HC. DOCUMENTS 

 APR 4 W7 



NORTH CARQUMA 



rith a little information 

 about tombstones, you can learn 

 some interesting things about a 

 person — or a person's family — 

 without reading the names, dates 

 or epitaphs. 



The gravemarker can speak 

 volumes in its design. 



In the mid- to late- 1700s, a 

 skull — or death's head — repre- 

 sented a negative, final attitude 

 toward death. An unusual example 

 of one can be found at the grave of 

 Josiah Howard, "A young man of 

 surprising ingenuity," who died in 

 1759 at age 22. He's buried at the 

 Christ Episcopal Church graveyard 

 in New Bern. 



The skull was first used on 

 tombstones by New England 

 puritans to symbolize the body's 

 mortality, says M. Ruth Little, an 

 architectural historian and Raleigh- 

 based consultant. In the 1700s, it 

 would have been unseemly for a 

 puritan to expect eternal life, and it 

 would have been offensive for a 

 gravestone to indicate that a person 

 was going to heaven, she says. Such 

 rewards had to be earned. 



The trends in New England 

 gravestone art extended into coastal 

 North Carolina as people sent away 

 for engraved markers. Because no 

 stone was native to the coast, 

 anyone who wanted a carved 

 marker had to be wealthy enough to 

 order it. Not until the 1830s did 

 anyone in North Carolina carve 

 tombstones commercially, Little 

 says. 



"Ordinary people didn't have 

 stone markers in eastern North 

 Carolina," she says. "They were 

 within the reach of a very small 

 percentage of people." 



The gloomy death's head — 

 and views toward death — contin- 

 ued to evolve in the 1700s. Wings 

 were added to the skull to symbol- 

 ize a heaven-bound soul. 



What Can You Read 

 From a Tombstone? 



By Jeannie Fans Norris 



A cherub eventually replaced the 

 death's head in the late- 1700s. The 

 cherubic face still had wings at the ears, 

 and it represented a more hopeful, 

 religious view toward death and 

 resurrection. It can be found in the older 

 cemeteries, including Christ Church and 

 the Old Burying Ground. Epitaphs of the 

 time began to speak of going home, 

 going to a reward and reuniting with 

 God. 



"The symbolism became hopeful," 

 Little says. "The skull got flesh. At that 

 time, the death rate was declining. Death 

 wasn't as present in people's lives." 



A heavenly reward was also 

 represented by a hand with an upward- 

 pointed finger. 



The urn was a secular sign that 

 appeared in the early 1 9th century and 

 reflected a neoclassical style of tomb- 

 stone art. It borrowed from the ancient 

 Roman tradition of cremating the body 

 and placing the ashes in an urn. Eastern 

 North Carolinians used the urn as a 

 symbol of death, although they most 

 certainly didn't know about or practice 

 cremations at the time, says Bennett 

 Moss, chairman of the Old Burying 

 Ground Committee for the Beaufort 

 Historical Association. 



A shroud, often draped over an urn 

 or an obelisk, and a weeping willow tree 



were signs of mourning. 



The lamb was a symbol for a 

 child who had died. 



A dove represented youthful 

 innocence and a soul flying away. 



And a tree or obelisk broken in 

 half also represented a young life cut 

 short. 



Clasped hands represented a 

 husband and wife, Moss says. They 

 were always displayed with the 

 husband's hand reaching beneath the 

 wife's hand, he says. The handshake 

 could also symbolize God welcom- 

 ing a soul into heaven and promising 

 eternal life, says Little. 



An anchor could represent one 

 of two things: that the deceased was 

 a captain or a spiritual anchor for the 

 family, says John Green, a historic 

 preservation consultant in New Bern. 



Confederate soldiers' graves are 

 denoted by Maltese crosses and, in 

 Cedar Grove, small square stones. 



The cypress stakes were placed 

 for people who did not import stone 

 from New England in the late 1700s 

 and 1800s. 



A bricked grave with a large, 

 rounded dome was a sign of afflu- 

 ence in the 1700s and early 1800s. 

 The Old Burying Ground holds 

 examples of these aboveground 

 markers, which were used into the 

 1840s. 



A brownstone or slate tomb- 

 stone with little decorative art was 

 probably erected in the 1700s. North 

 Carolina doesn't have engraved 

 stone markers prior to the mid- 

 17508, Little says. 



Fine-grained white marble 

 usually marked the grave of a 

 wealthy person in the early 1800s. 

 Granite began to replace marble in 

 the early 1900s. 



A grave that conspicuously 

 omits a birth date or age might have 

 contained the remains of a woman 

 who didn't want her age known — 

 even in death, Moss says. □ 



COASTWATCH 1 1 



