Historic American Cemeteries

Cultural traditions are preserved in a variety of rituals and beliefs. Mortuary rituals are, perhaps, one of the most poignant and enduring of these rituals. Over a century of research into mortuary ideology has documented strong parallels between the deceased’s identity, religion, and socio-economic status in life and corresponding rituals in death. I have spent 20 years researching European-American and African American Cemeteries. Read below for information on my latest project.

Historic African-American Cemeteries

Since 2001 I have studied above-ground features in African American cemeteries to better understand enslaved, free black, and post-bellum communities as evidenced through their mortuary practices. Topics addressed include gravestone variability, cemetery landscapes, funerary practices, and beliefs about death.

Classification of Cemeteries

In order to understand African-American mortuary traditions, they must be contextualized within their chronological and cultural setting. Accordingly, we analyze burial practices in four types of communities: (1) enslaved communities on plantations, (2) Free Black and post- bellum African-American neighborhoods, (3) post-1865 church burial grounds and attendant congregations, and (4) early twentieth-century public cemeteries, primarily associated with urban communities. The associated cemeteries can be classified as five primary types:

Landscapes

African-American cemeteries often exhibit distinct patterns from those found in European-American cemeteries. In mid-nineteenth century America, churches and private cemetery corporations began landscaping and designing burial grounds to resemble parks. These manicured landscapes remain popular today. This leads to a misconception that an overgrown cemetery that is not mowed, planted with grass, or enclosed by a formal fence is “abandoned.” In many cases, these “informal” burial grounds may represent deliberate articulations of a unique cultural identity and a particular philosophy toward death and burial. Many of the African-American cemetery landscapes in this project are characterized by profuse plantings (including yucca plants, tree-of-heaven, daffodils, periwinkle, cedar trees, and clusters of perennials). While none of these species is a unique attribute by itself, taken together the overall impression in many African-American cemeteries is a greater focus on the natural landscape, rather than sterile, pruned lawns.

Gravestone Variability

The gravestones in African-American cemeteries range from large, granite slabs to impermanent wooden posts. This includes mass-produced markers (such as inscribed marble, small metal 'picture frames' provided by funeral homes, and soapstone "boards") and hand-carved markers (worked from soapstone, marble, and concrete). The stones include a variable amount of information, from detailed inscriptions and epitaphs to unmarked and uninscribed markers. For example, slave gravestones usually lack the name of the deceased or their date of death. This practice, which may be due, in part, to the early 19th Century laws that made it illegal to teach an enslaved individual to read and write, suggests an emphasis on group mortuary practices rather than marking the death of an individual. Accordingly, many unmarked graves are clustered into kinship groupings, rather than rows of individual markers.

Other stone types include white and pink quartz, carved river cobbles, and unusually shaped fieldstones. A portion of these “rocks” are modified into distinct shapes, indicating a folk tradition of carving. Because many stones in this category lack inscriptions and utilize locally available materials, these gravestones often go unnoticed and are occasionally removed or inadvertently destroyed by property owners. One of the goals of this project is to document these historic cemeteries so that their location becomes part of the public record.

Epitaphs and Inscriptions

Gravestone inscriptions fall into two main categories, personalized information specific to the deceased (referred to here as an "epitaph") and non-specific information often taken from Biblical quotes or bereavement expressions (referred to here as "inscriptions"). Inscriptions tend to follow "fashions" in changing attitudes towards death. For example, early 20th Century markers emphasize peaceful hereafter, "She is at rest" or "He sleeps." The best known variant in this category is "rest in peace" or R.I.P.

The term" epitaph" is used in this project to refer to the biographic data that occasionally accompanies a stone. This category includes testaments to the deceased's work, church affiliation, or family life. For example, the Rev. M.T. Lewis' gravestone highlighted his professional accomplishments.

The stone at the left was located in an ante-bellum cemetery. The inscription is hard to read, but it probably contains multiple names and dates. The dates are preceded by "Anno," possibly a reference to the Latin for "year."