politicians and plenty of children. Some 

 remains were moved from the Christ 

 Church cemetery, explaining the 

 presence of tombstones from the 1790s. 



The cemetery mirrors almost two 

 centuries of history of the city and 

 Craven County. And it is recognized as 

 one of the state's finest collections of 

 18th- and 19th-century gravestones, 

 markers and monuments — most 

 erected when New Bern was the state's 

 largest town 



soldiers. The largest gravesite in the 

 cemetery, it commemorates the dead 

 from one of five wars that sent New 

 Bernians to the grave. 



"It's really the most amazing thing 

 in here," Green says. 



Standing 18 feet high on a pedestal, 

 the likeness of a Confederate soldier 

 keeps watch over the remains. Fifteen 

 feet underground, extending the breadth 

 of the monument's circular base, lie the 



mm 



and an impor- 

 tant seat of 

 commerce and 

 maritime trade. 



Cedar 

 Grove boasts 

 monuments in 

 the form of 

 draped urns on 

 pedestals, 

 classical 

 columns, 

 obelisks and 

 three-dimen- 

 sional figure 

 sculptures. 

 Aged tombs 

 covered with 

 large slabs 



contain quaint inscriptions, and moss- 

 grown vaults are intermingled with 

 modern and expensive monuments of 

 polished granite and spotless marble. 



Many of the monuments and 

 tombstones stand in plots surrounded 

 by low brick or marl walls. Cast-iron 

 fences, popular in the mid- to late- 

 1 800s, contain family plots. The most 

 common tombstone designs are the 

 vertical slabs of white marble shaped 

 and carved at the top, but they also 

 include the early horizontal slabs 

 supported by low walls. Several more 

 sophisticated versions of this design 

 support the slabs on six urn-shaped 

 marble balusters. 



These monuments are traditional 

 for the era, but Cedar Grove also has a 

 couple of features that distinguish it 

 from other cemeteries. One is the 

 Confederate veterans monument that 

 marks a mass burial of about 60 



A housclikc mausoleum in C cdar Qrove 



soldiers' skeletons in a vaulted grave. 

 Their coffins long ago rotted, the bodies 

 face east. 



Another unusual feature are three 

 houselike tombs, the likes of which you 

 won't see anywhere else in North 

 Carolina, Green says. These unusual 

 graves adopted the building conventions 

 of the early and mid- 19th century in 

 their bricks, brickwork and gabled roofs. 

 Three of the original five survive. Two 

 are family tombs with subterranean 

 graves 3 to 4 feet down and shelves 

 where the coffins were stacked. Green 

 says they appear to have started out as 

 normal ground burials that were taken 

 up when room became scarce. A 

 structure was built, the old tombstones 

 stacked against the wall and the coffins 

 stored on shelves. 



In the 1850s, when these tombs 

 were being built, the cemetery had a 

 much different appearance than it does 



today, Green says. A romanticism was 

 attached to graveyards in the mid- 19th 

 century, when the gate was built around 

 Cedar Grove and trees and flowers were 

 planted generously throughout the 

 grounds. Cemeteries that were laid out 

 at this time — well after Cedar Grove 

 was established — had winding paths, 

 knolls, vistas, valleys, dips, streams and 

 lakes. In an effort to romanticize the 

 rectangular, gridlike cemetery, a 



goldfish pond 

 was added in the 

 Victorian era. 



"This was a 

 very romantic 

 period. People 

 liked gardenlike 

 cemeteries," 

 Green says. 

 "But they were 

 stuck with this 

 rectangular 

 plan they'd 

 created (in 

 Cedar Grove). 

 So they built 

 this romantic 

 wall around it, 

 brought in cedar 

 trees and more 



exotic plantings." 



At the time, people would come to 

 the cemeteries to picnic or to stroll. And 

 this pastime lived on into the 1900s, 

 particularly in New Bern, which didn't 

 really have any parks. "The cemetery 

 was the prettiest place in town," Green 

 says. "There were 10 times as many 

 trees, flowering shrubs and exotic 

 plantings." 



In fact, during the Depression, 

 Green says his father earned his Boy 

 Scout merit badges studying nature at 

 the cemetery. That was the place to find 

 squirrels, birds and raccoons. 



But the tradition of visiting the 

 cemetery and its dead has waned, 

 lament Green and Goodwin. People 

 just don't do it anymore. Perhaps if 

 they did, however, they'd learn that in 

 their beautiful solitude and time-worn 

 monuments, cemeteries offer a unique 

 version of local history and heritage. □ 



6 MARCH/APRIL 1997 



