America's Oldest Art Galleries

The New England Primer:

In the burying place may see,
Graves shorter there than I,
From death's arrest no age is free,
Young children too must die.
My God may such an awful sight, Awakening be to me!
Oh! that by early grace I might
For death prepared be.

There is a word for the appreciation that some have for final resting places which is not morbid: taphophilia. Cemeteries offer many reasons to stop, consider and remember, one of which is that, in New England, they served as colonial America's earliest form of public art displays. The ornate carvings on tombstones were the first works of sculpture by European hands on our shores, a skill that was transported from England, particularly.

The earliest colonial American graves were marked with whatever rocks and wood happened to be nearby. When survival was paramount, initially, little effort was made to create lasting remembrances of those laid to rest. But as colonial settlements became more established, in the later 17th century, and those skilled in the art of sculpting and engraving became more numerous, tombstones became a vehicle for creative expression that some have viewed as America's first art galleries.

It is believed that one particular tombstone served as the inspiration for that of Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Elizabeth Pain (d. 1704) was a settler who was laid to rest in King's Chapel Burying Ground in Boston. There was no scandal attached to her life, but Hawthorne writes as if describing Pain's marker, upon which some today still see an 'A' engraved, p. 238:

And, after many, many years, a new grave was delved, near an old and sunken one, in that burial ground beside which King's Chapel has since been built. It was near that old and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tombstone served for both. All around, there were monuments carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple slab of slate—as the curious investigator may still discern, and perplex himself with the purport—there appeared the semblance of an engraved escutcheon. It bore a device, a herald's wording of which might serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; so sombre is it, and relieved only by one ever glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow:

"On a field, sable, the letter A, gules."

New England gravestones today are famous for their intricate and often mysterious symbolic carvings. The folk art on the headstones themselves has even spawned a new art form: gravestone rubbings. By affixing paper to the designs on a tombstone, and using charcoal or crayon, one may replicate the images below and take away copy of the memorial. As historical, genealogical and artistic interest in early American gravestones grew in the late 19th century, gravestone rubbings became a fad. Photography serves a similar purpose today, documenting the names, dates, and images associated with people otherwise to-be-forgotten. Gravestone rubbings may still be done at some locations, but there are often rules to be followed to prevent damage to these monuments. As a boy, I recall making my own gravestone rubbings at the Old Burying Point Cemetery in Salem, Massachusetts. Much credit for generating the early interest in American gravestones goes to "Harriette Merrifield Forbes (1856-1951) ... an historian, photographer and author. Her book" Gravestones of Early New England And the Men Who Made Them, 1653-1800, "published in 1927, was the first to treat early American gravemarkers as art objects, the country's oldest sculpture." She was the the mother of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Esther Forbes. Having spent her days exploring the local cemeteries around her, Harriette took great pains to research, document and explain the significance of colonial tombstones. Of particular interest is her research into the symbolism of the carvings, p. 114:

The thoughts suggested by the carving of the gravestones can be divided roughly into five classes:

I. A recognition of the flight of time.
II. The certainty of death and warnings to the living.
III. The occupation of the deceased or his station in life.
IV. The Christian life.
V. The resurrection of the body and the activities of the redeemed soul.

To give examples of each, the flight of time is most often represented by an hour-glass. Also employed were figures of Father Time, sometimes holding a scythe or an hour-glass. The certainty of death is represented prominently by a skull and crossbones, or variations thereof. The crowing cock (Matthew 26.75), lines from The New England Primer ('In Adam's fall/We sinned all'), and coffins all served as images to warn the living of impending death and the reckoning to follow. Military symbols and coats-of-arms denoted a person's station in life. "A very humble symbol, conceived in quite a different spirit from the coat-of-arms, military trappings, or even the minister's gown, is the scallop shell emblematic of our earthy pilgrimage. The scallop shell, abounding on the shores of the eastern seas, was use by the Pilgrims for cup, spoon, and dish; later it symbolized for them their crusade and was even adopted on their coat armor, an honorable and dignified device" (p. 120). The Christian life was often symbolized by the grapevine. "When bunches of grapes are combined with ears of corn, they symbolize the blood and body of Christ. Other vines besides the grapevine were employed. Sometimes a bird was placed in the vine, which, they tell us, signifies the soul partaking of celestial food...The dove, which may be the bird on at least some of our gravestones, is typical of Christian constancy and devotion. A squirrel cracking a nut is said to be a symbol of religious meditation" (p. 121). Mermaids were sometimes used, which are harder to explain. The trumpet and the rising soon speak to us as symbols of the resurrection. Likewise employed were images of the world, moon, and stars, the redeemed spirit emerging from a tomb or "making heavenly music," as well as the peacock. In one case, we can see a mother stepping out of her tomb holding her baby in her arms, an image of hope.

Many a tombstone tourist has been inspired to take a closer look at the gravestone symbols and the messages they convey. What is it that the person entombed, or his gravestone engraver, has to say to us even now? What can we take away from a tour of those old Puritan cemeteries besides a remembrance of that hearty generation that served the Lord and endured so much? The New England Primer, quoted at the beginning of this post, gives us a clue. Consider that you are made of clay and dust, and to the dust you shall return. Thomas Watson wrote: "O meditate on death! It is reported of Zeleucus, that the first piece of household stuff he brought to Babylon, was a tombstone: think often of your tombstone. The meditation on death would work these admirable effects...There is no stronger antidote, saith [Augustine], than frequent meditation upon death... " (A Christian on the Mount, p. 60). While walking through a cemetery, one might recall the words of the Book of Common Prayer funeral collect, "In the midst of life we are in death." Or we might hearken to the words of Martin Luther: "We say, 'In the midst of life we die.' God answers, 'Nay, in the midst of death we live'" (quoted by Roland Bainton, Here I Stand, p. 384).

Getting Past the Word 'Puritan'

It is very easy to dismiss a doctrine or practice as 'Puritan' rather than to study it in the light of the word of God. The practice is very old, and is continued in our culture today, even within the church, even amongst Reformed Christians. In our society, the word 'Puritan' conjures up images of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter or evokes the recollection of H.L. Mencken's quip that "Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy." The Puritan-minded are not ashamed of the label assigned to them, but desire above all that people would look at the substance of the thing, more than the label, and Berean-like, then consider whether it is in accord or not with God's word.

Lewis Bayly, The Practice of Piety, p. 86, describes those hindrances which keep sinners back from endeavoring after Biblical piety, among which he lists the use of semantics by the ungodly in their vocabulary designed to label evil good and good evil:

8. The last, and not the least block at which piety stumbles in the course of religion, is by adorning vices with the names of virtues: as to call drunken carousing, drinking of healths; spilling innocent blood, valour; gluttony, hospitality; covetousness, thriftiness; whoredom, loving a mistress; simony, gratuity; pride, gracefulness; dissembling, compliment; children of Belial, good-fellows; wrath, hastiness; ribaldry, mirth: so, on the other side, to call sobriety in words and actions, hypocrisy; alms-deeds, vain-glory; devotion, superstition; zeal in religion, Puritanism; humility, crouching; scruple of conscience, preciseness, &c. And whilst thus we call evil good, and good evil, true piety is much hindered in her progress.

Gisbertus Voetius expounds upon this theme in his Selectae Disputationes Theologicae, "Concerning Practical Theology," Part II, as quoted by John W. Beardslee III, ed. and trans., Reformed Dogmatics: Seventeenth Century Reformed Theology Through the Writings of Wollebius, Voetius, and Turretin, pp. 282-283:

The wholeness and precision of faith and conduct which all the pious are required to seek and to desire have now been assigned by some to a hated "Puritanism." That this has happened to purity of faith and teaching is shown by the vernacular works of the Remonstrants as well as by their Apologia, and by the innovators who began to spread Remonstrant errors in England after the meeting of the Synod of Dort in 1619, and who attacked those who were orthodox in this hateful business, as they regarded it, by the name of Cathari or Puritans; namely, those who were zealous for purity and the orthodox doctrine of the total grace of God, against the old and new scraps of Pelagian depravity. As to conduct and morals, Lewis Bayly, the bishop of Bangor, has witnessed in his widely distributed and famous book The Practice of Piety that piety has often been disparaged under the name of Puritanism. Since we see that the name was first conceived and used by papists in England, in order to have a label for those who desired simplicity of ceremonies and church organization, concern for good works and praxis, it is necessary to inquire whether those on whom they wished to place the label Puritan were ignorant of practical theology or hostile to it. The Puritan teaching must be earnestly studied, to see whether it agrees with the word of God or not, whether it carries on a struggle over shadows and words. I do not remember that it has been proved by anyone that the conduct and praxis that the Reformers urged, and that we urge with them, contradict the word of God.