Old Burying Ground, Sturbridge, Massachusetts: Part 1

The Old Burying Ground in Sturbridge, MA, is immense and beautiful. Furthermore, it has many fascinating stones that beautifully illustrate the thesis underlying Allan Ludwig's 1966 masterpiece Graven Images: New England Stonecarving and its Symbols, 1650-1815. In fact, the burying ground wasn't established until the 1740s (and the beautiful wall around it built in the 1790s by Revolutionary War veterans), but Ludwig's work still applies. It's probably best to use his words:

It has long been assumed that the American Puritans had no religious art. We now know that the notion has no substance in fact. In little more than 165 years of hurried creation and rapid innovation the Puritans carved an art of great simplicity and power. It was an art which substituted emblems of death, symbols of the Resurrection, and iconic soul representations for the narrative and allegorical cycles we normally associate with high religious art. The imagery endured and prospered until 1815 when it finally succumbed to the neoclassical style.

With only a few minutes to spend in the cemetery, I was thrilled that I happened upon the grave of the man designated as the "first settler in this town." According to the inscription, Mr. James Deneson was born in Scotland and died May 22, 1785 at the age of 85.

Grave of James Deneson

Detail of James Deneson stone

His wife, Experience, is buried beside him. She died in 1780 at the age of 73.

Detail of Experience Deneson stone

Here is one of the earliest graves in the cemetery: that of Rhoda Rice, who died at 1749 at the age of 10. The feathers on either side of the winged cherub head show an unusual degree of plasticity. At least as far as I can tell. Most New England gravestones of this era are characterized by their linearity and abstraction.

Grave of Rhoda Rice

The grave of Captain Joseph Cheney is delightful. I love the bug eyes of the cherub head and its ... hair? Hat? ... and little detail at the neck. I also like the swirls and little flowers billowing out from beneath its wings. The poem at the bottom of the grave ("Behold my friends as you pass by ...") is a variant of the poem on the grave of my own ancestor, David Hamblin, in Winchell Mountain Cemetery in Millerton, New York. It was very popular in New England in the 18th century.

Grave of Captain Joseph Cheney

Detail of Captain Joseph Cheney stone

The grave of Captain Nathaniel Walker is somewhat of a hybrid between what had been and what was to come. It has the common early motif of the winged cherub head, but shows a new level of naturalism and neoclassical simplicity compared to the blossoming details on the earlier stones. Created in 1781, the stone is an early sign of the neoclassical revival that was to hit New England in the early 19th century. Also, this stone seems to be made out of a thin, smooth gray slate, in contrast to the red sandstone used in the graves of the Denesons and Rhoda Rice.

Detail of Captain Nathaniel Walker stone