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Home , Bellefontaine Cemetery, Green Mount Cemetery, Mount Auburn Cemetery, Rural cemetery

pg. 36

When Mount Auburn opened in Cambridge, , in 1831, it introduced the “ movement” that included a new way of thinking about not only but the ways people used them. Two decades later, opened in St. Louis, inspired by the same model and dedicated in May 1850. (Image: Shutterstock) spring/summer ’20

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Death, Civic Pride, and Collective Memory: The Dedication of Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis

by jeffrey smith

When the Rev. Truman Marcellus Post delivered his sermon at the dedication of Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, he assured the crowd that they embarked on “no ordinary errand. No civic festivity, or literary reunion, no achievement of Commerce, or joy of Victory.” Post’s sermon was part of the festivities on May 15, 1850, to dedicate a new burial ground that would be different than any St. Louis had seen. This was the first and best example of the “rural cemetery movement” in the region, capitalizing on new thinking of cemeteries as community assets that people used as parks.

James Yeatman (1818-1901) was among the original board members of Bellefontaine Cemetery in 1849, and the one the board sent to the east coast to hire a superintendent. In August, he managed to lure Almerin Hotchkiss away from the prestigious Green-Wood Cemetery in . Hotchkiss brought his design and organizational ideas with him. (Image: Historical Society) Part of the original 138 pg. 38 acres Bellefontaine acquired from Luther Kennett included the Hempstead family rochester graveyard; Kennett Many major cities had buffalo had agreed to allow rural cemeteries by the brooklyn the Hempstead time Bellefontaine was family access to the dedicated in May 1850, as burial ground and a this map suggests. These akron turnaround when he were, not coincidentally, purchased it in 1831, also some of the and Bellefontaine fastest-growing cities created a family lot in the . consisting of the st. louis richmond (Map: Michael Thede) louisville former graveyard. It includes graves from nashville as early as the 1810s, memphis including that of fur wilmington trader . charleston (Images: Jeffrey Smith)

Bellefontaine was part of grew by five-fold over the next improvement of the city.” Being something of a revolution in three decades) created new used as a permanent burial site cemeteries that started when needs for graveyards—all those would not only not inhibit the opened people die, after all, and unlike city’s growth, as some were in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in population as we usually claiming, but would generate September 1831.1 Their founders tabulate it, cemetery population revenue and encourage growth and community leaders saw accumulates. Not only were in surrounding areas, thus them as a city amenity not unlike graveyards filling up, but cities transforming a geographic lemon parks, libraries, opera houses, like St. Louis were growing into civic lemonade.2 athenaeums, or museums. Others geographically as well, engulfing followed in other cities, responding them and thus monetizing that More importantly for our to many of the same needs and land with more profitable uses purposes here, these cemeteries cultural priorities. Paradoxically, than burying the dead. Cities were also a central piece of these “rural” cemeteries were needed burial grounds farther preserving and articulating a anything but rural in our context; outside the city to accommodate community’s collective or cultural they were almost exclusively an both the growing need for burial memory. Unlike their precursors, urban phenomenon, albeit located sites and to inter the remains of the new type of burial ground outside cities in the adjacent those being exhumed from those introduced by Mount Auburn in countryside. Within a decade or older graveyards now swallowed 1831 targeted more than the so, the remaining ten largest cities up by the city. They were generally bereaved burying loved ones; in the United States (and a number located between one and five rather, their founders designed of the smaller ones as well) had outside the city, well out of both the landscape and the similar burial sites—Laurel Hill the way of development. In fact, functions for the living to visit. in Philadelphia, Green-Wood a number of them intentionally They were not “pleasure grounds” in Brooklyn, Green Mount in used land that had little other as such, but they were places Baltimore, and Mount Hope commercial use. For example, where people could escape urban in Rochester opened such Mount Auburn took over a wooded crowding and pollution and be cemeteries by decade’s end. When area of glens and deep ravines part of a more natural setting St. Louisans received a charter called “Sweet Auburn”; the (albeit a highly mediated and from the State of Missouri for a land Simon Perkins sold the designed nature). Rural Cemetery Association proprietors of the Akron (Ohio) These cemeteries retained in early 1841, they were at the Rural Cemetery (renamed their sacred function of burial and forefront of thinking about Glendale) in 1839 was scenic with consecration, but they also served these burial sites. its deep glens but commercially the more secular function for almost worthless, and the board visitors. Since the new cemeteries Population pressures were at Hollywood Cemetery in encouraged (and even relied part of the story. Rapid growth Richmond even included the upon) visitors who may or may in American cities in the decades land’s economic inadequacy when not have had any relation to the after the ( making its case for a state charter cemetery or those buried there, became the first city with more in 1847, noting that the land was the monumentation took on a than 100,000 souls in 1820, and “wholly unsuited to the general spring/summer ’20

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Curvilinear roads that meshed with the terrain, handsome vistas, and planned landscaping were all parts of the rural cemetery movement, as is evident from these early maps of Mount Auburn in Cambridge and Laurel Hill in Philadelphia, both of which informed Hotchkiss’ design of Bellefontaine. (Images: Library of Congress)

At the dedication ceremony, Bellefontaine distributed copies of this map, drawn by noted St. Louis cartographer Julius Hutawa from the design by Superintendent Almerin Hotchkiss. Like a number of other cemeteries, Bellefontaine held an auction that afternoon in which people paid an extra premium to be the first to select the locations of their family lots. Among the road names was “The Tour,” so purchasers could be confident their family lots were in view of the main route visitors would take—and it worked; every person who bought a lot that day is either on or within view of The Tour. Hotchkiss knew the value of such a tour route from his experience at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. (Image: Missouri Historical Society)

They were not “pleasure grounds” as such, but they were places where people could escape urban crowding and pollution and be part of a more natural setting (albeit a highly mediated and designed nature). pg. 40

When former Senator Thomas Hart Benton (1782-1858) died, his grave was marked with an obelisk seen here in the distance on the right on a family lot he shared with Henry Brandt. As the Exposition approached, the State of Missouri established a Benton Monument Commission in 1902 to create and fund a more lavish granite marker for Missouri’s first senator, seen in here in the foreground. (Image: Jeffrey Smith)

Wayman Crow (1803-1885) was among the founding members of the board of Bellefontaine. While attorney James MacPherson agreed to host the first meeting of the organizers in March 1849, Crow—a prominent Whig politician and dry goods merchant—was one of the two who signed the invitation along with iron manufacturer James Harrison. Crow purchased a lot at the dedication, but a quarter-century later acquired a new one and vacated the old one for this site overlooking the . (Images: Missouri Historical Society, Jeffrey Smith) spring/summer ’20

“We know, that man is the creature of associations and excitements. . . . pg. 41 Who, that has stood by the tomb of Washington on the quiet Potomac, has not felt his heart more pure, his wishes more aspiring, his gratitude more warm, and his love of country touched by a holier flame?” , Dedication of Mount Auburn Cemetery, 1831 new kind and level of importance. through which we can understand resting here and there in obscure Before, in burying grounds the values and attitudes of the isolated tombs, undistinguished operated by churches or towns people and communities that and almost forgotten?” 6 William or even families, the markers erected, visited, and supported Wyatt echoed Walker’s view in provided a way to mark a grave them. Collective memory and his speech at the dedication of and suggest familial relations and monuments reflect the values Green Mount in July 1839 with ideas about salvation. After all, of both the creators of the his hopes that “here may be the people walking through monuments and those who interact recorded the public gratitude to a those graveyards were, by and with them, both at the time of public benefactor, and in some large, mourners at burials or creation and at every subsequent conspicuous division of these descendants of those interred. moment. Their responses may grounds, the stranger may read The demographics of visitors not be the same, but they are based the history of the statesman, the altered the thinking about on their own values and pasts. divine, the philanthropist, the monuments, gravestones, and soldier or the scholar whose deeds even the spatial arrangements of People consciously understood have improved or whose fame burials. Those markers evolved this role cemeteries played in adorned the city.” 7 That same into ways to communicate ideas reflecting cultural ideas and values year, founder about more earthly concerns such from their beginning. Speaking at John Jay Smith sent an article as social position, economic the dedication of Mount Auburn to the daily newspapers in status, and real or perceived in September of 1831, Associate Philadelphia about his having importance. Grave markers and Justice Joseph Story noted recently received the new visitor’s family monuments became larger the role of cemeteries in the guide to Mount Auburn— and more highly decorated, offering entertainment and edification some 250 pages long with sixty more information about the of all who wander their paths. engravings—observing that “thus deceased, and located in places “It should not be for the poor does a rural cemetery insure a that suggested status and purpose of gratifying our vanity double chance for good or great convenience to be viewed. or pride, that we should erect names being remembered first Despite a rhetoric of these columns, and obelisks, and on a stone tablet, and next on the monuments’ role of preserving monuments to the dead,” Story ever more enduring page.” 8 history (and to an extent they do noted, “but that we may read preserve a version of history) it thereon much of our own destiny That was the backdrop for is a highly mediated history that and duty. We know that man is the oration of the Rev. Truman reflects a kind of invention.3 That the creature of associations and Marcellus Post. The following 5 is to say, collective memory and excitements.” Others followed is an excerpted version of Post’s history are not necessarily two suit with similar sentiments speech, published by both sides of the same coin, despite almost immediately. Just four Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. the fact that the makers of them years later, Samuel Walker sought Louis newspapers, and even the believe “that they embody history, a place to collect the stone later biography of Post. This defined as objective reality, not commemorations of notable was not particularly unusual; an interpretation of a memory.” 4 figures in his booklet calling for a cemeteries commonly published Once we see them as a product rural cemetery that became Green the dedication speeches in early of a creative process rather Mount in Baltimore, thundering versions of their published rules than recording information or that “ has not been and regulations or as marketing contributing to the mourning without her great men, names documents; Mount Auburn process alone, cemeteries and that would have adorned a Roman published the proceedings of its their markers, monuments, age, in her proudest era; but dedication, complete with the , and structures take under our present system, where dedication speech of Associate on new importance as a prism are they? Who can point to the Justice of the Supreme Court narrow houses, where rest their Joseph Story. lowly heads? They are scattered to the four winds of heaven, pg. 42 Connecticut-born Truman Marcellus Post (1810-1886) was trained in both the law and theology, and became more strident in his antislavery views after the murder of Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois, in late 1837. He became pastor of Third Presbyterian Church in St. Louis in 1847, the post he held when he delivered this oration. (Image: Missouri Historical Society)

Nor Flattery soothes on our treatment of the dead. the dull cold ear of death.” A neglect of the decencies and pious proprieties of sepulture ever In no such dream of the reacts disastrously on the children of pride, but as under a manners and tastes, sentiments common doom, we come on an and morality, and, finally, on the errand of love and sorrow. We entire genius of civilization. come to consecrate a place to the sad proprieties of grief, and the But, apart from all last offices of earthly affection, philosophy, we love to linger the holy memories of the dead, around the place of our dead, and the repose of the grave— where we looked on the forms we to hallow a sanctuary for loved for the last time. Thither remembrance and love and fondly we oft return, and sorrow tears—to thoughts that walk soothes itself with its offering of “Address of again life’s pilgrimage with the tears, over their lone and lowly 9 departed, or see the faces faded and rest. We love to beautify their last Professor Post” lost from earth, brightening in the repose, as though the departed Fellow Citizens: smile of God. We come to select spirit were more quickly conscious the last home for families, and and cognizant around the spot We are come hither to-day friends, and forms we love most where the companion of its mortal on no ordinary errand. No civic dearly. Yea, to choose the place of pilgrimage awaits the resurrection, festivity, or literary reunion, no our own final rest, where memory, as though there it were still achievement of Commerce, or perchance, may drop over our sensible to the soothing charm joy of Victory, gathers us this day dust the “tribute of a tear.” of natural beauty, or the gentle amid these scenes of nature, offices of memory and love. True, this green and wooded seclusion. In doing this, and in exhibiting we cannot wake their sleep; they a care for the seemly bestowment answer us never with voice or sigh; We are come, ’tis true, to of our dead, we obey a universal still we delight to make their rest found a City—of your own feeling of humanity—a feeling beautiful—beautiful with all that emporium the shadow, the that regards the very form, nature, and all that art can give; counterpart, the home; to grow consecrated by the residence of we would strew it with flowers, with its growth, and become the soul and the memories of love, to be tended with gentle fingers, populous with its people—yet a as more than common earth. We and bedewed ever with fresh tears; city for no living men, a City of ask no more leave of Philosophy 10 we would that affection and the Dead, we found this day. for this sentiment than we do for honor should speak of them in our tears over the dead—content commemorative marble, and Not in pride come we. In no to follow the irrepressible impulse nature around should wear her vain ambition to wrestle with our of nature, an instinct of immortality benignest and loveliest aspect. mortal state, or rescue these clinging around our very clay. bodies from corruption, or our But we do know it is the highest In spite of philosophy, Nature still exclaims: “Ah! Who to names from oblivion. Too well, philosophy to follow the universal alas! we know, dumb forgetfulness a prey, and immortal voice of Nature. This pleasing anxious being Her indications, truer than all e’er resigned, Left the war “Nor storied urn, logic, always point to beneficent, precincts of the cheerful day, nor animated bust, though it may be hidden uses. Nor left one longing, lingering Back to its mansion look behind? On some fond breast the parting soul calls the fleeting breath; Moreover, observation teaches relies, Some pious drops the Nor Honor’s voice us, here, as everywhere, that closing eye requires, Even violated Nature vindicates herself from the tomb the voice of provokes the silent dust, Nature cries, Even in our ashes —a natural retribution attends 11 live their wonted fires.” spring/summer ’20

pg. 43 Posts and steps like these in Bellefontaine were intentionally designed to mirror the entrances to homes. They appear to not be present in other major urban cemeteries, suggesting that they were a product offered and created by a local stone works. (Image: Jeffrey Smith)

Natural taste and sensibility of death. Meditation flees such fitting loneliness and stillness again, plead for the rural scenes—the sanctity of private of the tomb. cemetery. A seemly and beautiful grief is outraged.13 The faces of the sepulture amid the jostle, and din, departed will not come to greet Grief for the dead, also asks and offenses of sight and sound, you, and the sensitive spirit hastes seclusion and isolation. It shuns in the tumult of the city! It is to hide its wound away from the the public walk. The stare of impossible! In the city churchyard, stare and curiosity of the passing the curious crowd oppresses, on the borders of our crowded crowd. No, not there—but in profanes, tortures it. It treads its and reeking thoroughfares, ‘mid seclusion, silence and solitude, path of sorrow with no idle gazer. the clang, and clamor, and dust, grief loves to seek the face of the It asks to love and weep alone. and the tramping of feet, and the dead, and commune with its It asks a burial place where the rattling of wheels, it seems as if memories and hopes: where landscape, with its natural variety the buried could not rest.12 We can earth, with its stilly life, where of surface, and the screen of hill, hardly disabuse the mind of the green in its time, and Spring and dale, and copse, and thicket, painful illusion, that the turmoil comes forth with its flowers may furnish separate sanctuaries of mortal life may still perturb beautiful and voiceless; and for sorrow. Our nature, too, asks a even the sleepers of the grave. Summer passes into a solemn place of final rest beside the forms The sensibilities of the mourner Sabbath glory; and pensive loved in life. . . . These sentiments are shocked by the mingling of Autumn throws its seemly shroud have, in every age, established the vulgar and profane life with of fading loveliness over the dying burial places amid the high the awe and silence of the house year; and the desolate Winter and tranquil and beautiful keeps religiously at least the places of nature. pg. 44 Health unquestionably requires the rural cemetery.

Health unquestionably passions, and quicken end requires the rural cemetery. The sympathies, and higher and “Soon the mourner shall burial place in the midst of the holier thoughts. follow the mourned, till we, city soon becomes a nuisance, and all hearts that beat for us exaling [sic] from its crowded Again, the rural cemetery, as beneath these heavens, shall graves the pestilence. From this a permanent conservatory of at last keep the long and silent consideration, as well as that of memories of the past, and the rendezvous of the grave. Yea, taste, either by custom or express attractor of the living within I see the endless succession of legislation, burials in the city were the sphere of their influence, is the future hastening on, as the universally prohibited by the a great interest of civilization; many waters of yonder mighty States of antiquity . . . . Maladies a perpetuator of social life and river, till the seasons weary in 15 the most dreadful to which man order. It binds the present to the their round, and the sun grows is liable have come forth from the past by the ties of reverent love weary in the sky, and time shallow and crowded graves to and sorrow. It gives the virtue and itself is sere and deathlike old. avenge the unseemly bestowment reason of the departed perpetual I see the world of Life itself of the dead.14 utterance on the ear of life. A passing, and Death’s shadow cemetery is a great picture gallery falls over all. But Death . . . But, far beyond the hygienic of the loved and honored dead. himself shall perish in that or aesthetic, the moral uses of the You walk in it as in a Pantheon of hour. The great Victor of rural cemetery claim our regard. historic virtues and fames. The Death shall summon the pale wise, the gifted, the eloquent, prisoners of the grave, and To make the place of the dead the good, the heroic, and the they shall come forth; and beautiful and attractive, is wise loved, look forth upon you from then, though voice of earth’s for man. The amenity that lures their rest, and the power of their memory may have perished life often with the shadow of the thought is upon your soul. That for ages, though the rock-hewn tomb, purifies, ennobles, and thought, in such scenes, preserves, monument may have hallows it. The tomb, the great not chains and enslaves order. crumbled long cycles ago, still refiner and chastener of life, as a record, written on no earthly a beneficent remembrancer and The rural cemetery, then, marble, waits us in the educator—the perpetuator of the demanded by natural taste and for great doom, and our mortal discipline of sorrow, without its its moral uses, we may regard as works follow us there.”— pang—the admonisher of the true almost a necessity of civilization; Epitaph, Truman Marcellus and enduring in our being—it is and we feel it worthy of ourselves Post’s gravestone, 16 well to give it permanent voice, and our city to provide such a Bellefontaine Cemetery often to invoke its influence to place for the burial of our dead, sober life’s passion and hope, and to consecrate it for all coming and to impart true wisdom to its time as a sanctuary for grief, reason and aim. and memory, and funeral silence and repose. Place, then, and preserve the city of Death beside that of We count it a matter of Life, as its sorrowful but blessed gratulation that the work has remembrancer. Let Life look oft been entered on in such a spirit on the features of its pale brother. and with such beginnings. The Make that face not foul and enterprise was long contemplated, revolting, but charming with the and at length entered upon as spell of beauty and of holy repose; almost a necessity of seemly and that the loving may often come permanent sepulture. to gaze thereon, and may turn away with chastened hopes and spring/summer ’20

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ENDNOTES

1 Recent scholarship has built on Blanche 7 William E. Wyatt, Services at the 14 Issues of health were commonly cited Linden-Ward’s seminal history of Dedication of , as reasons to establish cemeteries, and Mount Auburn Cemetery by expanding Montpelier, Vt., Sept. 15, 1855, with the Post was building on a long history the interpretive perspective beyond Rules and Regulations (Montpelier: E. P. of placing burial sites outside town. He her focus on Mount Auburn in terms Walton, Jr., Printer, 1855), 32. makes references to gravesites of the of landscape history; see Blanche ancient world, but he surely knew of Linden-Ward, Silent City on a Hill: 8 John Jay Smith, Jr., “Memoranda more recent thoughts on the subject. Landscapes of Memory and Boston’s Respecting the Foundation of Laurel In 1838, Laurel Hill Cemetery founder Mount Auburn Cemetery (Columbus: Hill Cemetery,” Laurel Hill Cemetery John Jay Smith (writing under the The Ohio State University Press, 1989). Archives, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; pen name “Atticus”) noted that rural Recent works have focused on these the undated article he sent to dailies in cemeteries were essential to keep cemeteries as cultural phenomena Philadelphia, pasted into this document, miasmas and such away from the as well. For examples, see Joy Marie “Rural Cemeteries—Mount Auburn.” population. See Atticus [John Jay Giguere, Characteristically American: Smith], Hints on the Subject of Memorial Architecture, National Identity, 9 The following offers excerpts from Interments, Smith “Memoranda and the Egyptian Revival (Knoxville: Post’s address, which was reprinted Respecting the Foundation of Laurel University of Tennessee Press, 2014; by both Bellefontaine Cemetery and Hill Cemetery,” 11. In 1839, the founders James R. Cothran and Erica Danylchak, in local newspapers. of Glendale Cemetery in Akron, Ohio, Grave Landscapes: The Nineteenth- used Smith’s exact words—right down Century Rural Cemetery Movement 10 This idea of cemetery as home to the italics—in its petition to the state (Columbia: University of South Carolina emerged as part of the rural cemetery legislature requesting a charter for the Press, 2018); Jeffrey Smith, The Rural movement. Family lots contributed to Akron Rural Cemetery, arguing that: Cemetery Movement: Places of Paradox this, with their arrangement and design “It is at this day well known, and has in Nineteenth-Century America (Latham: reflective of Victorian houses—steps been satisfactorily demonstrated, that Lexington Books, 2017). There are a in front and entry into public spaces burials in cities greatly endanger the number of histories of individual rural with “private” spaces (that is, individual public health; that the miasmata cemeteries as well; see, for example, gravestones) smaller. Unusual to disengaged from burying places, may, Jeffrey Richman, Brooklyn’s Bellefontaine (and perhaps unique) is the and often have, caused frightful Green-Wood Cemetery: New York’s number of newel posts entering family catastrophes, and that they not only give Buried Treasure (Brooklyn: Green-Wood lots with the terms “Our Home” on them. more virulence to prevailing maladies, Cemetery, 1988); and Christopher but also originate contagious diseases, Vernon, Graceland Cemetery: A Design 11 From Thomas Gray (1718-1773), whose ravages have been terrible.” See History (Amherst, Massachusetts: Library “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” Petition to Ohio Legislature, January of American Landscape History, 2011). first published in 1751. 10, 1839, Glendale Cemetery Minutes. The charter passed in March 1839. 2 “Statement to the General Assembly 12 Post’s reference to the rural cemetery Glendale Cemetery Minutes, Petition to of Virginia,” January 10, 1850, Hollywood as an escape from urban life was not Ohio Legislature, January 10, 1839. Cemetery Minutes, Hollywood Cemetery unusual in dedication speeches. It also Collection, Virginia Historical Society. speaks to the changed attitude about 15 Again, Post’s comments are consistent cemeteries as places for the living to visit with other writers and speakers at the 3 Elizabethada Wright. “Reading the and commune with nature rather than time, seeing the cemetery as a place to Cemetery, ‘Lieu de Memoire par merely a site to warehouse the dead. preserve and articulate the community’s Excellence,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly collective memory. At the dedication 33:2 (Spring, 2003), 28. 13 Here, Post is referring to a common of Mount Auburn Cemetery in 1831, problem in cities like St. Louis. As cities Associate Justice Joseph Story noted its 4 Dell Upton, What Can and Can’t Be grew in population, they also grew power in his dedication. Others followed Said: Race, Uplift, and Monument geographically so that land on the suit with similar sentiments almost Building in the Contemporary South outskirts of town used for burials immediately, quickly normalizing the (New Haven: Yale University Press, became surrounded by the city itself, idea that proximity to the great was 2015), 21. making that land too valuable to be used uplifting and edifying. See Joseph as a graveyard. As cities grew, therefore, Story, An Address Delivered on the 5 Joseph Story, An Address Delivered some of those graveyards remained, Dedication of the Cemetery at Mount on the Dedication of the Cemetery at others were moved. The idea of a Auburn, September 24, 1831, To Which Mount Auburn, September 24, 1831, bustling city immediately adjacent to is Added an Appendix, Containing a To Which is Added an Appendix, the burial ground was a common one, Historical Notice and Description of Containing a Historical Notice and though, and seen as problematic. the Place, with a List of the Present Description of the Place, with a List of Subscribers (Boston: Joseph T. and the Present Subscribers (Boston: Joseph Edwin Buckingham, 1831), 14; Samuel D. T. and Edwin Buckingham, 1831), 14. Walker, Rural Cemetery and Public Walk (Baltimore: Sands and Nelson, 1835), 19. 6 Samuel D. Walker, Rural Cemetery and Public Walk (Baltimore: Sands and 16 Gravestone, Truman Marcellus Nelson, 1835), 19. Post, Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri.