Guide to the Ossuary.” African

Studies 68, no.3 (2009), 370-386.

Hallam, Nathan. “Roger Williams National Memorial.” Public Historian 31, no.4

(2009), 103-106.

Hansen, Gregory. “‘Dipping into Southern Creativity’: Alan Jabbour on Fiddle

Tunes, Delta Blues, and Cemetery Traditions.” Arkansas Review: A Journal

of Delta Studies 40, no.3 (2009), 188-200.

Hatzopoulos, Miltiades B., and Pierre Juhel. “Four Hellenistic Funerary Stelae from

Gephyra, Macedonia.” American Journal of Archaeology 113, no.3 (2009),

423-437.

Henriot, Christian. “‘Invisible Deaths, Silent Deaths’: ‘Bodies Without Masters’ in

Republican Shanghai.” Journal of Social History 43, no.2 (2009), 407-437.

Hills, C.M., and T.C. O’Connell. “New Light on the Anglo-Saxon Succession: Two

Cemeteries and Their Dates.” Antiquity 83, no.322 (2009), 1096-1108.

Hucker, Jacqueline. “‘Battle and Burial’: Recapturing the Cultural Meaning of

Canada’s National Memorial on Vimy Ridge.” The Public Historian 31,

no.1 (2009), 89-109.

“Images of Remembrance.” International Journal of Epidemiology 39, no.1 (2010), 31.

Janoniené, Ruta. “Funeral Ceremonies at the Bernardine Church in Vilnius in the

17th to 19th Century. [Lithuanian]” Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis 54

(2009), 27-40.

Johnson, Michelle C. “Death and the Left Hand: Islam, Gender, and ‘Proper’

Mandinga Funerary Custom in Guinea-Bissau and Portugal.” African

Studies Review 52, no.2 (2009), 93-117.

The Year’s Work

171

Johnston, Russell, and Michael Ripmeester. “Awake Anon the Tales of Valour: The

Career of a War Memorial in St. Catharines, Ontario.” Canadian

Geographer 53, no.4 (2009), 404-426.

Karge, Heike. “Mediated Remembrance: Local Practices of Remembering the

Second World War in Tito’s Yugoslavia.” European Review of History 16,

no.1 (2009), 49-62.

Kazmier, Lisa. “Leading the World: The Role of Britain and the First World War in

Promoting the “Modern Cremation” Movement.” Journal of Social History

42, no.3 (2009), 557-579.

Keene, Judith. “Bodily Matters Above and Below Ground: The Treatment of

American Remains from the Korean War.” Public Historian 32, no.1

(2010), 59-78.

Klepatsky, Lev, and Andrey Surgaev. “Russian Burials in Europe.” International

Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy & International

Relations 55, no.1 (2009), 162-165.

Labno, Jeannie J. “The Polish Putto & Skull on Renaissance Funeral Monuments

to Children: Rudiments of Laughter, Grotesque Bodies & Mythic

Boundaries.” Renaissance Studies 23, no.3 (2009), 354-376.

Larsson, Marina. “A Disenfranchised Grief: Post-war Death and Memorialisation in

Australia after the First World War.” Australian Historical Studies 40, no.1

(2009), 79-95.

Lawton, Christopher R. “Constructing the Cause, Bridging the Divide: Lee’s Tomb

at Washington’s College.” Southern Cultures 15, no.2 (2009), 5-39.

Leach, S., et al. “A Lady of York: Migration, Ethnicity and Identity in Roman

Britain.” Antiquity 84, no.323 (2010), 131-145.

Leatherman, Christopher. “Chinese Mortuary Ritual in Deadwood.” South Dakota

History 39, no.4 (2009), 336-359.

Lending, Mari. “Landscape versus Museum: J.C. Dahl and the Preservation of

Norwegian Burial Mounds.” Future Anterior 6, no.1 (2009), xi-17.

Lever, Michael. “When Absence Is the Artifact: Unmarked Graves in the Jewish

Section, Melbourne General Cemetery.” International Journal of Historical

Archaeology 13, no.4 (2009), 464-487.

Levitt, Linda. “Death on Display: Reifying Stardom through Hollywood’s Dark

Tourism.” The Velvet Light Trap: A Critical Journal of Film & Television

65 (2010), 62-70.

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Love, Heather. “National Melancholy: Mourning and Opportunity in Classic

American Literature.” American Literature 81, no.1 (2009), 206-209.

Lowe, William C. “‘A Grand and Patriotic Pilgrimage”: The Iowa Civil War

Monuments Dedication Tour of 1906.” Annals of Iowa 69, no.1 (2010),

1-50.

Löwenborg, Daniel. “Landscapes of Death: GIS Modelling of a Dated Sequence

of Prehistoric Cemeteries in Västmanland, Sweden.” Antiquity 83, no.322

(2009), 1134-1143.

Luckins, Tanja. “Collecting Women’s Memories: the Australian War Memorial, the

Next of Kin and Great War Soldiers’ Diaries and Letters as Objects of

Memory in the 1920s and 1930s.” Women’s History Review 19, no.1

(2010), 21-37.

MacDonald, Douglas H., et al. “With Mica We Mourn: Fort Ancient Mortuary

Practices at Clark Rockshelter, Kentucky.” Midcontinental Journal of

Archaeology 34, no.2 (2009), 249-277.

Macleod, Jenny. ““By Scottish hands, with Scottish money, on Scottish soil”: The

Scottish National War Memorial and National Identity.” Journal of British

Studies 49, no.1 (2010), 73-96.

Matuzeviciuté, Simona, and Rimantas Jankauskas. “Possibilities and Problems

of Crypt Burial Research: The Case of Renavas Cemetery Chapel

Investigation [Lithuanian].” Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis 55 (2009),

149-163.

Mayo, James M., and Michael H. Hoeflich. “Commemorating God and Country

in American War Memorials: Symbolic Evolution and Legality.”

Environment & Behavior 42, no.3 (2010), 303-317.

Meigh-Andrews, Chris. “The Monument Project (Si Monumentum Requiris

Circumspice).” Leonardo 42, no.5 (2009), 474-475.

Middleton, Darren J.N. “Dead Serious: A Theology of Literary Pilgrimage.” Cross

Currents 59, no.3 (2009), 300-318.

Miller, Char Roone. “Aesthetic of Strength: the Air Force Memorial and Virilio’s

Last War.” Theory & Event 12, no.1 (2009), n.p.

Murray, Jennifer M. “‘Far Above Our Poor Power to Add or Detract’: National Park

Service Administration of the Gettysburg Battlefield, 1933-1938.” Civil

War History 55, no.1 (2009), 56-81.

O’Connell, Kim A. “A Monumental Task.” Preservation 61, no.4 (2009), 18-19.

The Year’s Work

173

Palmer, Scott W. “How Memory was Made: The Construction of the Memorial to

the Heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad.” Russian Review 68, no.3 (2009),

373-407.

Parker, Mike, et al. “Who Was Buried At Stonehenge?” Antiquity 83, no.319 (2009),

23-39.

Percoco, James A. “Abraham Lincoln Statues in the Hoosier State.” Indiana

Magazine of History 105, no.4 (2009), 342-364.

Pecore, John, et al. “What Happens to Cemetery Headstones?” Science Teacher 76,

no.6 (2009), 29-34.

Pershing, Linda, and Nishelle Y. Bellinger. “From Sorrow to Activism: A Father’s

Memorial to His Son Alexander Arredondo, Killed in the U.S. Occupation

of Iraq.” Journal of American Folklore 123, no.488 (2010), 179-217.

Porter, Jonathan. “‘The Past Is Present’: The Construction of Macau’s Historical

Legacy.” History & Memory 21, no.1 (2009), 63-100.

Rainville, Lynn. “Protecting Our Shared Heritage in African-American

Cemeteries.” Journal of Field Archaeology 34, no.2 (2009), 196-207.

Ryan, Mary P. “Democracy Rising: The Monuments of Baltimore, 1809-1842.”

Journal of Urban History 38, no.2 (2010), 127-150.

Roszko, Edyta. “Commemoration and the State: Memory and Legitimacy in

Vietnam.” Sojourn 25, no. 1 (2010), 1-28.

Rugg, Julie. “Houses of Life: Jewish Cemeteries of Europe.” Mortality 14, no.4

(2009), 375-376.

Sambu, Yves. “Why, When, How.” Transition 102 (2009), 12-17.

Sanders, George. “The Dismal Trade as Culture Industry.” Poetics 38, no.1 (2010),

47-68.

Sattenspiel, Lisa, and Melissa Stoops. “Gleaning Signals About the Past from

Cemetery Data.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 142, no.1

(2010), 7-21.

Sayer, Duncan. “Death and the Family.” Journal of Social Archaeology 10, no.1

(2010), 59-91. ____________. “Is There a Crisis Facing British Burial Archaeology?” Antiquity 83,

no.319 (2009), 199-205.

Schottenhammer, Angela. “A Buried Past: The Tomb Inscription (Muzhiming) and

Official Biographies of Wang Chuzhi (863-923).” Journal of the Economic

& Social History of the Orient 52, no.1 (2009), 14-56.

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Scutts, Joanna. “Battlefield Cemeteries, Pilgrimage, and Literature after the First

World War: The Burial of the Dead.” English Literature in Transition,

1880-1920 52, no.4 (2009), 387-416.

Seeman, Erik R. “Sources and Interpretations: Reassessing the “Sankofa Symbol”

in New York’s African Burial Ground.” William & Mary Quarterly 67, no.1

(2010), 101-122.

Smith, Michael. “The Church of Scotland and the Funeral Industry in Nineteenth Century Edinburgh.” Scottish Historical Review 88, no.1 (2009), 108-133.

Straczuk, J. “Entre Orthodoxie et Catholicisme: Des Cimetières Ruraux aux

Frontières de la Pologne et de la Belorussie.” Ethnologie Francaise 40, no.2

(2010), 327-338.

Struble, Eudora J., and Virginia Rimmer Herrmann. “An Eternal Feast at Sam’al:

The New Iron Age Mortuary Stele from Zincirli in Context.” Bulletin of

the American Schools of Oriental Research 356 (2009), 15-49.

Taft, Chloe. “Memorial 2.0.” American Scholar 79, no.2 (2010), 16.

Tala’I, Hassan, and Ahmad Aliyari. “Haftavan IV (Iron II) Settlement Cemetery:

NW-Iran, Azerbaijan.” Iranica Antiqua 44 (2009), 89-112.

Telle, Kari. “Spirited Places and Ritual Dynamics among Sasak Muslims on

Lombok.” Anthropological Forum 19, no.3 (2009), 289-306.

Treat, John Whittier. “Hiroshima, Ground Zero.” Publications of the Modern

Language Association of America 124, no.5 (2009), 1883-1885.

Tzortzopoulou-Gregory, Lita. “Remembering and Forgetting: The Relationship

Between Memory and the Abandonment of Graves in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Greek Cemeteries.” International Journal of

Historical Archaeology 14, no.2 (2010), 285-301.

Vanderstraeten, R. “Modes of Individualisation at Cemeteries.” Sociological

Research Online 14, no.4 (2009), n.p.

Walls, Samuel, and Howard Williams. “Death and Memory on the Home Front:

Second World War Commemoration in the South Hams, Devon.”

Cambridge Archaeological Journal 20, no.1 (2010), 49-66.

Watkins, Nicholas, et al. “The War Memorial as Healing Environment: The

Psychological Effect of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Vietnam War

Combat Veterans’ Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms.” Environment

& Behavior 42, no.3 (2010), 351-375.

Webb, Jenifer M., and David Frankel. “Exploiting a Damaged and Diminishing

Resource: Survey, Sampling and Society at a Bronze Age Cemetery

Complex in Cyprus.” Antiquity 83, no.319 (2009), 54-68.

The Year’s Work

175

Weiss, Max. “Practicing Sectarianism in Mandate Lebanon: Shi´i Cemeteries,

Religious Patrimony, and the Everyday Politics of Difference.” Journal of

Social History 43, no.3 (2010), 707-733.

Wernet, Mary Linn. “Re-Dedication Ceremony of the Bronze Tablets on the Grave

of Dr. John Sibley (1757-1837).” North Louisiana History 40, no.2/3

(2009), 127.

Westover, Paul. “William Godwin, Literary Tourism, and the Work of

Necromanticism.” Studies in Romanticism 48, no.2 (2009), 299-319.

Wilfand, Yael. “Aramaic Tombstones from Zoar and Jewish Conceptions of the

Afterlife.” Journal for the Study of Judaism: In the Persian Hellenistic &

Roman Period 40, no.4/5 (2009), 510-539.

Zigarovich, Jolene. “Preserved Remains: Embalming Practices in Eighteenth Century England.” Eighteenth-Century Life 33, no.3 (2009), 65-104.

Dissertations and Theses Ackels, Timberly A. “Lest We Forget: Exploring Collective Memory in Interwar

Britain.” M.A. Thesis, Southern Methodist University, 2009.

Anderson, Lisa M. “The Roman Military Community as Expressed in its Burial

Customs During the First to Third Centuries CE.” Ph.D. Dissertation,

Brown University, 2009.

Belli, Melia. “Royal Umbrellas of Stone: Memory, Political Propaganda, and

Public Identity in Rajput Funerary Architecture.” Ph.D. Dissertation,

University of California, Los Angeles, 2009.

Beningson, Susan L. “Shaping Sacred Space: Studies in the Ritual Architecture and

Artistic Programs of Early Buddhist Cave Temples and Their Relation to

Tombs in Fifth Century China.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University,

2009.

Bissell, Laura Jane Lindsay. “Understanding Motivation and Perception at Two

Dark Tourism Attractions in Winnipeg, MB.” M.A. Thesis, University of

Manitoba (Canada), 2009.

Britton, Lauren R. “A Biocultural Analysis of Nubian Fetal Pot Burials from Askut,

Sudan.” M.A. Thesis, University of Central Florida, 2009.

Bromberg, Amanda. “Holocaust Commemoration and the Creation of Living

Memory: How the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Contemporary Jewish

Museum, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe Assert the

Past in the Fabric of the Present.” M.A. Thesis, University of Southern

California, 2009.

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Brook, Anne Christine. “God, Grief and Community: Commemoration of the

Great War in Huddersfield, c.1914-1929.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of

Leeds (School of History), 2009.

Burritt, Nicole Jennifer. “A Study of Ethnicity in an Orthodox Christian Cemetery

in Flint, Michigan.” M.A. Thesis, Michigan State University, 2009.

Byock, Ashley M. “Embalming in Memory: Mourning, Narrativity, and

Historiography in the Nineteenth-Century United States.” Ph.D.

Dissertation, Northwestern University, 2008.

Chowritmootoo, Michan. “So Their Remains May Rest: Cherokee Death Rituals

and Repatriation.” M.A. Thesis, Texas Woman’s University, 2009.

Clayton, Sarah C. “Ritual Diversity and Social Identities: A Study of Mortuary

Behaviors at Teotihuacan.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Arizona State University,

2009.

David, Margaret L. “Excavation, Analysis and Reburial of the Historical Junkin Yost Cemetery from the Village of Indian Hill, Ohio.” M.A. Thesis, San

Diego State University, 2010.

DeGroot, Jocelyn M. “Reconnecting with the Dead via Facebook: Examining

Transcorporeal Communication as a Way to Maintain Relationships.”

Ph.D. Dissertation, Ohio University, 2009.

Dillane, Jeffrey Bryan. “Visibility Analysis of the Rice Lake Burial Mounds and

Related Sites.” M.A. Thesis, Trend University (Canada), 2010.

Dixon, Seth. “Symbolic Landscapes of Identity: Monumentality, Modernity

and Memory on Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma.” Ph.D. Dissertation,

The Pennsylvania State University, 2009.

Fields, Alison. “False Closure: Narratives of Trauma, Healing, and American

Nationhood.” Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Mexico, 2009.

Frost, R. Jeffrey. “The Ancestors Above, The People Below: Cemeteries, Landscape

and Dual Organization in Late Pre-Columbian Costa Rica.” Ph.D.

Dissertation, The University of Wisconsin – Madison, 2009.

Giguere, Joy M. ““The Dead Shall Be Raised”: The Egyptian Revival and 19th

Century American Commemorative Culture.” Ph.D. Dissertation, The

University of Maine, 2009.

Gonzales, Marisa. “The Green Burial Movement: Reworking the Relationship

Between Death and Society.” M.A. Thesis, Texas Woman’s University, 2009.

Graves, Karen Elizabeth. “Social Networking Sites and Grief: An Exploratory

Investigation of Potential Benefits.” Psy.D. Dissertation, Indiana University

of Pennsylvania, 2009.

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177

Harris, Daniel C. “Ziarah in the Javanese Context.” M.A. Thesis, Northern Illinois

University, 2009.

Hsu, Melanie V. “Continuing Bonds: Expressions in Pet Bereavement.” Ph.D.

Dissertation, Palo Alto University, 2009.

Jahnke, Lori M. “Human Biological Variation and Cemetery Distribution in the

Huaura Valley, Peru.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Tulane University, 2009.

Jensen, Anne M. “Nuvuk, Point Barrow, Alaska: The Thule Cemetery and Ipiutak

Occupation.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Bryn Mawr College, 2009.

Kahn, Timothy A. “Public Monuments and the Development of Siamese

Nationalism, 1908-1945.” B.A. Honors Thesis, Bucknell University, 2010.

Kollar, Sarah Elizabeth. “A Condition Assessment of the Old Island at Magnolia

Cemetery, Charleston, South Carolina.” M.S. Thesis, Clemson University,

2009.

Maher, Ruth Ann. “Landscapes of Life and Death: Social Dimensions of a Perceived

Landscape in Viking Age Iceland.” Ph.D. Dissertation, City University of

New York, 2009.

Marafioti, Nicole. “The Politics of Royal Burial in Late Anglo-Saxon England.”

Ph.D. Dissertation, Cornell University, 2009.

Martin, Michael S. “Imaginative Thanatopsis: Death and the 19th-Century

American Subject.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Temple University, 2009.

McKinney, Stephanie L. “Speaking of the Dead: Reconstructing Identity in Post Genocide Rwanda.” Ph.D. Dissertation, The Claremont Graduate

University, 2009.

Miller, Roy Don. “Si Monumentum Requiris Circumspice: The Art of Public

Commemoration in Republican Rome.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of

Newcastle upon Tyne, 2009.

Minkin, Shane Elizabeth. “In Life As In Death: The Port, Foreign Charities,

Hospitals and Cemeteries in Alexandria, Egypt, 1865-1914.” Ph.D.

Dissertation, New York University, 2009.

Mullane, Elizabeth Brownell. “Megaliths, Mounds, and Monuments: Applying Self Organizing Theory to Ancient Human Systems.” Ph.D. Dissertation,

University of California, Los Angeles, 2009.

Robinson, Helen Alexandra. “Remembering the Past, Thinking of the Present:

Historic Commemorations in New Zealand and Northern Ireland, 1940 1990.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Auckland, 2009.

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Rodate, Marisol E. “The Ambition, Cultivation and Display of Colonial Power: The

Victoria Memorial.” M.A. Thesis, California State University, Long Beach,

2009.

Rothman, Anna Leah. “Monuments to Empire: The Fate of British Cemeteries in

India Since Independence.” Senior Honors Thesis, Brandeis University,

2009.

Salyers, Abbie Lynn. “The Internment of Memory: Forgetting and Remembering

the Japanese American World War II Experience.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Rice

University, 2009.

Schurtz, Christopher Bradley. “Lest We Forget: Commemoration of the Bataan

Death March in New Mexico.” M.A. Thesis, New Mexico State University,

2009.

Ting, Elle Kwok-Yin. “Pax Americana: September 11 Memorialization and Nation Building Mythologies.” PhD. Dissertation, The University of Western

Ontario (Canada), 2009.

Widrich, Mechtild. “Performative Monuments: Public Art, Commemoration,

and History in Postwar Europe.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Massachusetts

Institute of Technology, 2009.

Xue, Lei. “The Elusive Crane: Memory, Metaphor and a Stone Monument from

Sixth Century China.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 2009.

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CONTRIBUTORS Markers XXVII RON ANTHONY, Wood Scientist for Anthony & Associates Inc., focuses on the application of innovative inspection technologies for assessment of timber structures and forensic investigations on woo-related failures.

Mr. Anthony has authored approximately 100 publications and is the 2002 recipient of the James Marston Fitch Foundation Grant for his approach to evaluating wood in historic buildings.

KENT COUPÉ is a history major at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. In 2009-10 he was an exchange student in Leiden in the Netherlands, and has recently been photographing early Jewish gravestones in London, Hamburg, and Amsterdam’s famous Beth Haim cemetery at Ouderkerk-on-the-Amstel.

He is the recipient of a Ruby Grant from Reed College that provided salary and travel money to photograph and analyze Curaçao’s cemeteries. He plans to pursue graduate studies in Dutch or Dutch colonial history.

BOB (ROBERT W.) DRINKWATER, an historical archaeologist, holds an M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

For much of the past forty years, he has been recording, photographing, and occasionally reporting on the eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century gravestones and stonecutters of western Massachusetts. Bob is a charter member and past president of AGS, and currently serves on the AGS Board of Trustees. He currently offers two Gravestone Studies workshops at Greenfield Community College.

KIM DUGAN, Wood Specialist for Anthony & Associates, has a M.A. in Anthropology with an emphasis in Historic Archaeology. She is a project director for preservation projects that have required historical and archaeological surveys, archival research, site evaluations and wood condition surveys. In 2010, she was selected for the 14th International Course on Wood Conservation Technology held in Oslo, Norway.

BRUCE S. ELLIOTT is a graduate of the Centre for English Local History at the University of Leicester (UK) and of Carleton University in Ottawa,

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Canada, where he is currently a professor of history, teaching a seminar on gravestones and cemeteries as well as courses on 19th century immigration history and urban neighborhoods. His activities in heritage have been recognized by awards from the American Association for State and Local History, the Ontario Heritage Trust, and the Ontario Genealogical Society.

He has spoken at AGS conferences on gravestones of Bermuda, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, and in 2010 organized a discussion panel on teaching gravestones and cemeteries in universities and colleges. The paper in this issue of Markers arises from a larger project on the transition of gravestone production from craft to industry.

LAURA ARNOLD LEIBMAN is a Professor of English and Humanities at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of Indian Converts (U. Mass. Press, 2008) and the “Indian Converts Collection” http://cdm. reed.edu/cdm4/indianconverts/, which is a digitized archive containing gravestone images from a variety of ethnic groups from throughout New England. Her most recent book, Friendly Piranhas and Other Myths of First American Jews, analyzes material culture from the Jewish Atlantic World (Vallentine Mitchell Press, forthcoming). This book will be accompanied by a digital archive of several thousand images of gravestones from early Jewish cemeteries from Amsterdam, Hamburg, London, the Caribbean, and port towns on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. She currently writes two blogs that deal with gravestones: http://travelsjewishhistory.blogspot.com/ and http://colonialgyrabbit.blogspot.com/.

JOY M. GIGUERE, Instructor of History at Ivy Tech Community College in Fort Wayne, Indiana, has been a member of AGS since 2005 and has presented regularly at the annual AGS conference, in addition to presentations at the national Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association annual meeting, and the Social Science History Association annual meeting. Her article, “Virtuous Women, Useful Men, & Lovely Children: Epitaph Language and the Construction of Gender and Social Status in Cumberland County, Maine, 1720-1820” was published in Markers XXIV (2007). She received her PhD in History from the University of Maine in 2009.

JUNE HADDEN HOBBS, the editor of Markers, is Professor of English at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, where she serves as chair of the Department of English Language and Literature, Director of Undergraduate Research, and chair of the faculty. She teaches courses in American Studies, composition, and rhetoric as well as an honors seminar called Death in American Culture. She has published articles on gravestone iconography and the connections between gravestone art and epitaphs and other forms of literature in Markers, Studies in the Literary Imagination, and The Southern Quarterly. Hobbs has also published an

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article on typology in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead as well as a book and several articles on American hymnody. A collaborative article written with C. Michael Hawn, “‘Thy Love . . . Hath Broken Every Barrier Down’: The Rhetoric of Intimacy in Nineteenth-Century British and American Women’s Hymns,” will appear soon in an anthology titled Music and Theology in Nineteenth-Century Britain.

VINCENT F. LUTI has been a member of A.G.S. since its founding. He has been an A.G.S. conference coordinator, given many papers, and led conference tours in Rhode Island and Massachusetts Some of his research on eighteenth-century gravestone carvers of Rhode Island and Bristol County, Massachusetts, has appeared in Markers. Mallet and Chisel, a book on eighteenth-century gravestone carvers in Newport, Rhode Island, was published in 2002, and another is in the works on eighteenth-century carvers of the Taunton River Basin, Massachusetts. He is a recipient of the Harriette M. Forbes Award. He retired from the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth in 1996 and lives in Westport, Mass.

JOHN MARTINE is 47 and lives and works in the Chicago area. He has been a member of the Association for Gravestone Studies since 2001. His interest in gravemarkers began through visiting cemeteries as historical sites on childhood vacations with his parent. He later began to see them not only as memorialization but as an art form, though now he kind of looks at them as photo subjects as he plays with cameras a lot.