Cemeteries in American History

How does our treatment of the dead reflect society?

Teaching American History February 2014 Cynthia Williams Resor What do you know about cemeteries? • Can you: – Name a “style” of cemetery? – List 3 symbols commonly used on tombstones and what they symbolize? – Name who owns the cemetery where your family members are buried? – Quote the cost of a typical funeral?

– Quote the cost of a cemetery Palm – Roman’s used palm fronds as a lot? symbol of victory; Christians adopted the symbol to mean victory over death Lancaster Cemetery , Ky. • $8,000 - $10,000 - typical traditional funeral service will cost the average family – casket – $2,300 – funeral director’s basic services fee – $1,500 – embalming and body preparation – $600 – funeral ceremony and viewing – $1,000 – miscellaneous (hearse, death certificates, obituary, etc.) – $600 – grave space – $1,000 – cost to dig the grave ( sometimes called the open/close fee) – $1,000 – Headstone – $2,000 – Grave Marker – $1,000

150,000 separate burial grounds, covering around 2 million acres, in USA 1. Churchyards 2. denominational graveyards 3. municipal burying grounds 4. New Orleans 5. farm and family 6. western frontier 7. Native American 8. Rural cemetery movement 9. Lawn-Park Cemeteries 10. Memorial Parks 11. Natural Burial 12. Military cemeteries – at home and abroad 13. Membership based – fraternal, etc 14. Communities of exclusion Palm – Roman’s used palm fronds as a Potters field symbol of victory; Christians adopted Mass graves the symbol to mean victory over death 15. pet cemeteries Lancaster Cemetery , Ky. 16. ship and automobile graveyards

KY law related to cemeteries • 381.697 Cemeteries maintained by legal owners. – (1) Every cemetery in Kentucky except private family cemeteries shall be maintained by its legal owner or owners, without respect to the individual owners of burial plots in the cemetery, in such a manner so as to keep the burial grounds or cemetery free of growth of weeds, free from accumulated debris, displaced tombstones, or other signs and indication of vandalism or gross neglect. • 525.105 Desecration of venerated objects, first degree. – (1) A person is guilty of desecration of venerated objects in the first degree when, other than authorized by law, he intentionally excavates or disinters human remains for the purpose of commercial sale or exploitation of the remains themselves or of objects buried contemporaneously with the remains. – (2) Desecration of venerated objects in the first degree is a Class C felony. • 525.115 Violating graves. – (1) A person is guilty of violating graves when he intentionally: – (a) Mutilates the graves, monuments, fences, shrubbery, ornaments, grounds, or buildings in or enclosing any cemetery or place of sepulture; or – (b) Violates the grave of any person by destroying, removing, or damaging the headstone or footstone, or the tomb over the enclosure protecting any grave; or – (c) Digs into or plows over or removes any ornament, shrubbery, or flower placed upon any grave or lot. – (2) The provisions of subsection (1) of this section shall not apply to ordinary maintenance and care of a cemetery nor the removal and relocation of graves pursuant to procedures authorized by and in accordance with applicable statutes. – (3) Violating graves is a Class D felony. – (4) The court shall order the defendant to restore the cemetery to its pre-damage condition. • Many more at this website – – http://louisville.edu/anthropology/faculty-and-staff/diblasi-site/kentucky-revised-statues-as- they-relate-to.html Cemeteries in the news

• 1-15-2014 • Urn containing Sigmund Freud's ashes smashed during theft attempt • Thieves apparently smashed ancient Greek vessel they were trying to steal from Golders Green crematorium in north London • http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/15/urn-sigmund-freud-ashes-smashed-theft-attempt

• 6 – 6- 2013 - Vandalism – Vandals overturned and damaged more than 200 gravestones at Richmond Cemetery sometime late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, according to Richmond police. – Assistant police chief Bob Mott said most of the vandalized gravestones were just overturned, but some were heavily damaged. – "Some of them have been actually pushed over the pedestal and are cracked or broken," he said. – The vandalism follows a similar case in 2010, when more than 100 gravestones were overturned at the cemetery, off East Main Street near downtown Richmond. • 1 – 17 – 2014 - Theft – CONROE, Texas – A trio has been charged with stealing items from more than a dozen cemeteries and one is still on the loose. – Montgomery County deputies believe the threesome swiped 13 grave markers, 144 cemetery vases, eight brass vase rings and three brass picture frames totaling nearly $57,000. • 10 – 1 – 2013 - Closure – Military cemeteries around the world housing American soldiers who died in key battles during the First and Second World Wars were temporarily closed from Tuesday due to the US government shutdown. – The move affects some 20 cemeteries in France, Belgium, Britain, Italy, Tunisia and Mexico which serve as the final resting place for troops who died in landmark campaigns such as the Normandy D-Day landings, the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) said on its website. • 2012 - (CBS News) - Corporate Greed – Problems at America's cemeteries, including exhuming bodies so plots can be resold, are raising questions about whether this part of the multibillion dollar "death-care" business needs more monitoring. 60 Minutes examines this largely unexamined industry, which in many cases is controlled by large corporations, and which consumer advocates believe may be taking advantage of people at a particularly vulnerable time in their lives - http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cemeteries-draw-complaints/ • 1-20-2014 – Preservation – A history-loving West Creek Township (Indiana_ farmer saved a 200-year-old cemetery from real estate speculators after another Lake County tax sale blunder. – John Kramer, 74, recently relinquished control of the Fuller Cemetery to township officials a year after he purchased and cared for this 1.2-acre final resting place for the area's pioneer families and its less fortunate residents.

How did I get interested in cemeteries?

• Always like to explore the cemetery at church as a kid • Good place to walk the dogs and look at the interesting names & monuments • Genealogy • Thematic instruction and place-based education – How can I connect local cemetery to wider themes in history? West Family Cemetery, Mill Springs, Wayne – Past to present connection County, KY A few sources • Cemeteries – Library of Congress Visual Sourcebooks – By Keith Eggener, 2010 – ALL the photos here - http://www.wwnorton.com/n pb/loc/cemeteries/ • The Last Great Necessity, Cemeteries in American History – by David Charles Sloane, 1991 • Stories in Stone: A Field Guide to Cemetery Symbolism and Iconography – by Douglas Keister , 2004 • Visiting cemeteries • photographs by Resor are not attributed in this PowerPoint

Anchor – symbol of hope Hebrews 6:19 Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast . . .. Highgate Cemetery – London England Angels Highgate Cemetery London England

WHY STUDY CEMETERIES??? • Vast diversity in American burial customs and burial places • 3 centuries of cemetery history in USA – And 1000s of years of burial history before the USA • Burial places reflect: – American technology – business practices • cemetery institutional structure – Before the Civil War – lot holders made more decisions about how the lot looked – After the Civil War – the formation of the cemetery landscape by lotholders, cemetery designers, and cemetery managers/owners was intricately related to the marketing and management of the cemetery. – demographics • Variation by social class, region, etc – cultural norms • Religious practice • Mourning traditions – social relationships • Role of the family members – Domination of family over the dead changes to withdrawal of family in the last 200 years • Burial of rich, middle class, poor – material culture • trends in art and design

• Tensions between – Public and private – Rich and poor – God and science – Amateur and professional • Primary source for study of history – the grounds of most cemeteries have not been redesigned – so the landscape and monuments are a primary source on how Americans of a certain time felt about death, art, nature and society

Draped Urn – very popular in 1800s – urn holds ashes (but not really because cremation was rare in 1800s drape was a symbol of the veil between earth and heaven Broken Column – end of life or a life cut short Lancaster Cemetery , Ky. European VS American burial traditions Europeans influenced but 5 primary differences: 1. who owns the cemetery? 2. who controls the remains of the dead? 3. can the cemetery be moved or developed for another purpose? 4. style of landscape? Highgate Cemetery – London England 5. burial or cremation?

European VS American burial traditions

1. Americans preferred private ownership – Europeans more likely to allow church and government to oversee the interment of the dead – When in-city churchyards were prohibited in early 1800s – Europeans usually turned to municipal government to designate the new burial places on the edges of the city (except for the British)

2. Americans preferred family control – The permanent family lot not the norm in Europe • Père Lachaise – est. outside of Paris 1804, was first Continental cemetery to allow middle-class families to purchase perpetual burial rights • Prior to this – graves were rented, typically for between 6 – 20 years, after which the remains were removed to the charnel house • Père Lachaise opened an era in which the privacy of the dead was more respected by society

Charnel house & ossuary • charnel house – a vault or building where human skeletal remains are stored – often built near churches for depositing bones that are unearthed while digging graves • ossuary • a chest, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains • frequently used where burial space is scarce • body is first buried in a temporary grave, then after some years the skeletal remains are removed and Basel's dance of death by placed in an ossuary. Jacques-Antony Chovin, 1789

Interesting but not exactly related to American history fact . . .

• The Capuchin Crypt – several tiny chapels located beneath the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini on in Rome, Italy – Contains the skeletal remains of 3,700 bodies believed to be Capuchin friars buried by their order – when the monks arrived at the church in 1631, moving from the old monastery, they brought 300 cartloads of deceased friars European VS American burial traditions

• 3. commercial activity – Lot-holders could never be sure that economic development and overcrowding would not result in the dead being moved, cemetery land being reused or underdeveloped parts being appropriated • In 1800s - American lot-holders assumed the management of cemeteries; • French lot-holders remained at the mercy of others who established the maintenance schedules, set regulations about visitors, monuments, etc • Even today – many Europeans continue to rent their family plots for a 10 to 100 year period; if the family has moved, lost touch or died out, the plot can be resold and remains removed – Europeans knew that government run cemeteries were not in the business for profit • Americans have not had the same reassurance – Since mid 1800s – many for-profit cemeteries have been founded • some offer excellent customer service; • others have defrauded customers and allowed everything to grow up

European VS American burial traditions

• 4. natural landscapes – In American cemeteries, the landscape has remained much more natural; with large natural spaces around the monuments – The European (including British) memorial has always received more attention than the surroundings with less room in between • Less space in Europe • 5. cremation – Fewer Americans are cremated – Maybe because the trauma of 2 World Wars; Europeans have stripped the death ritual of much of its emotion – Europeans more likely to cremate dead • place urns in communal storage, and add names to a book of remembrance – Catholic church prohibited cremation from 1870s to 1960s • but 20th century Europeans increasingly embraced the practice

Before late 1700s Americans buried dead in 4 types of places:

1. unorganized, isolated places – Pioneers 2. the domestic graveyard – a family plot on the farm as people settled 3. churchyards – established alongside new churches, sometimes before the church was built 4. the potter’s field – for the poor and those not accepted in other burial places – Often abandoned after a severe Vacant chair – death of a young person or child epidemic A famous song from 1861 called “The Vacant Chair” eulogizes an 18 year old killed in battle – Potter’s fields never existed for very Lancaster Cemetery , Ky. long

the potter’s field

The term comes from Matthew 27:3-27:8 in the New Testament of the Bible, in which Jewish priests take 30 pieces of silver returned by a remorseful Judas:

Then Judas, who betrayed him, seeing that he was condemned, repenting himself, brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and ancients, saying: "I have sinned in betraying innocent blood." But they said: "What is that to us? Look thou to it." And casting down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed, and went and hanged himself with a halter. But the chief priests, having taken the pieces of silver, said: "It is not lawful to put them into the corbona, because it is the price of blood." And after they had consulted together, they bought with them the potter's field, to be a burying place for strangers. For Cross and Crown – crown symbolizes this the field was called Haceldama, that is, victory; cross means Christianity the field of blood, even to this day. Together mean Christ is king Lancaster Cemetery , Ky.

Markers before c. 1700 • Wood or stone • Local stone used – slate, schist, soapstone; local artisans • Stele-shaped markers – typical from 1750 – 1830 • At first, only carvings were initials, ages, years of birth and death • Skulls and crossbones, skeletons, the death’s-head – reminded those passing by that death was inevitable – teaching that they should live piously in hopes of salvation • 1740s – started using soul-effigy

– a winged representation of the soul ascending toward heaven – Remained popular until late 1700ss – Was more optimistic, reflecting a growing belief in a greater Soul effigy, 1787 chance for salvation http://www.wwnorton.com/np • Also some portraits, hourglasses, mourners, urns on stones b/loc/cemeteries/ – Some carvers were well known and sold stones in other towns & cities • After Revolution – the soul-effigy gradually disappeared – Gravestone carving generally became more standardized and less artistic • Classical symbols – urn and willow and mourner became very popular

Winged skull; 1793 http://www.wwnorton.com/npb/loc/c emeteries/ Weeping willow and female mourner, 1882 Clasped hands – a heavenly welcome or an earthly farewell Lancaster Ky Cemetery But the old cemeteries were full. . • Trinity Church, seat of Anglican bishop in New York, used the vaults and churchyards (photo below) • Estimated that by 1800, after 100 years of use, there were the remains of over 100,000 New Yorkers • Vaults throughout the church, tunneled out from the church into the ground surrounding the building • No corpses were removed and only a few acres to use • Burials raised the level of the churchyard by several yards • By the 1800s – ground level was above the street

• In Charleston, an 1859 report said that St. Philip’s churchyard with space for approx. 2000 graves had been filled with 10,000 bodies

Overcrowding in Europe • 1780 – Parisians living in apartment buildings next to the ancient Cimetiere des Innocents heard rumbling in their basements – Soon overwhelmed by the stench rising from below – several became ill from mephitic gas – The overcrowded graveyard had broken down the basement walls and sent over 2000 partially decomposed bodies into basements – Quicklime was applied – but new they needed another solution for overcrowding • Cimetiere des Innocents (the Holy Innocents Cemetery – used since 1186 – 10% of city’s dead buried their annually – estimated that over a million bodies had been buried, decomposed and removed to the charnel house – bodies only stayed in ground a few years • French officials opened the catacombs – used as the city’s burial place from 1780s until early 1800s • 1804 – Père Lachaise opened – the FIRST “rural cemetery”

• London faced similar overcrowding • Considered lethal to the health of humans

Père Lachaise, Paris France Old cemeteries were messy, and not treated as sacred • Graves not carefully plotted, so lines not neat • Later, some were “beautified” by straightening lines of memorials and adding pathways • Few trees or shrubs because needed the space for burial • These were not the sacred, closed places that we think of today – Rarely fenced – Used for markets, fairs, meetings, walks, talks

– Grass might be grazed by animals Open book – registering the name of the deceased OR can be compared to the human heart that is open to the world and to God Lancaster Cemetery , Ky. Highgate Cemetery – London, England Opened 1839

1796 – 1855 THE LIVING AMONG THE DEAD

THE RURAL CEMETERY MOVEMENT

Why named “rural” cemetery? • Located in “rural” areas outside of major cities – Today these are urban or suburban areas due to growth • Also called Garden Cemeteries

Highgate Cemetery – London England Opened 1839 Key elements that caused the change: • Transformation began in the decades after the American Revolution – centrally located graveyards were removed to the outskirts of the growing towns • Age of independence – Americans wanted a new history, a renewed sense of identity • The dead were unprotected and moved from place to place as cities grew • People believed that the dead could threaten the living – Thought graveyards exuded gasses that caused disease • Wanted economic distinctions after death, as well as in life Dove – symbol of Holy Ghost, or purit – Wealthy wanted it shown in their Lancaster Cemetery , Ky. monuments after death

The first in the new movement • 1796 - New Haven Burying Ground established - Connecticut old cemetery was full • 3 concerns caused it to be established: – Didn’t like the insecurity of family farm burial – Epidemics every year (yellow fever) – many dead – where to put them? – Didn’t want burial on the public green • New Haven Burying Ground incorporated and located outside of town – permanence and security were primary goals (first cemetery incorporated in USA) • Cemetery belonged to the families who, through their investment in lots, joined the incorporation – A family could protect the graves of ancestors – The dead were separated from the church and the state – the family became central – 9 sections for different religious groups – Extensive family lots centered around a large monument with the family name and the smaller gravestones; hedges or fences added around the family plot – Planned using popular styles in English gardens, added trees for shade, geometric design – But didn’t immediately catch on everywhere

• New Englanders ready for a change Mount Auburn – tired of constant moving of graveyards, vandalism, abandonment and neglect founded 1831 • social changes allowed people to think differently – westward migration, new religious ideas, rise of industrial manufacturing,

• Mount Auburn organized as a voluntary association of families and individuals – A VERY dramatic & experimental change in burial customs at that time – Had always associated the church and graveyard in New England history – Organizers were afraid people wouldn’t want to change and purchase the lots – joined with the Mass. Horticultural Society (had wanted to develop a new experimental garden) to create a garden of graves – Used Père Lachaise in Paris (1804) as a model; by 1830’s a Paris tourist attraction Calla Lilly – South African calla lilly introduced in USA and Europe in late 1800s – became very popular in monuments Lancaster Cemetery , Ky. Mount Auburn Cambridge, MA - founded 1831 served the Boston area

1847

https://archive.org/stream/dearbornsguideth01dear #page/n5/mode/2up Entire Text – published 1851 Mount Auburn corporation • Mount Auburn corporation created the backdrop: • the lot holders developed the landscape – Affordable to middle class – Families were expected to decorate the grounds with plants and memorials – Family lots – 300 sq feet – enough for burial of several generations – Families eagerly purchase lots of $60 to enjoy its beauty before they needed to bury someone – Erected the family monument – hired gardeners to plant and tend their lots – economic distinctions were soon clear • Lots of curving roadways and wide pathways allowed for lots of prime lots near the path • Also sold single grade sites – markers of single lots were limited, single grave owners could not vote it the corporation • Soon received national recognition – Emily Dickenson; Ralph Waldo Emerson and many other newspapers & magazines praised it – Travelers from Europe visited it • Within 20 years –the movement spread to Atlanta, Maine, Saint Louis – Laurel Hill – Philadelphia – 1836 - – Brooklyn’s Green-Wood – 1838 – Washington DC’s Rock Creek – founded in 1719 expanded and redesigned in 1830s – Hollywood Cemetery – 1849 - Richmond, VA – Bellefontaine Cemetery – 1849 – St. Louis, MO – Forest Lawn Cemetery – 1849 - Buffalo, New York – Magnolia Cemetery – Charleston, SC - 1850 – Chicago’s Graceland – 1860

Topics: This lesson plan uses Mount Excellent Lesson Plan Auburn Cemetery as a focus on the development of new attitudes toward death, nature, and family life in the early 19th century, a time of rapidly growing urban centers and changing ideals. It can be used in U.S. history, social studies, and geography courses in units on urbanization and reform movements. Time period: Early to mid 19th century http://www.nps.gov/hi story/NR/twhp/w wwlps/lessons/84 mountauburn/84 mountauburn.ht m

Celtic Crosses Highgate Cemetery – London England Opened 1839 Symbolic of the new emerging national culture • Turned into a national movement in which Americans were concerned with: – Rural nostalgia – Americans connected it with the new Republic • Identified domestic tranquility with agriculture and horticulture – Americans had been a little slower to accept the picturesque (had plenty of natural wilderness) – But in the east, forests were cleared (so much that in eastern cities were worries of having enough firewood) – encouraging respect for the dead • Placing a grave in a garden was a major shift in attitude toward death – strengthening of family • The loss of family members and the private trauma of death became a focus of the death ritual – replacing the more open, public ritual • Offered celebration of life and death, hope for the dead, and repose for the living – the history of their communities and nation • Also a part of civic culture of the antebellum period and the association movement • Recreated “community” that had changed since small town/village life

Changing view of death • The name for a burial place even changed – Americans started using the word cemetery (from the Greek word for sleeping chamber) – Suggested that death was sleep – showing how American religion was becoming more optimistic • American Protestants shifted their views – American Evangelical Protestants moved away from Calvinism (predestination) – Began to stress good works (as a way to improve life and get to heaven) – New positive views of salvation for more people lessened the fear of Gothic Revival Monument death Highgate Cemetery – London England

Influence of Romanticism

Blocher Memorial, in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, NY Nelson Blocher of Mr. and Mrs. John Blocher died 1884 at 37 after a long illness Story – Nelson died of a broken heart because his parents wouldn’t let him marry the serving maid that he fell in love with What is Romanticism?

• an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century • peak from 1800 to 1850 • a reaction to: – the Industrial Revolution – the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment – the scientific rationalization of nature • romantic Gothic literature- American Examples – Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) and Rip Van Winkle (1819) – the Leatherstocking Tales (1827-1841)of James Fenimore Cooper – Edgar Allan Poe – Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850) – Emily Dickinson – Herman Melville Moby-Dick (1851)

• Romanticism – emphasis on tragic death, Romanticism the elegy and the boundary between life and death • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - 1774 The and Dying Sorrows of Young Werther • English - William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley • Emphasis on children’s graves – Dying sinless was more praiseworthy that living (and sinning) • Popular literature celebrated the passing of young innocents – cult of innocents – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin • Eva - Eva falls terminally ill. Before dying, she gives a lock of her hair to each of the slaves, telling them that they must become Christians so that they may see each other in Heaven. On her deathbed, she convinces her father to free Tom, but because of circumstances the promise never materializes. – Lydia Sigourney • wrote elegies or poems for recently deceased neighbors, friends, and acquaintances. Her Lamb - Lancaster Cemetery , Ky. work is one example of Victorian-era death literature which views death as an escape to a better place, especially for children.

Idealizing death

• The dead are depicted as at peace, continuing the Romantic perception of death – Percy Bysshe Shelley • “How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep.” – Little Nell from Dicken’s The Old Curiosity Shop • “ She was dead. No sleep so beautiful and calm, so free from trace of pain, so fair to look upon . . . . .” Charlotte Canda (1828–1845) “cult of the innocents” • Her story and the creation of her monument is a true Victorian drama – Charlotte was the only daughter of Charles Canda, a Frenchman who had served as an officer in Napoleon’s Army and later emigrated to America. – On Charlotte’s 17th birthday, as she was returning home from her party in a storm, she was thrown from a carriage when the horses bolted. She died in her parents’ arms shortly after the accident. – Charlotte had been designing a monument for her recently deceased aunt and had sketched the ideas for it on paper • Her father adapted the design concept and personalized it for Charlotte by adding her initials, musical and drawing instruments, books, sculptures of her pet parrots and other symbolic details. The concept featured a niche containing a portrait statue of Charlotte with a star above her head symbolizing immortal life. • The Canda family, sparing no expense, commissioned John Frazee, a noted New York architect and marble carver • Charlotte, a Catholic, having first been buried at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Prince and Mott Streets, was reinterred on consecrated ground at Green-Wood on April 29, 1848 – Charles Albert Jarrett de la Marie was a French nobleman who was Charlotte Canda’s fiancé. One year after her death he took his own life out of the grief of losing Charlotte. He is buried in the adjacent plot marked by an elegant headstone bearing his coat of arms.

Charlotte Canda’s Monument in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York

• http://www.green- wood.com/2010/charlotte-canda/ • Read about the restoration of the monument Romantic influence in landscape architecture • The informal, natural, romantic, picturesque • The Gothic, English cottage, Swiss chalet and other rustic styles – Curving streets or paths, informal or picturesque plantings, rustic gates and out buildings, irregular pools, quaint bridges, grottos, etc. – Cemetery design used it first, which influenced the movement for public parks and the design of public parks, later applied to designs of suburban communities • • Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) – Designer of New York City’s Central Park – didn’t like the rural cemeteries – Said they were a “constant resort to pleasure seekers, travelers, promenaders, and loungers” and refused to design new ones – Instead designed essentially same landscapes as parks, without graves – Ashland Park in Lexington, KY designed by Olmsted Birth of “landscaping”

• gates that established a boundary between worlds of living and dead – Cast iron or stone gates of a Gothic or Egyptian motif (like the monuments, reflected the contemporary styles in architecture) • Wanted visitor to experience the opposite of the urban, commercial life – Very large grounds with hills, valleys, winding, curving roads, lakes, streams • Influenced city park planning

Gates of Green-Wood, Brooklyn, New York Rural Cemetery Monuments Highgate Cemetery – London England Opened 1839 • Shift away from religious to more ecumenical, individualistic, symbols of nature and hope and immortality • Statues of Faith, holding anchors of Hope, stood on pedestals decorated with ornaments of ivy (memory), poppy (sleep), oak (immortality) and the acorn (life) • Influenced by: – neo-classical styles (urns) – Egyptiana

• Symbolic language so complex – had to have guide books to explain it – American eagle – eternal vigilance and universal liberty Above – old style flat – Full blow rose – prime of life monument Right – new 3 dimensional, – 3 dimensional monuments (not flat symbolic style with full blow tombstone) with decorative carving, rose – symbol of prime of life sentimental statuary (ex – angels) Highgate Cemetery – London – Popular monuments were copied England

Egyptiana • Napoleon’s 1798-99 intrusions into Egypt, followed by the British presence in Egypt inspired the Egyptian Revival Period – Egyptian archeological items brought to England and the British Museum – Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778 – 1823) a circus strong man turned tomb raider – Egyptiana VERY popular - offered great potential for memorial art

Obelisks Top - Lancaster Cemetery , Ky. Right – Tuttle Chapel Cemetery, Wayne County, Ky Egyptian Avenue Egyptian Avenue – a street of the dead Excavated 12 feet into the steepest part of the hillside Dead were interred in a line of 16 family vaults Each vault brick lines –with shelves for 12 coffins Inverted torch on doors – symbol of life extinguished

Highgate Cemetery – London England Cedar of Lebanon already 150 years old when cemetery was established Made 20 catacombs around the tree, each with an Egyptian style pediment So popular that an outer circle of 16 more were constructed facing the circle – 40 years later Highgate Cemetery – London England Connecting with America’s past in 19th century cemeteries

Tree – part of the Victorian Rusticity movement; especially popular between 1880s – 1905 Could even be ordered from Sears and Robuck Possible symbols -symbol of life -ivy on the tree trunk, the deceased was the head of the family -When the deceased individual was a young person, the stump or cut tree symbolizes a life cut short Lancaster Cemetery , Ky. Very popular to honor local Connecting with “heroes” – Honored those that died in America’s past wars – Famous local figures – Local pioneers Remains of many local important people were moved from family cemeteries or churchyards and moved; give more impressive monuments – Some included Native Americans Forest Lawn – Buffalo (RIGHT) – Senecan political and military leader Red Jacket

– Buffalo Historical Society. Unveiling took place on June 22, 1892 – had an elaborate ceremony attended by hundreds of people Victorian Cult of Mourning • March 1861 – Queen Victoria’s mother died • December 1861 – Prince Albert suddenly dies (probably typhoid) • Dozens of formal customs had to be followed in upper and middle classes (England and USA)

19th century decoration made from hair of loved one – Fort Harrod Museum, Harrodsburg KY “The Good Death” • 19th century concept how one should die – Core of Christian practice – “ars moriendi” - ("The Art of Dying") • dying was an art there were provided “rules” of conduct • Based on Latin texts from 1415 and 1450 – advice on the protocols and procedures of a good death, explaining how to "die well" according to Christian precepts of the late Middle Ages – Inspired by Black Death 60 years earlier and social upheavals of the 15th century – translated into most West European languages – 1651 – Jeremy Taylor (London) The Rule and Exercise of Holy Dying • revision of the originally Catholic version – established the genre in Protestantism • In 19th century - concept of “the good death” published in: – American Sunday School Union tracts – Popular heath books – Popular literature – Dickens’s Little Nell, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Eva – Theme of Civil War songs, stories, and poetry

Elements of “The Good Death” • expected part of middle-class behavior in North and South • How one died epitomized a life already lead and predicted the quality of life everlasting – Dying person was brave, accepted death – Dying among family was essential • kin performed essential rituals • Family should be assembled at the deathbed • Relatives would show concern and comfort the dying • Family members could assess the spiritual condition of the soul and hear the last life-defining words – Last words very important • believed to be the truth because a person wouldn’t lie before meeting his maker • Last words were lessons to those around the deathbed.

Changes in Cemeteries – 1850s

• By opening of Civil War – rural cemeteries throughout USA • New generation of landscape designers wanted a simpler and cleaner landscape • AND • Americans began to retreat from their close relationship with death

Grave of Karl Marx - 1818 –1883 Highgate Cemetery – London England

Decline of rural cemeteries

• Rural cemeteries were being closed in by growing cities – faced vandalism, abandonment, overcrowding • Families choose the newer styles of cemeteries – Less profit, less maintenance in rural cemetery • Most cemeteries were professionalized – Used larger work crews, lawn mowers, trucks, new technology

Commercialization of the Cemetery 1855 – 1917

Family monuments with smaller markers for family members Lancaster Cemetery , Ky. The Pastoral or Land Park Cemetery

• Critics thought rural cemeteries had become crowded and cluttered • One of the first pastoral or land park cemeteries established at Spring Grove in Cincinnati – Adolph Strauch – landscape gardener – began in 1855 – He limited the size of monuments, thinned the tree and shrubs and opened up the cemetery landscape – Strauch said the forest of obelisks, Gothic-style mausoleums and other large monuments destroyed the unity of art and nature; wanted only to use the classical style of monuments

• Immediate success and copied nationwide but also resisted by lot-holders who wanted to decide what to do with their lot • Important in commercial cemetery development AND in the profession of landscape architecture • By 1900 – Strauch recognized as the progenitor of the modern cemetery and the leader in the professionalization of cemetery management – Strauch 1859 – new position of “superintendent of the grounds and landscape gardener” created by the board of directors

Parkomania

• Cemetery design had an impact on city park design • 1858 – Olmsted and Vaux design was accepted by New York City for the new Central Park – Within a decade – Philadelphia, Baltimore, Brooklyn, Hartford and Detroit started park development • Suburban neighborhoods followed the model – Ashland Park – Lexington KY Lilly - purity – casting off earthly things and attaining heavenly qualities Or symbol of chastity Lancaster Cemetery , Ky. Why did professionalization of cemeteries (and death) occur? • Society become more secularized – threatened the sentimental vision of the afterlife and cause a greater fear of death • Americans began to rely on others to tend the dying (hospitals) • and care for the dead (funeral industry) • and maintain the grave – (commercial cemeteries) • Death became a business for making money • But some protested – encouraged cremation

Professionalization of Death

• By 1880s – more Americans dying in hospitals than at home (but many still died at home) – Hospitals, long considered places for the poor, had been upgraded to attract middle and upper classes – More private rooms, more professional nurses – Antiseptic environment understood

• First funeral homes began to appear in the 1880s – Undertakers had been providing coffins and other funeral goods for over a century – Often early undertakers were furniture makers or woodworkers – At first, undertaker laid out the body in the family’s parlor • THEN NEW DEVELOPMENTS: – Embalming became popular in Civil War – Longer distances from home to cemetery required professional transportation – Urban life mean fewer people had room in their parlors for the body – families looked to undertaker to make sure they were doing all of the “right” things • Death became more formal (identified with Victorian culture in America and England) • Still sentimental but more formal – Americans not as obsessed with death

• Change took a long time – even by the 1930s, many funerals still in the home

Vocabulary of death changed • Parlors – living rooms • Undertakers – funeral directors • Coffins – caskets Portraits of the • Dead person – deceased Above: Lancaster deceased Cemetery , Ky. Left: Highgate Cemetery, London England By 1900s – three broad categories of cemeteries • cemeteries dominated by monuments – preferred by some ethnic, racial, religious groups that liked headstones, individual markers and family monuments • rural cemeteries – Coping around graves, large individual markers, lots of plantings – Model for many small town cemeteries • lawn-park cemetery – Monuments were granite, classically style – Family monuments but individual monuments must less obvious – Order Coping around graves – Highgate Cemetery – London England Increase in Cremation

• Supporters wanted to simplify the burial process • Eliminate the sentimental atmosphere • Limit burial costs – believed expensive funerals were based on vanity and guilt, not sanctity and honor • Influenced by health movements that wanted remove decaying bodies • Cemetery redesigned to include cremated remains

Isolating Death & Selling the Cemetery 1917 – 1949

Forest Lawn Memorial Park today in Glendale, CA (near Los Angeles) Opened 1917 The Lawn Park Cemetery

• 3 influences: • 1. people tired of contemporary monument styles – Influenced by the joyful Christ – used academic and ancient art that appealed to the middle class – believer in a joyous life after death – Hubert Eaton, founder, convinced that most cemeteries were "unsightly, depressing stoneyards“ – Wanted cemetery to reflect his optimistic, Christian beliefs, "as unlike other cemeteries as sunshine is unlike darkness." • 2. development of real-estate and insurance industries that developed sales and advertising • 3. Los Angeles was a unique environment open to change – huge influence of people from other places

1917 Forest Lawn Memorial Park Los Angeles • no family monuments – only small individual monuments • Copies of famous art and memorial statutes – Today – the six Forest Lawn (southern California) cemeteries contain about 1,500 statues, about 10% of which are reproductions of famous works of art – Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper recreated in stained glass in the Memorial Court of Honor – full-sized reproductions of other Renaissance sculptures, including Michelangelo's David and Moses. • more lawn – more suburban like • joined the jobs of funeral director, cemetery, monument dealer – aggressive sales • 1920s – built the nation’s largest mausoleum – modeled after Campo Santo in Pisa, Italy • By 1929 – expanded to 200 aces, had 28,000 interments, 400 employees – Each hear had a half million visitors, 3,600 interments, 900 weddings – By 1935 – over 600 memorial parks in America – In 2009 - Michael Jackson entombed in Holly Terrace in the Great Mausoleum – Look at the modern website and price list - http://forestlawn.com/wp- content/themes/forestlawn/downloads/gplLA.pdf

1910 advertisement for West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Pennsylvania

1913, Chicago Tribune

Cemetery Landscape in 2014

• Cemeteries are not static but changing • Cemeteries are born, live and die – Just like farms, cities, suburbs, theatres, business, people • Restoration and preservation movements – 1970s – a rebirth of interest in Victorian culture inspired the preservation of the rural cemeteries • What is the future? – More are willing to cremate the dead – More vandalism – New cemeteries are not welcome neighbors • 2 million Americans die a year – where will they end up?

Learn about your local cemeteries

Taylor Family Cemetery, Nancy, Pulaski County, KY On the bluffs of the Cumberland River (Lake Cumberland Learn about the past and present of local cemeteries • Cost of burial today in your community? • Are lots available locally? • History of the local cemeteries • Who is buried in local cemeteries? • Do local cemeteries need restoration/preservaton? • Do local cemeteries need documentation (class project)? Find a cemetery http://www.imortuary.com/cemeteries/ Modern Costs http://www.findagrave.com/index.html

How did Americans deal with death during Civil War? Review – Feb. 2012

The Civil War shattered much of the sentimentalism and melancholoy that permeated mass culture in the romantic age

How did Americans deal with death during Civil War? • Federal power expanded during the Civil War to deal with these deaths – establishment of national cemeteries • Chattanooga, Stones Rivers, Knoxville created by Union generals • Antietam and Gettysburg – created by join actions of northern states – Civil War pension systems to care for the dead and the survivors Photograph from the main eastern theater of the war, Battle of Antietam, September-October 1862. Antietam, Md. Bodies of Confederate dead gathered for burial].

Gardner, Alexander, 1821-1882, photographer. http://www.loc.gov/pictu res/collection/cwp/

Gettysburg, Pa. Bodies of Federal soldiers, killed on July 1, 1863 near the McPherson woods

O'Sullivan, Timothy H., 1840-1882, photographer. http://www.loc. gov/pictures/col lection/cwp/

Dying in battle and “The Good Death”

• Worst way to die : – the unattended death as an unidentified person on a battlefield or in a hospital, far away from home and loved ones • How could “good death” happen on the battlefield? – Soldiers tried to find surrogates • Photographs of loved ones in the hands of the dead soldiers • Nurses in hospitals acted as substitute kin – A dead Yankee soldier at Gettysburg was found with a ambrotype (early photograph) of 3 children “tightly clasped in his hands” • made a sensation in newspapers, poems and songs

How did family know their solider died “the good death”? • Government did not have system of reporting casualties during the war • “News of a Good Death” – Soldier’s closest companions at the time of death wrote a letter to next of kin – the ultimate solace for family – the consoling promise of life everlasting – Camp hospital nurses and doctors often wrote the letters • Some wrote or dictated the letters as they died. • Some soldiers wrote the letters in advance and these were sent to loved ones if they died

Last Letters from soldiers

• The letters describing soldiers’ last moments on Earth are so similar, it is as if the authors had a checklist in mind. • Letter writers understood the elements of the Good Death – 1. the deceased had been conscious of his fate – 2. had demonstrated willingness to accept it – 3. had shown signs of belief in God and in his own salvation – 4 left messages and instructive exhortations for those who should have been at his side

• The Bad Death – execution for desertion or for crimes (murder, rape) – These were more frequent in the Civil War than in any American conflict before or since

Antietam, Md. Confederate dead by a fence on the Hagerstown road, 1862

Gardner, Alexander, 1821-1882, photograph er. http://www .loc.gov/pic tures/collec tion/cwp/

Soldiers became hardened to death

• “The more we get used to being killed, the better we liked it”

• Soldiers acted with as little concern as if not men but “hogs dying around them” http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/coll/item/2005688685/

City Point, Virginia. Soldier's graves near General Hospital. between 1861 and 1869 http://www.loc.gov/pictures/coll ection/cwp/

THE BURYING July 4, 1863– Battle of Gettysburg • Battle lasted 3 days – a town of 2,400 people had to deal with – 22,000 wounded AND 7,000 dead men and 3,000 dead horses

A harvest of death, Gettysburg, PA. Dead Federal soldiers on battlefield. Battle of Antietam - Sept. 17, 1862

• the bloodiest single day of combat in American history • 23,000 men dead and untold numbers of horses and mules killed or wounded • A nurse arriving 10 days later found men still scattered on the field.

• Photo - "Bloody Lane" in the sunken road after the Battle of Antietam, 1862. General D. H. Hill's Confederate troops received multiple assaults and an enfilading fire from several Union divisions leaving this bloody scene.

Who buried the dead? • Proper burial is very important – Christians believed the actual physical body will be raised again on Judgment Day • In the beginning of the war, both North and South ordered military hospitals to create burial grounds and keep careful records (1861) – Losses were expected to be small in number • several Northern states were determined to bring every slain soldier home • As late as 1863 – Gov. Andrew Gregg Curtin of Penn said that at a family’s request, the state would pay the coast of removing a body from Gettysburg for reburial within the state • Several state-aided and voluntary organizations (Penn. State Agency, Louisiana Soldiers Relief Assoc. , etc) tried to help individuals bring loved ones home. • But overwhelmed with the massive numbers of dead Who buried the dead? • Commanding officers of Union army were supposed to be responsible for burial of their soldiers who died and report that to the adjutant general – BUT there was no attention to the details of how this Bull Run, Virginia. Soldiers would actually be graves on the battlefield. carried out http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collectio n/cwp/

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Unfinished Confederate graves near the center of the battlefield. O'Sullivan, Timothy H., 1840-1882, photographer.

CREATED/PUBLISHED 1863 July. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/cw p/

• Responsibility for the dead usually fell to the victor. – Each side tried to bury and mark graves of own soldiers, but other side were often buried in mass graves. – Tried to bury near a landmark and include a headboard with name so relatives could find the body later. – Wooden panels from hardtack boxes, pieces of board from ammunition boxes and fence rails became makeshift grave markers

• Both Union and Confederate provided their own dead Dead officers officers with privileged treatment. – Bodies of Union officers packed in charcoal and sent to Washington where placed in metallic coffins and shipped to homes across the North (after Battle of Cedar Mountain -1862)

– Bodies of Confederate officers often retrieved and escorted home by the slaves who had accompanied them into service. • More than 6000 blacks traveled with Lee’s army in Penn. in 1863 • “Negro servants hunting for their masters were a feature of the landscape that night” after Gettysburg.

• In the North - Sanitary Commission – Took growing responsibilities for burials and in handling the dead. • 1,000s of volunteers, hundreds of paid agents worked to provide needed supplies and assistance to soliders • care of hospital graveyards and death registries, arranging for burials after battle, helping families in find dead loved ones and shipping home

• Adams Express Company (north) and Southern Express (south) did booming business – transporting bodies. – At beginning, bodies were shipped in wooden coffins – But weather and delays created the requirement for metal coffins “Warranted Air-tight” that could meet shipping requirements and “be placed in the Parlor without fear of any odor escaping therefrom” – but metal coffin cost as much as $50 – too much for most people.

Sanitary Commission • a private relief agency created on June 18, 1861

Washington, D.C. Group of Sanitary Commission workers at the entrance of the Home Lodge in Washington 1862-1865

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/cwp/

Embalming surgeon at work on soldier's body -Between 1860 and 1865 Unknown location.

EMBALMING THE DEAD History of embalming • In 1850s – embalming used mostly for study of anatomy and pathology – provided cadavers for dissection – But medical student deaths believed to be – caused by toxic embalming solution during dissections

• Thomas Holmes – father of modern embalming – medical student deaths caused by toxic embalming solution during dissections – Holmes discovered a “safe, nontoxic” embalming fluid that contained about 4 ounces of (arsenic) per gallon of water • immediately killed or halted the microorganisms responsible for decomposition – began selling the product - $3 per gallon • In 1861 embalmed Union Col. Elmer E. Ellsworth, friend of President and Mrs. Lincoln’s who once had served as an apprentice in Lincoln’s law office – Mrs. Lincoln that he looked “natural, as though he were only sleeping.” • Holmes accepted a commission as captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps – Embalmed first in Washington and then directly on the battlefield – fee for embalming was $50 for an officer and $25 for an enlisted man • Prices rose to $80 and $30 later in war

• Holmes’ nontoxic embalming solution was toxic and contaminates the soil in older cemeteries DR. BUNNELL'S (1823-1891) EMBALMING SHEDS NEAR FREDERICKSBURG, VIRGINIA, DECEMBER 1862

IDENTIFYING THE DEAD • Today - The government has the obligation to account for and return (dead or alive) every soldier

• US spends millions of dollars each year to find and identify the approx. 88,000 individuals still missing from WWII, Korea and Vietnam. • NOT ALWAYS THE CASE . . . . • Only with WWI did soldiers begin to wear official badges of identity – what became known as dog tags. • • Only with the Korean War did the US establish a policy for identifying and sending home the remains of every dead soldier.

• Soldiers tried to identify themselves – commercially purchased badges (right) – information in a Bible – names on bits of paper pinned to uniforms • Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was shot and was afraid he was going to die – he saved his paper ID rest of his life.

How did people learn who died in Civil War?

1. published lists (in newspapers) – but notoriously inaccurate and incomplete – Who published these lists? • the chaplain (but 1/2 of Conf and 2/5 of Union regiments had no chaplain) • the officers • Civilians representing charitable organizations

2. personal letters from dead soldier’s fiends, officers, etc. Clara Barton kept small notebooks to enter information about the families of dying soldiers so she could write the family

3. voluntary organizations – – In North – Christian Commission and the Sanitary Commission – 92,000 letters home were estimated to have been written by these groups

• Harper’s Weekly October 24, 1868 – ran a drawing of an unknown man copied from a deathbed photograph – trying to find survivors – Letters streamed into the office • some were fortune hunters wanting to claim money (soldier had $360 with him when died) • Most were just desperate to find loved one. • Soldier was never identified.

Voluntary organizations

• 1864 – Individual Relief Department – created by Christian Commission to answer inquiries – Sent out printed notebooks to volunteers in field to keep records and sent to central Relief Department – Included a place for notes on each solider to show he had died “the good death” – Also worked to preserve the identities of the dead on the battlefield • Volunteered as a graves registration service • Published lists to help people find grave of their soldier • Published 8,000 names from several Confederate prisons

Voluntary organizations Sanitary Commission – more professional – system of paid agents – Created Bureau of Vital Statistics • Wanted to apply science and efficiency – Conducted inspections of camps for hygiene – distributed extra clothing, special food for death, helped discharged soldiers get home, answered inquires about missing soldiers • 1862 – created a Hospital Directory – centralized name and condition of every soldier admitted to a Union hospital • covered all 233 army general hospitals • During the first year – 13,000 specific inquires were submitted and 9,203 were answered. – By early 1865 – more than a million names were recorded in the ledgers. – Still - many requests couldn’t be answered – 70% or requests for information were successfully answered

Fredericksburg, Va. Nurses and officers of the U.S. Sanitary Commission – May 1864

Photograph from the main eastern theater of war, Grant's Wilderness Campaign http://www.loc.gov/pi ctures/collection/coll/i tem/2005688685/

Requests for information • Letter from Susannah Hampton from New York – 2 months after Gettysburg

• “will you please to inform me at your earliest convenience whether my son Joseph H. Hampton a member of company A 72 regiment N.Y. State vols Excelsior is alive or dead if alive and wounded please be so kind as to state what his wounds are and where he lies and if cared for and if Dead Oh pray let me know it and relieve my anxiety. . . . I have heard all kinds of rumors about him and his miseries until they have left me in a state bordering on phrensy. “

• Poet Walt Whitman helped to notify kin – spent 7 or 8 hours a day in Washington DC hospital, provided personal food items – peaches, apples, socks, soap, “cheer” and wrote 100s of letters, he reported that he wrote more than a dozen a day

• One of Whitman’s letters • “Your son, Corporal Frank H. Irwin, was wounded near Fort Fisher, Virginia, March the 25, 1865 . . . He died the first of May . . . Frank had everything requisite in surgical treatment, nursing, . . . He was so good and well-behaved . . . At time he would fancy himself talking . . . . to children or such like, his relatives I suppose, and giving them good advice, . . . . He was perfectly willing to die . . . and was perfectly resign’d . . . .I do not know his past life, but I feel as if it must have been good . . . He could not be surpass’d. And now like many other noble and good men, after serving his country as a soldier, he has yielded up his young life . . . in her service.”

Confederacy had greater shortages of information • Didn’t have all of the voluntary associations that North had in pre-war years – State organizations did what work was done – Some people sent out paid agents to find their soldiers

• In South – claims for back pay as well as the Confederate funeral allowance – $45 for an officer and $10 for an enlisted man – had to be accompanied by proof of death.

Some just never knew . . .

• Some refused to believe their soldier was dead because never got information or body • the planchette (precursor of the Ouija board) became popular during the 1860s and especially in the years following the war – offered everyone the opportunity to be a medium and talk to the dead.

Clara Barton’s efforts to find the missing

• Spring 1865 – Founded the Office of Correspondence – Worked with the Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army – to serve as an information clearinghouse – Published the names submitted by those in search of kin – hoping to get news about them – Pres. Andrew Johnson agreed to subsidize the dissemination of these lists – By mid-June she had published the names of 20,000 men – By time she closed the office in 1868 – she reported that it had received and answered 68,182 letters and had secured information about 22,000 missing soldiers.

Clara Barton’s published appeal for names & information • “I appeal to you to give such facts relative to the fate of these men as you may recollect or can ascertain. They have been your comrades on march, picket or raid, or in battle, hospital, or prison; and falling there, the fact and manner of their death many be known only to you.” US. Colored Troops assigned the work of burial and reburial

Cold Harbor, Va. African Americans collecting bones of soldiers killed in the battle - FINDING THE GRAVES 1865 April.

Union efforts to find graves

• July 1865 – Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs ordered every Union commander to submit a report of “all interments registered during the war” • Became the basis for the Roll of Honor – printed in 27 installments – 8 bound volumes, as officers turned in names for next 6 years – But only listed 101,736 burials – fewer than 1/3of the total of Union fatalities • 1865 – Army started “superintending the interments of the remains of Union soldiers yet unburied and marking their burial—places for future identification”

• October 1865 – called for a survey of cemeteries contain union soldiers • U.S. Army representatives travelled all over South to find graves

– Found a mess – Vandalism – Human and natural forces – plowing, floods, ransacked, roads built over graves – Headboards destroyed – Never buried to begin with • By 1869 – had gathered 114,560 soldiers into 20 national cemeteries – each body in a separate coffin, original burial site recorded and final destination documented.

• During the war – African Americans had risked lives burying Union soldiers. – 2 miles from Savannah – in a corner of “the Negro Cemetery” were 77 graves of colored soldiers – taken care of by freed people – In Bowling Green, Ky – behind an African Colored Church – 1,134 well-tended graves of both white and black Union soldiers – a nearby black carpenter was able to provide information because he had made the coffins

U.S. Government didn’t care about Confederate dead • In South – private associations did the work – Example - Hollywood Memorial Association of the Ladies of Richmond • Women provided the leadership in these associations – The most important was the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which grew from 20,000 members in 1900 to nearly 100,000 women by 1920. First Memorial Day In North - May 3, 1868 – designated for the purpose of “strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion” In South –separate observances until after WWI – Some southern states still have a different Memorial Day - Confederate Memorial Day – Beginning in 1866, the Southern states had their own Memorial Days, ranging from April 26 to mid-June.

• The birthday of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, June 3, became a state holiday in 10 states by 1916.

Military Service Records compiled

• an extensive pension system for Union veterans made systematic and accurate data about military service necessary – Muster rolls, strength reports, hospital records, casualty lists collected – Information entered on index cards and sorted into individual soldiers’ files – Required a small army of clerk • 1893 – workers and documents housed in Ford’s Theatre – 2 floors collapsed and killed 22 employees

More ideas related to death & dying The Poisoner's Handbook

• In the early 20th century, the average American medicine cabinet was a would-be poisoner's treasure chest, with radioactive radium, thallium, and morphine in everyday products. The pace of industrial innovation increased, but the scientific knowledge to detect and prevent crimes committed with these materials lagged behind until 1918. New York City's first scientifically trained medical examiner, Charles Norris, and his chief toxicologist, Alexander Gettler, turned forensic chemistry into a formidable science and set the standards for the rest of the country. • American Experience – PBS episode – http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/introduction/poison ers-introduction/ – PLUS teacher guide - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/teachers- resources/poisoners-guide/ • Social studies + Science • Based upon this book – The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum

• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach • A Social History of Dying by Allan Kellehear