John Bull, Chronology, and "Puritanism"

Charles Bardin stone, 1773, NCBG, Newport, carved by John Bull

This week, I've been reading the papers from the 1976 Dublin Seminar on Puritan Gravestone Art. In general, the essays are good and thought-provoking, especially David Hall's curmudgeonly contributions, in which he expresses doubt about pretty much all of the other contributors' conclusions.

One essay that had me nodding along until the last page was Dickran Tashjian's "Puritan Attitudes Toward Iconoclasm." His main argument is that gravestones were regarded as civil art and thus were not considered violations of the 2nd commandment. He cites plenty of relevant 17th-century sources to back up his argument that Puritan scholars in Massachusetts and England regularly argued that the prohibition against idolatry only applied to ecclesiastical settings, not civil images. Since graveyards and the stones in them were civil, rather than sacred, objects, images were not a problem, and there was no reason to smash up any gravestones.

This is all very useful to me, and I was pleased to have found this essay until I turned to the last page. Tashjian qualifies his argument a bit by noting that "imagery still had to conform to public taste," which would not have endured outrageously idolatrous images. In view of this assertion, he argues that the Charles Bardin stone in Newport (by John Bull, 1773) does not depict God, but, rather, Moses (contra Ludwig) because representing God the Father "would have been taken as idolatrous by the terms of the Puritans' interpretations of the Second Commandment."

Needle scratch.

Wait, wait, wait. I'm all on board for discussing Puritan interpretations of the Second Commandment in Massachusetts in the 17th century. But if those are the parameters of the discussion, you absolutely cannot extrapolate to make an argument about a stone carved in Newport in the late 18th century. John Bull may have been many things — a runaway apprentice, a mutineer, a thwarted genius, an ungrateful SOB — but he was not a Puritan. And he didn't live in a Puritan colony. And, lest the point be overlooked, he carved this stone in 1773.

I'm pretty uncomfortable using the term "Puritan" for Massachusetts in general after 1680 or so, though I'll make an exception for self-professed adherents like the Mathers. What does it even mean to characterize Rhode Island — which wasn't even "Puritan" in the 17th century — as "Puritan" 100 years later? The mind, it boggles.

This is my main gripe about the many gravestone studies I have read so far, both in the Dublin Seminar papers and in books by the Tashjians, Ludwig, etc., and even David Stannard's The Puritan Way of Death: they are incredibly sloppy when it comes to chronology. If you are making an argument about "Puritans" based on sources written 1590-1640, you cannot, cannot, cannot, marshal a stone from 1785 into your argument. It's like trying to make an argument about music during the American Civil War and citing The Black Eyed Peas as an example.

More Press for Our Course!

From the Harvard Gazette.

Pottery Barn Museum Collection

I hope I can point to this collection without sounding like a shill for the nostalgia-peddling, over-charging swindlers who run Pottery Barn. Their latest evil plan involves teaming up with the American Folk Art Museum and the Shelburne Museum to make a couple of gorgeous reproductions available to the mass market under the title of The Museum Collection. Curse you, Pottery Barn. It is so hard to criticize you when I am drooling over your merchandise.

I have gone on record as a critic of the American Folk Art Museum — I think that their collection, which includes both 18th-century needlework and the paintings of Henry Darger, is incoherent* — but they do have some amazing quilts. The exquisite Sunburst Quilt that is being reproduced by Pottery Barn was made by Rebecca Scattergood Savery of Philadelphia sometime in the 1830s or 1840s. Pottery Barn's catalog description does not attribute the quilt to its quilter, preferring the passive voice — "The original was crafted near Philadelphia around 1835 . . ." — even though the quilt's authorship is fairly well documented.


The Museum Collection also includes two reproductions of hooked rugs from the Shelburne Museum. While I do not find these rugs nearly as appealing as the sunburst quilt, I have enjoyed reading their catalog descriptions. When the catalog says that "hooked rugs are believed to be indigenous to America," I have visions of little woolen squares scampering through the forests or growing on beach plum bushes.

* I don't have a problem with Henry Darger — I just think that featuring ordinary handicrafts of the 18th-century alongside 20th-century "outsider art" tends to encourage a the modern viewer to perceive the 18th-century objects as idiosyncratic, rather than as the mainstream productions of an historical era.

A Cooper's Inventory

Joseph Dyer (1719-1780), son of Lydia Dyer, made his living as a cooper in Boston's North End. As a craftsman who worked in the city's rough-and-tumble waterfront district, he is just the sort of man we think of when we picture an ordinary Bostonian of the Revolutionary era.

When he died in 1780, Dyer was a relatively prosperous craftsman, but still someone who worked with his hands. The inventory from his probate records shows that he was able to accumulate many small luxuries over his lifetime. It is important to keep in mind that 18th-century probate records often show people at their most prosperous, after they have spent a lifetime gathering objects and resources, so we shouldn't assume that all coopers had such extensive household goods. Still, it is helpful to remember that the craftsmen of Boston were able to maintain an impressive (by 18th-c standards) standard of living, even after the economic difficulties of the 1760-1780 period.

The contents of Joseph Dyer's house in 1780:

Stuff and Nonsense

Via Boston1775's Twitter feed:

Museum directors enumerate myths that "should by now be history."

Grave Offerings at Arlington

My least favorite investigative reporter, Mark Benjamin, has published another frantic article about Arlington National Cemetery over at Salon. As ever, the shrillness of his writing and the shallowness of his inquiry sets my teeth on edge, but I suppose I must keep reading him if I hope to stay current on the cemetery news.

As far as I can tell, Benjamin's purpose in this new article is to whine about not receiving enough credit from the AP for his role in changing Arlington's policies on grave offerings. Last summer, Benjamin wrote a thoughtless piece about mementos left on graves being "trashed" by callous staff members. Though Arlington's policy clearly stated that items left on graves would be removed after a few days, Benjamin implied that anything less than the perpetual preservation of all grave offerings was an affront to the dignity of the soldiers buried at Arlington and a slap in the face to their grieving family members. The article was long on outrage and short on consideration of the purpose of grave offerings, public vs. private meaning, or the cycle of decay as a legitimate part of death and dying. My full critique of that article is here, though I will reprint an excerpt below the fold.

Now, the Army has embarked on a new program to preserve the mementos left on graves in section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, where many of the dead from Iraq and Afghanistan are buried. Benjamin's new article is not really about the policy change — it is about the fact that the AP did not give him credit for spurring the change. Benjamin spends the article calling editors and cemetery officials, "wondering why the AP had omitted Salon's earlier reporting in its feature on Arlington's new Section 60 policy." 

Benjamin's articles make much more sense to me now that I have read Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death. Like Mr. August Chelini, the man who sued an embalmer when he found that his mother's body had decayed a year and a half after her death, Benjamin believes that preservation of the ephemeral is both possible and desirable. According to Mitford, it is a peculiarly American way of approaching death and its trappings. It makes me think of the sadness I felt as a child when my siblings and I would buy glo-sticks at fireworks shows. We would put them in the freezer to last just a bit longer, but the knowledge that they would die made it difficult for me to enjoy them while they lasted.

Curious Expeditions

While doing some background research on a new course about the history of life and death issues, I came across an intriguing blog: Curious Expeditions.

It specializes in documenting strange and extraordinary objects, places, and events. Many of the entries tend toward the macabre — ossuaries, medical museums, mourning jewelry — and might hold some interest for those of you interested in the material culture of death.

Loring Silver Bowl at Boston 1775

If your interest in material culture runs toward the finer stuff, check out J.L. Bell's series of posts about Joshua Loring's silver bowl over at Boston 1775.

Authentic Fabrics

Via Jezebel, this article in the Smithsonian Magazine highlights the work of the wonderfully named Rabbit Goody, who weaves historically accurate fabrics for Hollywood costumes. Some of her big projects include the John Adams HBO miniseries and work with various historic homes.

Textiles are certainly not my specialty, but I love them. I have several coverlets from Family Heirloom Weavers in Red Lion, PA and they are so wonderfully cozy-looking. Warm, too!

Bostonian Society Exhibit

Earlier in the week, Boston 1775 linked to a nice little online exhibit put on by the Bostonian Society (the people who run the Old State House). The exhibit features material objects that belonged to or were created by 18th-century women and girls. The interface is not obvious (click on numbers on the watch face to access different objects), but the pictures are lovely.

I especially enjoyed the mourning ring (pictured above) and the 1821 coffin plate. If I remember correctly, there is a character in one of Lucy Maud Montgomery's later Anne novels who collects coffin plates. As I child, I thought that that sounded like an interesting hobby, though, now that I think about it, I wonder how she got her hands on them.

Anglo-Saxon Treasure Discovered in UK

This story kind of makes me want to get a metal detector.

Mementos at Arlington

I've been reading Salon's series on "Grave Offenses" at Arlington National Cemetery and I have to say, I'm pretty underwhelmed. Despite the author's outraged tone, there seems to be little cause for the sensational titles. Coming in the wake of the Burr Oak disaster, I think it's somewhat irresponsible of Salon to sensationalize this series which, as far as I can tell, has uncovered no malicious intent or actual wrongdoing.

The first installment made a few serious (though unsubstantiated) accusations — some bodies are not buried beneath the correct headstones — that, if true, are truly troubling. Other complaints — the computer database project is taking longer than expected — are par for the course and hardly outrageous. The boss sounds like a jerk, and, should the investigation find that he did mistreat his employees, he should be punished. That said, Salon presents no evidence to back up its most sensational claims about the actual treatment of bodies at Arlington.

Today's follow-up piece examined the treatment of mementos left at veterans' graves. The author, Mark Benjamin, writes in high dudgeon about personal artifacts being "trashed" at Arlington, rather than catalogued and preserved as they are at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial:

The sun was out after several days of rain . . . Left out in the rain to rot were crayon drawings by children who had lost a parent, photographs of soldiers with their babies, painted portraits and thank-you notes from grade-school kids to fallen soldiers they had never known. Colors of artworks ran together. Photos were blurred and wilted. Poems and letters were illegible wads of wet paper. A worker in a brown uniform wandered among the graves, blasting the headstones with a power washer without regard to what was left of the mementos -- or the obviously uncomfortable mourners looking on. Some items got further soaked. The worker blasted others across the grass. Many of them would end up in a black trash bin in the cemetery's service area.

Benjamin goes on to interview family members who are "distraught" to discover that their grave offerings are destroyed after they are collected during regular cemetery maintenance. He is shocked at the paltry collection of artifacts preserved by cemetery staff — medals, uniforms, children's drawings — which pales in comparison to the vast collection of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. "What war stories had been lost forever? What words from a father to a son or wife to a husband were sitting in some landfill? What meaningful personal artifacts had been relegated to the Arlington trash bin?"

Benjamin has two major objections: the artifacts are treated disrespectfully and they are not being preserved for posterity. The first seems quite overblown — he admits that he visited after several days of heavy rain and the "disrespect" he witnesses seems to consist mainly of soggy letters that have blown about. Does he want Arlington to build a dome? And yes, items left at graves are often removed and discarded in order to keep the cemetery uncluttered. I don't think that this comes as a surprise to anyone. The word "trashed" seems harsh, but I haven't read anything that suggests to me that the Arlington staff has treated grave offerings with callous disregard.

The second complaint is more interesting to me. As an historian, I'd love to see every artifact ever created preserved, but that's a very selfish impulse.

I started out on Benjamin's side, but his over-the-top indignation lost me by the end of the article. His major complaint is that Arlington's collection policies are not the same as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial's. Of course they aren't. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial's policy of collecting, cataloguing, and preserving every photograph, flower, and teddy bear left by visitors is extraordinary, not routine. The collection is vast and growing and is already a valuable resource for scholars.

Benjamin laments that no similar collection exists at Arlington, but that strikes me as an unreasonable standard. No cemetery saves all of the grave offerings — how could it? Set aside the logistics of collecting artifacts from Arlington's 600+ acres vs. the VVM's 500 linear feet, set aside the logistics of cataloging and preserving all of those tons of artifacts, set aside the fact that Arlington has never made a commitment to building a collection (in fact, they ask people not to leave items other than flowers). Should Arlington save the offerings? I'm not so sure.

What is the function of a grave offering? Is it meant for the historian's eye? Or does the historian commit an act of violence merely by gazing? Does it do its work in an archive? Or is it the exchange between the bereaved and the beloved that matters?

As historians, we want to know everything, read everything, and speak for others. We want to dig below the surface, expose everything to the light, claim understanding. It is very hard for us to accept the sacredness of silence and the utility of decay. I would like nothing better than to dig up every body in the slave section of the Newport Common Burying Ground and count the beads, examine the bones, analyze the offerings. What stories I could tell! But I have accepted that those offerings are not for me. It's why I don't support the idea that gravestones should be removed from cemeteries in order to preserve the art — decay is part of the life of that object and it can never mean the same thing in a museum as it did on a hill overlooking the harbor.

Why should we save a letter left on a soldier's grave? Why is it disrespectful to let it dissolve in the rain, soak into the soil, or fly away in the wind?

Benjamin's article reminded me of a seminar I attended when I was in high school at a local historical society. A preservationist from the SPNEA was speaking about preservation techniques for textiles and furniture to an audience of amateurs with attics full of family relics. The preservationist's specialty was quilts, and her eyes widened with wonder when one elderly woman brought forward an ancient quilt that had passed from generation to generation in her family. It was a beautiful quilt — intricate, colorful, and very, very old by quilt standards. When the woman started talking about how their family uses the quilt for their annual family picnic, the preservationist's eyes just about fell out of her head. There was a lot of stammering about wrapping it mylar and NEVER EVER taking outside ever again. The woman looked at the preservationist like she was crazy and said something along the lines of, "everyone in my family for eight generations has sat on this quilt, and you'd better believe it's going to see nine and ten."

What is the value of a quilt? Should it be protected from moths and studied by professors? Or should it decay with use by a family that values it for what it means to them, not for what it tells us about the social and cultural history of quilting?

I'm a professional scholar of material culture. I love an old quilt. I love an old letter. If I had a box full of grave offerings from the 18th century, I'd faint with delight. But I'm not troubled by the treatment of artifacts at Arlington as described in the Salon article. The artifacts are not preserved, but they seem not to be mistreated. What's wrong with that?

Five Pieces of Junk

From Cracked: Five Pieces of Junk That Turned Out to be Invaluable Artifacts

Thank You, Winterthur!

I'm back from Delaware, where I had the honor of presenting my paper on Pompe Stevens at the Winterthur Museum. I got great feedback and a lot of enthusiastic praise, which was very reassuring. I was nervous about speaking slowly and clearly, but it all went well.

I had never been  to Winterthur before and I was duly impressed. During one of the breaks, I was able to take a tour of the house, which is crammed with 80,000 amazing artifacts — furniture, paintings, china, textiles, silver, architectural features, etc. I enjoyed the Society of the Cincinnati china and the giant punchbowls near the formal staircase. If you like Early American material culture — particularly when it takes the form of high-end decorative arts — this museum is truly a must-see.

Bellarmine Jug

Due to Harvard's insane semester schedule, I am currently in the midst of a paper-writing frenzy instead of a relaxing holiday break. Thus, posting has been and will continue to be light as I devote every impulse to write toward the writing that has due dates attached to it.

In the meantime, I will post some pictures of my Christmas presents. One of the best ones is this Bellarmine Jug from Pete, who very sweetly remembered my affinity for them.

We don't know how old it is or where it came from — our only clue is that it came from an antiques dealer in the Netherlands.

I haven't had time to research the medallion, which may provide some clues. Unfortunately, it's a but difficult to search for this particular medallion on the internet, since all Bellarmine jugs feature bearded men.

I like his hat.

Deep Thought of the Day

Has anyone written a cultural history of messages written on paper currency by ordinary citizens?

I have a dollar bill in my wallet now that says, "Impeach Bush." This one says, "Free the Werewolves." And there's always Where's George?

If someone were to write that book, I would read it.

Amending Imported Stones

When I was in Maine, I noticed that many of the 18th-century graveyards were dominated by stones from the big Boston carvers, particularly the Fosters of Dorchester. This makes sense due to the close ties — social, economic, and political — between coastal Maine and Massachusetts. Besides the prevalence of Dorchester-carved slate, one of the most notable things about Maine gravestones is the vast number of epitaphs that emphasize the deceased's connections with Massachusetts.

In addition, the readily-available stone in southeastern Maine is crappy for making gravestones (the stones made of local stone are typically severely deteriorated and illegible), so it makes sense that anyone with enough money would send home to Boston for slate.

The quality of the lettering on these stones indicates that the epitaphs were carved by professionals in Boston. This raises an interesting question: how did they know what to carve? Unlike local carvers who might have known the deceased or his/her family, urban carvers serving a rural market must have received orders by letter (this is probably true of any of the larger carving workshops). I don't know who wrote those letters, but it seems that somewhere along the line, there was a failure of communication.

I say this because I've seen several slate gravestones in outlying communities on which an unskilled person has altered the dead person's name.

The Joshua A. Hopkins stone (1815) in Wellfleet, MA, out near the tip of Cape Cod, is a good example of this pattern. The high-quality slate and elegance of the engraving suggest that this stone was carved near Boston and shipped across Massachusetts Bay (though I should note that I'm not 100% sure — the urn is fairly simple and could have been carved by a local). That far out on the cape, there's very little native stone worth carving. When the stone arrived, someone was obviously dissatisfied because the letterer left out Hopkins' middle initial. Since the rest of the stone is run-of-the-mill (not even a verse), it's possible that a friend of the Hopkins family ordered the stone while in Boston and didn't think to include personal details. Regardless of who ordered the stone, someone in Wellfleet was disappointed and did his or her best to correct the omission.

The Abigail Grosvenor stone (1763) in Pomfret, CT has a similar correction. It's a Boston-area slate stone (probably from the Foster shop) with competent lettering, though, to be honest, it looks like they let a high-level apprentice do the lettering because it's not as crisp as it should be. If the original lettering looks a little rough, the prominent addition of "JUNR" looks like it was gouged out with a sharp stone. If the text had been carved by a local, it would make sense to have the same hand make the correction. Instead, a much less skilled carver hacked out the missing designation.

Of course, a local carver could mess up name just as well as a carver who had to send his stone 100 miles. I'll put together a collection of name corrections and we'll see whether there are any differences between small-time carvers working in a local market and large operations serving distant communities.

Mourning Under the Willows

 

In the years following George Washington's death in 1799, popular mourning art was all the rage. One trendy motif was an elaboration on the urn-and-willow design, featuring a mourner leaning on a memorial obelisk under a willow tree. Sometimes, the obelisk will have the name of the deceased or a short epitaph painted/engraved/embroidered on it.

This motif can be found in British mourning jewelry from the last quarter of the 18th century. The English bracelet at right was made to memorialize Ann Read, who died on March 8, 1789. By the way, I am a big fan of the Art of Mourning website — they have lots of great jewelry and other mourning art and, what's even better, great pictures of it.

While the mourner is typically a woman (or group of women), male mourners appear on jewelry and gravestones commemorating the deaths of young women. The English mourning ring at left is a man's ring. Its inscription is dedicated to Elizabeth Legrew (d. 4 July 1791 at age 34). Similarly, the gravestone at the top of this post memorializes Sally Gardner of Harvard, MA (d. 18 February 1818 at age 21). Presumably, the man leaning on her obelisk represents her husband, Jerome Gardner. This is a beautiful stone — I love the delicate vines and the hat.

This design was rendered in all sorts of media during the early 19th century. In addition to gravestones and jewelry, it shows up in lithographs, watercolors, and needlework. One influential lithograph entitled "America Lamenting Her Loss" (at right, click to enlarge) was reproduced by the thousands, popularizing the motif across the United States. For more on popular representations of Washington following his death, see "Reading Portrait Prints: New Ways of Seeing Old Faces" by Wendy Wick Reaves over at Common-Place.


While it is not possible to draw a direct line from any particular lithograph to the watercolors of Eunice Griswold Holcombe Pinney or the needlework of young girls like Sarah Sabin, it is easy to see how so-called "folk" artists borrowed designs from commercially-produced images.

I don't mean to knock folk art, but I do mean to undermine the romanticized idea that "folk" art is produced by people who are isolated from popular culture and the market. At the American Folk Art Museum in New York, the material manifestations of 19th-century popular culture are exhibited in the same space as the works of Henry Darger and other "outsider" artists. This annoys me because the organization of the museum puts popular culture from an earlier era on the same footing as weird modern stuff, implying that both are out of the mainstream because they are unfamiliar to the modern viewer. I think that this fallacious equation gives people the wrong idea about 19th-century culture by calling to mind a naive and pastoral people who toiled away in simple honesty, close to the land, uncorrupted by the evils of modernity. Also, I object to applying the term "folk" to Henry Darger because "folk" implies a tradition maintained over a period of time by, you know, some folk, and Darger is a solitary loon.


The mourner-with-obelisk motif is an example of a design that originated with high-end European artisans (jewelers, in this case), was popularized through the commercial press, and was eventually adopted by obscure artists whose work is now regarded as "folk." I have nothing against early American "folk" art — I love the aesthetic and think that popular art opens a window into the lives of early American women.  Still, we shouldn't fetishize vernacular expressions of popular motifs. The Mary Frances Stoddard stone (1818, Providence, RI) is charming, but it is also material evidence of a far-reaching network of popular and commercial culture that stretched from elite English parlors to the humble artisans of New England.

Vandalism in Malden

As I noted in a previous post, the Bell Rock Cemetery in Malden, MA is not in particularly good shape. The ground is littered with debris (glass, trash, condoms, etc.) and many of the gravestones are broken or knocked over.

Many graveyards have broken/toppled gravestones and it isn't always evidence of vandalism — lawnmowers, weather, and the ravages of time all take their toll. In Malden, there is clear evidence of vandalism. Even if some of the stones haven't been broken deliberately, many have been defaced on purpose.

Here are some examples:

These are only a few of the pictures I took — other examples of vandalism were more subtle (drawing on soul effigies with pencil, initials carved into stones, etc.)

I don't know whether anything can be done about this. I was thinking about getting in touch with James Cahill, the Superintendent of Cemeteries in Malden, but I don't know if that would do any good. There are only three public cemeteries in the town, so he must already know about what's going on at Bell Rock, right? Maybe we could put together some sort of preservation/cleanup effort. What do you think, gravestone aficionados?

The earliest stone at Bell Rock is dated 1670. Just to let you know what is at stake, here's one of the stones that has not yet been mutilated:

William Park

The gravestone for the six Childs Children was carved by the William Park shop in Groton (thx, RJO). This workshop's designs are characterized by deep-set "portraits" of the deceased, which are often framed by small arched or round windows (see the Jonas Stone stone (1790), Lexington, MA, above). The portraits are stylized and are not necessarily faithful to the person's countenance, but they do seem to approximate the person's gender and age.

One interesting thing the Park workshop is that it produced some double stones with unusual, asymmetrical designs. Usually, when two people are buried under the same stone, the stone will bear either a single design or two similar designs. The John and Leanard Locke stone (1791) is an example of this. Other examples include the Williams brothers stone, the John and Mary Pitman stone, and the Wait and William Tripp stone.

The Park workshop bucked convention on at least two occasions. The Benjamin and Mary Cutler stone (1776) in Lexington has two different tympanum designs. Benjamin's side of the stone features a winged soul effigy, while Mary's side has a portrait similar to those of the Childs daughters'.

There is a similar stone from the same year in Fitchburg (photo credit RJO). This one is dedicated to infant siblings, Israel and Molly Garfield.

As on the Cutler stone, the boy/man is commemorated with a winged soul effigy, while the girl/woman has an un-winged portrait under an arch. I don't know whether there's any ideological significance to this, but it strikes me as odd. Looking back over my photographs, I couldn't find any examples from this workshop in which a woman's or girl's stone features a winged figure. That may just be because I wasn't looking for those stones when I was in the field. I'll keep an eye open for them next time.