Marilyn Yalom - The American Resting Place: 400 Years of History Through Our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds

PHOTOGRAPHS BY REID'S. YALOM

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON NEW YORK 2008

TEXT COPYRIGHT 2008 BY MARILYN YALOM
PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT 2008 BY REID'S. YALOM

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

For information about permission to reproduce selections from
this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Yalom, Marilyn.
The American resting place / Marilyn Yalom ; photographs by Reid'S. Yalom.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-618-62427-0
1. CemeteriesUnited States. 2. CemeteriesUnited StatesPictorial
works. 3. United StatesHistory, Local. 4. United StatesHistory,
LocalPictorial works. 5. Sepulchral monumentsUnited States.
6. Funeral rites and ceremoniesUnited States. 7. United States
Social life and customs. I. Title.
e159.y35 2008 929'.50973dc22 2008001861

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

BOOK DESIGN BY ROBERT OVERHOLTZER

MP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

PHOTOGRAPH ON PAGE viii:
Veiled Column, Loudon Park Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland

FOR THE NEXT GENERATION:

Lily, Alana, Lenore, Jason, and Desmond

Photo Portfolio

Preface: Tombstones to Live By

1. Claiming the Land

2. Marking the Grave

3. Solidarity in the Cemetery

4. Distancing the Dead

5. Death's-Heads and Funeral Gloves: Boston, Massachusetts

6. "Gone Are the Living, but the Dead Remain": Newport, Rhode Island

7. Cemeteries as Real Estate: New York City

8. Plain and Fancy: Philadelphia and Lancaster County

9. The Southern Way of Death: South Carolina and Georgia

10. New Orleans: Where It's Better to Be Buried above Ground

11. Rituals of Remembrance: St. Louis and the Boonslick

12. Ethnicity, Religion, and Class in Underground Chicago

13. Celebrating the Dead in Polyglot Texas

14. California: Missionaries, Miners, Moguls, and Movie Stars

15. Who Owns the Bones? Sites and Rites in Hawaii

16. National Military Cemeteries

17. Old and New Fashions in Death

Notes

Acknowledgments

Selected Bibliography

Index

PLATE

Etowah mound, Etowah, Georgia

Burial site of Bartholomew Gosnold, Jamestown, Virginia

Wooden crosses, San Juan Bautista Mission, California

Death's-heads, Circular Churchyard, Charleston, South Carolina

Soul effigy, Circular Churchyard, Charleston, South Carolina

Heavenly Queen, Calvary Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri

Separation fence, Jewish section, Oak Woods Cemetery, Chicago

Lin Yee Chung Chinese Cemetery, Oahu, Hawaii

Mary Baker Eddy memorial, Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Forest Lawn Cemetery, Glendale, California

King's Chapel Burying Ground, Boston

Jonathan and George Bunker, Phipp's Street Burying Ground, Charlestown, Massachusetts

Copp's Hill Burying Ground, Boston

Lopez tombstone, Touro Jewish Cemetery, Newport, Rhode Island

"Ann, A Negro Child," Common Burial Ground, Newport, Rhode Island

Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York, with nearly 3 million graves

Dutch Reformed Churchyard seen from inside the church, Brooklyn, New York

Trinity Churchyard, New York City

Warner tomb, Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia

Amish cemetery, Bird-in-Hand, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

Ecclesiastes XII, Beth Elohim, Charleston, South Carolina

Coffin-shaped tombstone, Bethel United Methodist Church, Charleston, South Carolina

Cannon and Civil War dead, Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, South Carolina

Rural burial ground, Nassau Island, South Carolina

Slave headstones, Laurel Grove Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia

"August," Laurel Grove Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia

Statue under hanging moss, Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia

Mausoleum lock, Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia

Aboveground tombs, St. Louis II Cemetery, New Orleans, Louisiana

Angels at night, Metairie Cemetery, New Orleans, Louisiana

"So Sadly Misted," Holt Cemetery, New Orleans, Louisiana

After Hurricane Katrina, half-buried Madonna, Holt Cemetery, New Orleans, Louisiana

Carmelino Maciocia, Calvary Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri

Dred Scott, Calvary Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri

Charles Balmer, Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri

Isaiah Sellers, Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri

Marker for Angelina Hardin, Jewell Family Cemetery, Columbia, Missouri

Sleeping mother and child, Roseland Cemetery, Chicago

Gypsy couple, Forest Home/German Waldheim Cemetery, Chicago

Getty tomb, Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

Schoenhofen mausoleum, Graceland Cemetery, Chicago

Crucifix, All Saints Polish National Catholic Cemetery, Chicago

Gravestones, Mount Olive Scandinavian Cemetery, Chicago

Niche, Bohemian National Columbarium, Chicago

Wrought-iron Alsatian cross, Castroville Catholic cemetery, Castroville, Texas

Day of the Dead, San Fernando Cemetery, San Antonio, Texas

Four candles, San Fernando Cemetery, San Antonio, Texas

Junpero Serra among the tombstones, Mission Dolores, San Francisco

Drytown City Cemetery, Amador County, California

Remembrance stones, Jewish cemetery, Jackson, California

Mausoleum, Hollywood Forever, Hollywood, California

Spirit trail, Honokahua, Maui, Hawaii

Catholic cemetery, Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii

Loo Lum Shee, Lin Yee Chung Chinese Cemetery, Oahu, Hawaii

Fallen Chinese tombstones on beach, Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii

Japanese cemetery above Red Sands Beach, Hana, Maui, Hawaii

Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia

8. Markers, Gettysburg National Cemetery, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

"Punchbowl," National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Oahu, Hawaii

Pet cemetery, Presidio military base, San Francisco, California

Native American veteran, Shivwit band of Paiute Indians reservation cemetery, Gunlock, Utah

Replacement military headstones, Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, South Carolina

"Beloved Mother," Japanese headstones on beach, Maui, Hawaii

"Looking Forward," Kate Tracy and her mother, 1854, Walnut Grove Cemetery, Boonville, Missouri

Prefaces are always written at the end. When authors look back on their work, they often wonder how they managed to fashion a book out of so much (or so little) material; how they soldiered on despite doubts and fears and the knowledge that their publication would be thrown into the world with thousands of others. What are my feelings at the end of this book? Primarily amazement at my hubris. How did I dare write a history of American cemeteries encompassing four hundred years?

The project turned into an astonishing adventure for me and my photographer son, Reid, as we traveled together to more than 250 cemeteries. To borrow words from James Agee in his explanation of how he and Walker Evans produced their landmark book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men:"The photographs are not illustrative. They, and the text, are coequal, mutually independent, and fully collaborative." My text and Reid's photos are essentially parallel narratives intended to convey the wonders found in the land of the dead.

The first English settlers in America did not commonly use the word "cemetery," which would have referred to ancient European sites such as the Roman catacombs. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, English-speaking people on both sides of the Atlantic would have employed such terms as "burying ground," "burial ground," "graveyard," or "churchyard."