Canongate Kirkyard, Edinburgh, Scotland

Canongate Kirkyard, located on the Royal Mile, is the final resting place of Adam Smith and Robert Fergusson, as well as many other less famous people. Above is the gravestone erected to Agnes Mouat, spouse to Robert Rutherfurd (the 18th- and 19th-century Scots were apparently fans of the gender-neutral designation "spouse"). There's a skull, a toppled hourglass, and what is presumably Agnes's spirit rising to heaven in the form of a winged head.

It's cool to visit famous people's graves, and to see the accumulation of offerings, but I like ordinary people's graves best. In Scotland, I'm most fond of graves that show the deceased's trade. The stone below was erected to the Society of Coachdrivers in Edinburgh, and shows a coach driving over a bridge. Edinburgh, of course, is a city built on hills and bridges between them.



I liked the looks of this unusual cut-out gravestone, commemorating an infant.

Adam Smith's grave.

Looking out the back of the kirkyard, you can see the Nelson Monument standing on Calton Hill.

St. Vigeans Churchyard, Angus, Scotland

I visited this little burying ground on a hill a little less than a year ago. The hill is thought to have been a Pictish religious center - several dozen Pictish stones and architectural fragments were incorporated into the 12th-century church, and have since been recovered and incorporated into the St. Vigeans Sculptured Stones Museum (which I did not get to see, unfortunately).

To me, of course, the most noteworthy aspect of the site was its friendly resident cat. Perhaps it was attracted by the fishes on one of the gravestones.

South Leith Parish Kirkyard, Edinburgh, Scotland

The South Leith Parish Kirk (or Church) has a 500-year history and some of the oldest - as well as most interesting - gravestones that I have ever seen. Like the Old Calton Burial Ground, its stones are thick and monumental. But the South Leith stones are notable for the frequency of trade symbols and other details relating to the occupation of the deceased. In contemporary graveyards in the United States, I have rarely seen occupations listed on gravestones, unless the deceased was a physician, ship's captain, clergyman, or politician. In Scotland, 18th- and 19th-century gravestones abound with bakers, masons, printers, carriage makers, etc.

The death's and cherub's heads in this cemetery are also incredibly plastic, even sculptural. Other features that are distinctive to Scottish gravestones (versus American): they use both sides of the stone (whereas Americans only use one), the stones are thick enough to allow motifs to emerge from the sides, and women are referred to by their maiden names. Men are also often referred to as "the husband of ...," a form of reference that I have never seen in the United States. Lastly, gravestones can be cumulative - i.e., space is left for additional names and details for family members who die after the stone is first erected.

One thing you may not have known about gravestones: they can provide clues as to how people spoke in the past. This stone commemorating Hannah Whyte, daughter of William Whyte, Shipmaster in Leith, who died at the age of 17, says she was "deeply regrated."

Another interesting find: this inscription featuring a poem I was always told originated in New England. Or did it? 

 

Old Calton Burial Ground, Edinburgh, Scotland

What's better than an old graveyard? One that is situated in the shadow of Arthur's Seat and the Salisbury Crags. I don't know if I ever mentioned this, but Scottish gravestones are different from American ones. They're generally bigger and thicker. They feel more architectonic and monumental. I attribute this to the fact that Scotland has extensive and easily accessible granite deposits. From a purely practical standpoint, stone was cheaper and easier to come by for Scottish people than it was for Americans of similar means.

That being said, graveyards in 18th- and 19th-century Scotland - as in the United States - represent landscapes of privilege. Old Calton Burial Ground is the final resting place of many prominent individuals, including philosopher David Hume, scientist John Playfair, and publishers William Blackwood and Archibald Constable. It is also the site of the American-Scottish Civil War Memorial, erected to Scottish soldiers who perished in the American Civil War. The "ordinary" people buried in the Old Calton Burial Ground and similar cemeteries were fairly well-to-do tradesmen, professors, and authors.

As for the motifs: the skull and crossbones is a fairly common find, and seems to have flourished roughly contemporaneously with the "death's head" in the American Northeast. However, the Scottish skull and crossbones is far less stylized than its American counterpart - perhaps attributable to Edinburgh's prominence as a center for science, medicine, and (most infamously) anatomy. In the years surrounding the Scottish Enlightenment, citizens of Edinburgh resorted to extreme measures to procure anatomical specimens for study.

8: John and Mary Green

Grave of John and Mary Green

John and Mary Green are unique among the people of the cemetery I have studied so far. While Jemima Stanton was the first immigrant I encountered, John and Mary are the first immigrant couple. John was born in England around 1814, and Mary was born in Scotland in December 1816.

When did they come to America? Well, it must have been before 1860, because that was the year that their daughter Flora died at the age of 5. She's buried in the cemetery as well, although I didn't photograph her grave.

According to the 1860 census, John and Mary's daughter Alice was born in England, while their daughter Elizabeth was born in New York. This places their date of immigration between 1847 and 1852. At this time John was working as a laborer, and Flora had recently died.

1860 US Federal Census

According to the 1870 census, John was a U.S. citizen. What about Mary? Well, no one cared. There are almost no naturalization records for women in the nineteenth century. A woman became a citizen either through her father or her husband. The status of women in the nineteenth century comes across very clearly through the records. The fact that it's so much easier to research a male ancestor than a female one says a lot by itself.

Anyway, John was working as a gardener, and he and Mary now had five children living with them: Alice, Elizabeth, John, Anna, and Selena.

1870 US Federal Census

Ten years later John, 68, was working as a laborer and Mary, 64, as a nurse. Selena, 19, was the one child still living with them.

1880 US Federal Census

John died on December 12, 1896. Four years later, Mary was living with her son, his wife of 19 years Fannie, and their daughters Mabel and Lillian in Brooklyn. According to the census Fannie was the mother of three children, two of whom were living; Mary was the mother of nine children, six of whom were living. John and Fannie had another child, Howard, who died on May 26, 1884, at the age of one year, nine months, and 15 days; he is buried in the cemetery.

1900 US Federal Census

Mary died on August 12, 1901, at the age of 84.

In 1910, John and Fannie Green had moved to Westchester and were living with their two daughters and two boarders, George and Amy Jane Knapp. John was working as a surveyor.

1910 US Federal Census

John had died by 1920, when Mabel, age 33, was listed as the head of a household that included her 30-year-old sister Lillian, her 58-year-old mother Fannie, and one boarder. Merritt Brundage (a name that combines two very common surnames in the cemetery) is listed as "father," but he's not Mabel's father. Was he her grandfather? At 86 and 79, he and his wife Alvina were old enough to be Fannie's parents.

1920 US Federal Census

Mabel and her sister were teachers at a private school. They probably knew my great-grandmother, who was born just three years after Lillian and was a teacher at the same time and lived in the same neighborhood. Martha Warren, the boarder, was a widow of 47 and a dressmaker.

The 1870 census confirms that Merritt and Alvira Brundage are Fannie's parents. Here they all are, with Fannie's brothers Gilbert and Frank and their farm laborer Daniel Marshall.

1870 US Federal Census

None of these Brundages appear in my transcription from 1914, but it's possible they were buried after that year.

In 1930, Fannie and her daughters were still living together, along with Elizabeth Richards, their 88-year-old lodger. Mabel and Lillian were still working as teachers.

1930 US Federal Census

Lastly, in the 1940 census, Fannie, Mabel, and Lillian were living in the same place, and the sisters were still working as teachers.