Funerary art in Puritan New England

Funerary art in Puritan New England encompasses graveyard headstones carved between c. 1640 and the late 18th century by the English Puritans, founders of the first American colonies, and their descendants.

Granary Burying Ground, Boston, Massachusetts

The earliest Puritan graves in the New England states of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, were usually dug at random in designated local burial grounds, sometimes marked with upright slate, sandstone or granite stones containing factual but inelegant inscriptions. The following generation decorated their headstones with carvings; most frequebtly with depictions of death's head, a stylized skull sometimes with wings or crossed bones.[1] Later examples show the deceased carried by the wings that would apparently take their soul to heaven.[2] From the 1690s the imagery becomes less severe, and began to include winged cherubs (known as "soul effigies") who had fuller faces and rounder and more life-sized eyes and mouths.[1] In headstones dating from the Federalist Era, the rise of secularism saw the prominence of urn and willow imagery.

Early New England puritan funerary art conveys a practical attitude towards 17th mortality rates; death was an ever present reality of life,[3] and their funerary traditions and grave art provide an unique insight into their views on mortality and death.

The minimalist artistry of the earlier designs reflect the puritan's stern religious doctrine, and largely avoided unnecessary decoration or embellishment. In the late 18th century, depictions of coffins, urns and willows became common.[4]

Stonecarvers

The craftsmen and woman who designed and built the early headstones were generalists tradesmen who also worked as smiths, leather-workers or printers. They tended to work locally; there are no known journeyman or itinerant carvers producing across a wide geographical area. A significant number of surviving headstones share a decorative traditions, which some variation between regions.[5] Through probate documentation, newspaper announcements and inscripted signatures, researches have been able to associate the carvers behind particular headstones with identifiable historical people.[1] Although some 300 individual carvers working in New England have been identified, very little is known about any of them, with only few exceptions such as John Lamson of Ipswich,[6] or Nathaniel Holmes (active c. 1805) of Plymouth.[7]

by the late 18th century, stone-carving had become an independent industry, with its own system of apprenticeships and workshops. Although not considered a fine art, the craft required large amounts of skill and knowledge, including selecting stones from rock outcroppings, shaping them, preparing their faces and carving the reliefs.[8]

Flat, tablet shaped stones made from slate was the preferred medium until marble became fashionable in the early 19th century.[9] Early puritan era carvers were especially preoccupied by economy of line, geometric shapes and, at times abstract patterns. The show a unstylized "primitive"[10] approach that tended towards simplicity and naturalism. As the approach is not detectable in later American art, the historian Allan Ludwig described it as a "half-finished experiment in form making. Its place...must therefore be described as one of quite isolation. Nothing of the older tradition remained after 1815 but the silence of a forgotten epoch."[11]

Attitudes towards death
Death's head, Granary Burial Ground

Although modern society sharply avoids the reality of everyday disposal of its communities' dead, in puritan society these were common facts of life. Thus, their art reflects a pragmatic approach, embracing realistic imagery that evokes human decay into skulls and bones. Their use of simplistic, line drawn imagery was a deliberate rejection of Catholic iconography, a choice also reflected in the design of their churches, portrait paintings and stained glass.[12] However, in a society that largely rejected visual art as idolatry, images created for funeral rites and headstones themselves were among the few artworks most people in this period would be were exposed to.

Puritan grave art reflects a deliberate move away from the European High Baroque type. Because its first generation craftsmen developed their craft isolated in the new word, as self taught, their works can be described as folk style, expressed in a vernacular style.[13][14] In this the their output reflects a general move towards a more vernacular and direct mode of expression, but practically, the style allowed the production of a far greater number of stylized headstones by removing the need for the carvers having deep workshop experience.[15] Although the New England style was heavily influenced by contemporary or slightly earlier trends in rural England and Scotland,[15] this was more in terms of iconography and symbols than style.[16] New England art of the time avoided Biblical allegories and depictions of the Christian cross.[16]

Gravestone of Christian Hunter More, wife of Richard More, The Burying Point, Salem, Massachusetts

A common approach in the 1980s and 1990s in academic literature was to treat these older graveyards as museums, that is as "outdoor, spatially delineated repositories of cultural artifacts",[17] and as material to understand the thoughts of the people who had created them. The historian Terry G. Jordan agrees with this, and said that, given such artifact's density and state of preservation in New England, "nowhere else [in America] is it possible to look so deeply into our people's past".[17] Meyer's takes this further, writing that the grave art of this period "exhibit patterns of change over temporal spans...and...can in many instances yield valuable cultural insights to a number of discrete time periods, including the present."[17] Following Forbes work, researchers applied social sciences techniques in interpretation.[18]

The cultural historian James Hijiya urged caution and rose concerns on the prevailing academic approach and methodology, and noted how the early carvers left no account record of their intentions, and so their motives cannot be easily interpreted, and observed that there is no remaining instance of any articulated evidence which indicates even "their outlook on life and death."[19] Although a significant scholar in the field, Hijiya urges that reading into the meaning of any stone has to consider "information extraneous to the stones themselves" such as "writings produced at the same time as the carvings, though by different hands [and] aesthetic or anthropological theory which purports to illuminate human behavior at any time".[20] Hijiya suggested an approach similar to the art historian Erwin Panofsky, that there is no reason to assume that any decoration is "uniquely determined."[20]

Style

Compared to most headstones, the early Puritan examples are low sized and wide. They were typically capped with a rounded tympanum resembling the semi-circular half stones often found above the main doorway entrances into churches. The tympanum thus has symbolic meaning, reflecting the belief that through death, the soul moves from one world into the next. The theologian and minister William Perkins wrote that death was "a little wicket or doore whereby we passe out of this world and enter into heaven."[21] This belief is also evident in some of the inscriptions, where the date of death is prefaced by terms such as "translated" or "exchanged" rather than "died".[21] The phrase "Here Lies the Body" (or "Here lyes Buried the Body") makes this more explicit, implying that while the remains are present in the ground below, the soul has gone elsewhere.[21]

Hijiya divides Northeastern American gravestones into six broad and overlapping styles reflective of "six different attitudes toward death".[22] Of these, the first three are strictly "puritan", before the style softened as Unitarianism and Methodism became more popular.[23]

The six styles are:

  1. "Plain Style" (1640–1710): Resignation
  2. "Death's Head" (1670–1770): Awe
  3. "Cherubs" / "Angels" (1740–1820): Confidence
  4. "Urn and Willow" (1780–1850): Mourning
  5. "Monumentalism" (1840–1920): Defiance
  6. "Modern Plain Style" (1900–2001): Ignorance[22]

Plain Style

The first generation of settlers did not utilize communal burial grounds, and instead buried their dead on the highest point on their property, with individual graves marked with wooden slabs or field-stones.[24] The earliest New England Puritan burying grounds date from the 1660s,[24] and were, according to writer Meg Greene, "simply places to deposit the remains of the dead".[25] In adherence to the second biblical commandment, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image", the earliest settlers sought to avoid the worship of ancestors through stone images.[26] In addition they sought to avoid use of the traditional Catholic cross, while table type tombs were seen as too elaborate, practically and aesthetically.[27] The graves had little order to their plotting,[upper-alpha 1][25] and were either unmarked, or were marked a by wooden sign or an uncut rock, with only very few having a simple greenstone or carved headstone,[28] usually with no decorations or ornamentation.[1]

When inscriptions began to be used, they are at first brief, factual and typically carved with "interruptive punctuation", that is an interpunct (raised period), between each word.[1] Full names, kinship, age at death and the year of death are given, while the dating of placement of the stone itself is also present; typically the were commissioned and erected with a year of the burial.[5]

By the mid-17th century, the headstones had become increasingly elaborate, describing the nature and frequency of death in dark, bleak and often bitter imagery.[25] Soon after, a significant number contain epitaphs, the tone of which is often correlated with the severity or bleakness of the design.[5] In 1980, the historian Peter Benes described one such graveyard in Plymouth County in terms of "menacing stares, impish smiles, and enigmatic facial contortions combine with totally abstract effigies to stop the modern viewer in his tracks, while revealing little of their significance".[29]

The now named Plain Style comes before puritan gravestone art found a voice, and consists of little stone markers with unornamented, factual inscriptions. It begins in the very early Colonial period, and lasts until roughly the first decade of the Eighteenth century. In most scholarly overviews, the amateurish carvings are attributed to a lack of tools and know-how on the part of the very early practitioners, who did have access to more experienced stonemasons. This explains in part why it remained in some areas later than others; with craftsmen in some areas developing their skills quicker than in others.[30] A further reason may be that the early puritans, due to their feelings on humility and lack of regard for adornments, deliberately kept their headstones simple and minimalist.[28] Hijiya goes on to say that the lack of decoration may have reflected that they viewed death as simply as an "ordinary, unremarkable aspect of the human condition", absent from any notion of either oblivion or passing on to ethereal life.[31]

Death's head
Winged death headstone, Granary, Boston. 17th century

The death's head is the earliest and most frequently occurring motif in colonial era American headstones. The head usually is winged, and accompanied by imagery such as hourglasses, bones and coffins.[32] Though seemingly frightening to modern viewers, the image of a skull was then less about inspiring dread in the viewer, and more about acknowledging an normal, everyday fact of human life. In their belief system, death was when the flesh passed away to make way for renewal in the afterlife.[33] The skulls reflect puritan funeral rituals in total, including their approach to elegies, funerals rites and sermons.[34] Commonly, the horses carrying the remains of the deceased to the graveyard were draped with robes containing painted coffins and death's heads.[35] Burial usually too place three to eight days after death, with the headstone erected up to eight months later.[36]

Skull and cross-bones, gravestone of Elizabeth Hurd (d. 1779), Granary, Boston

Before the colonies had established themselves and begun to generate wealth, burial rituals were expensive; a relatively elaborate funeral in Boston in the 1720s would have cost around £100.[upper-alpha 2] The headstones were a relatively small part of the overall expense, in the 1720s they ranged from £2 to over £40.[37]

Later, the death's head image became less stern and menacing. The figure become crowned, with the lower jaw eliminated, and serrations of teeth appear on the upper row, a characteristic carving of the mid-18th century. Particularly, the eyes become more animated—almond shaped and with pupils—seeming more soul-like than deathlike.

Extra imagery such as foliage, grapes and vines, and hearts suggest new life through sacraments and resurrection. This transition cannot be clearly, or easily, seen through the gravestones. The changes are very minute and gradual leaving some stones with a disturbing image in between an empty skull and a lively soul.

Cherubs
Cherub, 1777. The Burying Point, Salem, Massachusetts

Continuing the evolution of the winged death head to the glorification of the soul, cherubs (or "soul effigies") comprise skull-like representations of the soul[38] with distinctly human faces. Some are placed in an enclosing motif, such as a solar symbol or a tree. Others retain the angels wings commonly seen in the death head.[38]

The use of cherubs rather than death's heads appears to have originated in the Boston area in the mid-18th century, and is more commonly found in southern rater than northern parts of New England.[39] Especially from late 18th century on, some of the cherubs have individualized faces, and may contain elements of portraiture. Those on headstones marking male graves tend to have hair shown with a downwards curl, while those marking female graves show an upwards curl.[40] The inclusion of cherubs mostly dates from the mid 18th century and has a direct lineage to earlier funerary art, often showing a living human arched by wings.[32]

Urn and Willow

The rise of secularism during the Federalist Era, roughly lasting from 1790 to 1820, saw the prominence of urn and willow in headstone imagery. During this period, the imagery turned even more away from English influences, in favor of Neoclassicism and Greek Revival style.[41]

Urn and willow, on the gravestone of Lois Witham (d.1800). Old Burial Ground, Rockport MA

Other motifs from this era include imps of death depicted as small evil demons bearing the arrows of death. They are particularly associated with the Charlestown stone mason Joseph Lamson, who carved imps either pallbearing or adorned with imagery of death and decay such as scythes and hourglasses.[42]

Monumentalism and Modern Plain Style

By the end of the 18th century, as social classes emerged and became more important, graveyards lost their earlier egalitarian uniformity and simplicity; up until that point all headstones were of equal size and plots were grouped together. Plots in certain areas of existing graveyards became more expensive as a marked difference emerged between cemeteries in well off as compared to less affluent areas. The graveyards of the former tended towards grandiosity and monumentalism, while the latter are characterized by crowded rows of simple headstones.[35]

The change was especially seen from the 1840s, when a trend towards integrating nature and landscape emerged, leading to the use of obelisks, columns, and statues, while the use of slate was largely phased out in favor of marble.[43] In addition, disease and odor concerns in urbanized areas pushed graveyards toward the outskirts of towns and cities, no longer an integral part of the central landscape.[24] It is at this point that the Puritan traditions in funerary art end.

The historian Karen Wenhworth Batignani describes New England headstones from 1900 as "far less interesting than their predecessors. Polished granite blocks that offer names and dates but few clues as to who the deceased were."[43] She, like other historians, attribute this is a culture of denial of death, in which large sums of money are spent on "steel lined, gorgeously cushioned caskets [and] air conditioned tombs".[43]

Inscriptions

Epitaphs

Epitaphs become common from the later 17th century. From these, sit becomes possible to tell something of the attitudes and outlook of both the masons and the deceased.[5] They often take the format of memento moris:[44]

Remember me as you pass by
As you are now so once was I
As I am now you soon must be
Prepare for death and follow me[44]

These early examples always reflected the pessimistic puritan outlook of the time, in that they do not mention an afterlife or the resurrection of the dead, and often include imagery of worms, decay and dust. It is only on the later cherub stones that more personalized goodbyes to loved ones, or mention of an afterlife begin to appear:[44]

Farewell my wife and children dear
I leave you for a while
For God has called and I must go
And leave you all behind.[44]

Study

Serious academic study of early puritan funerary art is a relatively new field. The historian and photographer Harriette Forbes, working with the historian Ernest Caulfield in Massachusetts during the 1920's, was the first to study the subject and amassed the first significant library of photographs and an expansive catalog of 16th century graves.[45] Her book Gravestones of Early New England and the Men Who Made Them, 1653-1800 classified and interpret the artifacts in the context of the dominant religious and cultural influences of their times.[18] The influential puritan minister, author, and pamphleteer Cotton Mather observed in 1693 how "the stones in this wilderness are already grown so witty as to speak".[46] However modern scholars take a more circumspect view, in that most of the early carvers were often armatures, and although they had basic understandings of iconography, their style and language evolved in a setting cut off from European trends, or a coherent, internal, written discourse. The historian Richard Meyer largely agrees with Mather's claim, and notes how the path of study of these early graveyards understood that such artifacts, "through a variety of complex and often interrelated manifestations, establish patterns of communication (and even dynamic interaction) with those who use or view them".[46]

The next major publication was Allen Ludwig's 1966 book Graven Images: New England Stone Carving and its Symbols, 1650-1815, although it tended to focus on describing specific examples, rather than present broad overviews or analysis.

Reflecting the density of surviving examples, in 2006, the art historian James Blachowicz produced a catalog of 8000 stones and 713 individual burial grounds.[9] He lists some 1300 stones that are signed or have been documented, and made a significant contribution to the methodology used to attribute headstones to individual carvers. In particular he identified 60 sets of typefaces, provided a detailed overview of how styles of representing letters, numbers and symbols could be used to group headstones by their carvers.[47]

Footnotes
  1. Individual plots were often dug in random spots in the burial ground. See Green (2017), p. 13
  2. To put in context, in the 1720s a relatively well-off family would spend c. £300 per annum. See Ludwig (2009), p. 59

References

Citations
  1. "Iconography of Gravestones at Burying Grounds". Boston City Hall, October 25 2019. Retrieved April 11 2020
  2. Wenhworth Batignani (2003), p. 206
  3. Ludwig (2000), p. 52
  4. Ludwig (2000), p. 82
  5. Dethlefsen; Deetz (1966), p. 502
  6. Roark (2003), p, 54
  7. Blachowicz (2006)
  8. Roark (2003), p, 55
  9. Wood (2008), p. 194
  10. Ludwig (2000), p.431
  11. Ludwig (2000), p.428
  12. Garvan (1960), p. 108
  13. Ludwig (2000), p. 244
  14. Ludwig (2000), p. 65
  15. Ludwig (2000), p. 249
  16. Ludwig (2000), p. 258
  17. Meyer (1989), chapter 1, p. 2
  18. Meyer (1989), chapter 1, p. 3
  19. Hijiya (1983), pp. 339-340
  20. Hijiya (1983), p. 340
  21. Roark (2003), p, 59
  22. Hijiya (1983), p. 341
  23. Dethlefsen; Deetz (1966), p. 508
  24. Wenhworth Batignani (2003), p. 3
  25. Greene (2007), p. 13
  26. Roark (2003), p, 53
  27. Garvan (1960), p. 112
  28. Hijiya (1983), p. 342
  29. Prioli (1980), p. 335
  30. Hijiya (1983), pp. 341–342
  31. Hijiya (1983), p. 343
  32. Dethlefsen; Deetz (1966), p. 503
  33. Ludwig (2000), p. 77
  34. Prioli (1980), p. 334
  35. Ludwig (2000), p. 58
  36. Roark (2003), p. 55
  37. Ludwig (2000), p. 59
  38. Ludwig (2000), p. 168
  39. Dethlefsen; Deetz (1966), p. 504
  40. Dethlefsen; Deetz (1966), p. 505
  41. Wenhworth Batignani (2003), p. 5
  42. Ludwig (2000), p. 100
  43. Wenhworth Batignani (2003), p. 6
  44. Dethlefsen; Deetz (1966), p. 506
  45. Prioli (1979/80), p.328
  46. Meyer (1989), chapter 1, p. 1
  47. Wood (2008), p. 195

Sources
  • Benes, Peter; Montague Benes; Jane. Puritan Gravestone Art II. Boston, MA: Boston University, 1978
  • Dethlefsen, Edwin; Deetz, James. "Death's Heads, Cherubs, and Willow Trees: Experimental Archaeology in Colonial Cemeteries", American Antiquity, 1966. pp. 502-510
  • Eriquez, Christina. Our History In Stone: The New England Cemetery Dictionary. lulu, 2010. ISBN 978-0-5572-4169-9
  • Garvan, Anthony. "The New England Plain Style". Comparative Studies in Society and History, volume 3, no. 1, 1960. pp. 106-122. JSTOR 177900
  • Greene, Meg. Rest in Peace: A History of American Cemeteries . CT: Twenty-First Century Books, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8225-3414-3
  • Hijiya, James. "American Gravestones and Attitudes Toward Death: A Brief History". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 127, No. 5 (Oct. 14, 1983), pp. 339-363. JSTOR 986503
  • Ludwig, Allen. Graven Images: New England Stone Carving and its Symbols, 1650-1815. CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0-8195-6040-7
  • Merrifield Forbes, Harriette . Gravestones of Early New England and the Men Who Made Them, 1653-1800. Pyne Press, 1973. ISBN 978-0-8786-1049-5
  • Meyer, Richard. Cemeteries and Gravemarkers: Voices of American Culture. MI: Umi Research Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0-8357-1903-2
  • Prioli, Carmine. "Review: Early New England Gravestone Scholarship". Early American Literature, Volume 14, no. 3, Winter, 1979/1980. pp. 328-336
  • Roark, Elisabeth. Artists of Colonial America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-3133-2023-1
  • Tashjian, Dickran; Tashjian, Ann. Memorials for Children of Change: The Art of Early New England Gravestone Carving. Wesleyan, 1974. ISBN 978-0819-5406-14
  • Yal-om, Marilyn. The American Resting Place: 400 Years of History Through Our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008. ISBN 978-0-6186-2427-0
  • Wenhworth Batignani, Karen. Maine's Coastal Cemeteries. Lanham MD: Down East Books, 2003. ISBN 978-0-8927-2604-2
  • Wood, Mary Catherine. "Book Review: James Blachowicz. From Slate to Marble: Gravestone Carving Traditions in Eastern Massachusetts, 1770–1870". Winterthur Portfolio 42, no. 4, Winter 2008. pp. 294-296
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