Longmeadow Cemetery, Longmeadow, MA

This week I had the privilege of speaking at the 2015 Annual Conference of the Association for Gravestone Studies in Westfield, Massachusetts, as well as attending the lectures, workshops, and tours. My paper, in case you're curious, was titled "'The Fashionable Dead': The Rise of Gentility in an American Cemetery, 1760-1900," and was about the stylistic and cultural changes between the 18th and 19th centuries as demonstrated in the gravestones of the St. George's/St. Mark's Cemetery. My paper draws upon the scholarship of James Deetz, Edwin Dethlefsen, Robert Blair St. George, and in particular that of Richard Bushman, whose book The Refinement of America provided me with the conceptual distinction between 18th-century elite gentility and the 19th-century democratized or "vernacular" gentility.

St. George's/St. Mark's has some truly extraordinary 18th-century stones, but there are only a handful of them. Imagine my delight when the first cemetery I visited on the Connecticut River Valley Sandstone tour was filled with dozens upon dozens of 18th-century sandstones, many of them far earlier than the ones in our cemetery, all arranged in neat rows stretching across the grass. The rows, of course, are a Victorian imposition, but the colonial stones are immaculately preserved. This is Longmeadow Cemetery in Longmeadow, Massachusetts.

Once you've visited quite a few cemeteries (like me), you start to get a feel for what distinguishes one from another. There is a notable tension between the homogeneity of iconography (for example, the death's head and the cherub are ubiquitous) and its differentiation between locations, carvers, and time periods. The St. George's/St. Mark's Cemetery preserves a direct stylistic link between lower New York State and the Connecticut River Valley in the form of the stones carved by Solomon Brewer, a native of the CRV who moved to the Hudson River Valley in the late 18th century. Thus the stones that I have been researching for years are the stylistic descendants of the ones pictured here, and they share many obvious connections.

Yet there are many obvious differences too, such as the Baroque flamboyance of the stones pictured above and below, which exhibit a need to occupy almost every inch of available space with ornament. This is definitely pared down in the stones of the Hudson River Valley.

 Yet the basic elements of the cherub pictured above are preserved in Solomon Brewer's New York stones: cherub face, crown, and wings. Also notable: the color of the sandstone, which is much closer to brown than the red sandstones in the St. George's/St. Mark's cemetery. Though you can't see it (the flag is blocking it in the photograph) this stone is from 1765.

 This stone dated 1790 is crowded with ornament, including heart-shaped hourglasses, a sun floating above the cherub's head, and scalloped edges around the epitaph. But note the realism of the wings relative to the Ebenezer Colton stone; they are far less stylized, perhaps hinting at an incipient neoclassicism around the turn of the century. It is also a simple rectangle, as opposed to the earlier "bedstead"-shaped stones.

There is something distinctly Egyptian about this stone dedicated to two children of Nathaniel and Jerusha Taylor in 1801; perhaps having something to do with the contemporary campaigns of Napoleon in Egypt?

I am guessing that this stone was carved by the same person or in the same workshop as the stone above (Stephen Keep). I like that so many of the cherubs in this cemetery have pupils; it gives them a liveliness that is lacking in other, pupilless cherubs.

The rooster on the stone of Naomi Ritchard, dated 1760, was used as the emblem of the 2015 AGS Conference. It's a symbol of resurrection. The other icons are the hourglass and what looks like a scythe cutting down a stalk of wheat, a symbol of a life cut short.

I'm always happy when the full epitaph is visible; in so many stones, the last lines have sunken below the ground. "Our Life is ever on the wing / And Death is ever nigh: / The moment when / our Lives begin: / We all begin to Die." Cheerful!

Check out the scythe and hourglass at the bottom, rather than the top, of this stone, as well as the hairs sketched onto the cherub's head. Also notable in the background: on the left, an amazingly preserved table grave; on the right, one of the oldest (if not the oldest) stones in the cemetery, which I unfortunately didn't get a good picture of.

Gravestone of Samuel Ely, A. B., a graduate of Yale College, who died in 1772. "He was Meek Sedate / Quiet & Religious / He bore a Lingering Sickness / With Great Patience / he had not only hope but / Even Joy in his Death." My favorite stones are those that give personal information beyond that of the basic name, dates, and ages at death.

Another great stone with a scythe, this one cutting down a flower, appropriate for a woman who died in her 29th year. An unusual aspect of this stone is that the husband of "Mrs. Eunice" is not named, but her parents are. 

"Life is a bubble quickly broke / A tale forgot as soon as spoke." Incidentally this reminds me of the Emily Dickinson poem: "A word is dead when it is said / Some say - / I say it just begins to live / That day." (Yes, I visited Amherst while I was in Massachusetts.)

The fruits dangling from the vines in the stone on the right look like hearts. The "cherub" is more like a stylized portrait of the deceased, complete with coiffed hair. 

Finally, although I am not usually such a fan of urns and willows, I like that this one is cut in sandstone. The use of sandstone in the graveyards I visited persisted long after it had ended in the Lower Hudson Valley, even into the 1860s. In the St. George's/St. Mark's Cemetery, the parishioners had moved on to marble by 1820s.