RESEARCHING CONNECTICUT’S HISTORIC CEMETERIES: AN ANNOTATED REFERENCE GUIDE March 2019 RESEARCHING CONNECTICUT’S HISTORIC CEMETERIES: AN ANNOTATED REFERENCE GUIDE Complied and Annotated by Scott V. Goodwin R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates, Inc. Prepared for STATE HISTORIC PRESERVATION OFFICE 450 COLUMBUS BLVD., SUITE 5 HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT 06103 2019 This report was produced under the auspices of the Connecticut State Historic Preservation Office’s Hurricane Sandy Disaster Relief Assistance Grant program, funded by a grant from the National Park Service’s (NPS) Emergency Supplemental Historic Preservation Fund. R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates, Inc., and the Connecticut SHPO are grateful to NPS for its assistance. Although this material is based on work assisted by a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of the Interior. Cover: Cypress Cemetery, Old Saybrook, Connecticut (2018). Photo by Scott V. Goodwin TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 1 II. UNDERSTANDING CEMETERIES IN CULTURAL CONTEXT ....................................... 3 A. Death and Memorialization in the Western Tradition ............................................................... 3 B. Death and Memorialization in America .................................................................................... 5 III. THE DESIGN AND LANDSCAPING OF BURIAL SPACES ................................................ 7 A. Early American Cemeteries (17th–19th c.) ............................................................................. 7 B. The Rural Cemetery Movement (1831–1870s)........................................................................ 9 C. Landscape-Lawn Cemeteries (1855–1920s) and Memorial Parks (1917–Present) ............... 13 D. Ethnic and Religious Variations ............................................................................................ 15 E. National and Military Cemeteries .......................................................................................... 16 IV. FUNERARY ART AND ARCHITECTURE: MONUMENTS, MARKERS, AND MEMORIALS ................................................................................................................... 18 A. Form, Style, and Symbolism.................................................................................................. 18 B. Stone Carvers, Designers, and Memorial Manufacturers ...................................................... 27 C. Materials ................................................................................................................................ 33 D. Epitaphs and Inscriptions ....................................................................................................... 34 V. FUNERAL, BURIAL, AND MOURNING CUSTOMS .......................................................... 36 VI. LAWS AND BYLAWS .............................................................................................................. 40 VII. RESOURCES FOR CEMETERY-SPECIFIC RESEARCH ................................................. 43 A. Fairfield County ..................................................................................................................... 43 B. New Haven County ................................................................................................................ 45 C. New London County .............................................................................................................. 50 D. Middlesex County .................................................................................................................. 52 VIII. PRESERVATION, DOCUMENTATION, AND CONSERVATION ................................... 54 A. Preservation and Management ............................................................................................... 54 B. Documentation ....................................................................................................................... 57 C. Conservation .......................................................................................................................... 58 IX. BIBLIOGRAPHIC INDEX ....................................................................................................... 61 ABOUT THE AUTHOR .......................................................................................................................... 75 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION This annotated bibliography focuses on the burial grounds and cemeteries of Connecticut established from European settlement to the twentieth century. It was designed to assist in the informal and scholarly exploration of those multifaceted heritage sites, and is meant to encourage further investigation into local, regional, and national funerary history. The resources compiled and summarized in the subsequent chapters deal with a range of topics relevant to cemetery research. The first chapter, Understanding Cemeteries in Cultural Context, introduces the subject of cemetery studies through texts on the social and cultural history of death and burial in the Americas and in European traditions. The second chapter, The Design and Landscaping of Burial Spaces, looks at common types of historic cemeteries found in Connecticut through an exploration of burial-space design movements in American history. The third chapter, Funerary Art and Architecture: Monuments, Markers, and Memorials, addresses the history, identification, and evaluation of designed cemetery objects, and the artisans who created them. A chapter on Funeral, Burial, and Mourning Customs deals with practices that occurred in and around Connecticut cemeteries that may have influenced cemetery development. The fifth chapter, Laws and Bylaws, considers the legal framework for the regulation of burial spaces. The sixth chapter chronicles Resources for Cemetery-Specific Research in Connecticut’s four coastal counties.1 The seventh and final chapter reviews salient literature on developing Preservation, Documentation, and Conservation strategies for historic cemeteries. In each chapter, the resources chosen either inform or directly contribute to the understanding of cemeteries in Connecticut. A variety of resource types were considered. Books, periodicals, articles, pamphlets, document indices, technical briefs, photograph collections, and survey reports are all cited in the bibliography. Most of these resources are available from major public libraries, and many of the citations have been digitized and can be viewed on websites such as www.archive.org (including periodicals like Markers: Annual Journal of the Association for Gravestone Studies and Park and Cemetery) or in online version of books such as J.J. Gordon’s Cemetery Management. It should be noted that the citations compiled here represent only part of the literature on New England cemeteries and an even smaller portion of the literature on individual cemeteries in Connecticut. Many of the works cited in the following chapters have bibliographies that can assist readers in exploring specialized topics. For researchers focusing on individual cemeteries, town libraries and historical societies remain the best resources for research into local history and local historical sites. 1 This document is specifically concerned with burial grounds and cemeteries in the lower four counties of Connecticut (Fairfield, New Haven, Middlesex, and New London), owing to parameters laid out by the Connecticut State Historic Preservation Office’s Hurricane Sandy Disaster Relief Assistance Grant program, funded by a grant from the National Park Service’s Emergency Supplemental Historic Preservation Fund. Nonetheless, many resources cited here are broad in scope and may be useful for research elsewhere in the state. 1 One important resource for Connecticut cemetery research that has not been given an individual entry in this document is the Charles R. Hale Collection of Connecticut Cemetery Inscriptions. The Hale Collection contains headstone inscriptions from more than 2,000 cemeteries in Connecticut that were surveyed as part of a Works Progress Administration (WPA) initiative directed by Charles R. Hale from 1932 to 1935. It is an invaluable source of vital statistics. Because it is used primarily as an aid in genealogical research, it does not fit well within the framework of this bibliography. Cemetery researchers, nevertheless, should be aware of the Hale Collection. It is a useful guide to locations of often-overlooked Connecticut cemeteries and burial grounds; it provides a way of quickly locating significant interred individuals; and it is a useful source of data for comparative site analysis. The Hale Collection is available in print at the Connecticut State Library and is a public domain resource also made available via online genealogy services (e.g., New Horizons Genealogy 2008). It also has been republished frequently in cemetery guides that may be found in local libraries. 2 CHAPTER II UNDERSTANDING CEMETERIES IN CULTURAL CONTEXT Connecticut’s cemeteries are repositories of local history. They serve important roles in our communities as places of memory and archives of family histories. But they also function as museums of cultural artifacts. Those artifacts can teach us about how