230 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
PERPETUAL CARE of MONUMENTS and MAUSOLEUMS 
An address before the Norfolk Convention of the Association of American Cemetery 
Superintendents, by James Scorgie, Supt. Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge,'^ Mass. 
Someone of an inquiring as well as crit- 
ical turn of mind has asked when the great 
American novel is to be written ; when the 
purely American opera is to be given ; 
when will we see a style of architecture 
which will characterize the genius and 
spirit of the American nation as did the 
architectural efforts, say, of Egypt or 
Greece? Perhaps, like our friend, M. Jour- 
dain, who discovered late in life that since 
childhood he had been speaking prose, we 
may have all of these things with us today. 
Those looking on this age from the per- 
spective of a century or two hence will see 
many things that have escaped our notice. 
There is one institution, however, which 
we may claim as purely American, Ameri- 
can in its conception, and here also it has 
achieved its greatest success. The Garden 
Cemetery, begun in New England, and car- 
ried out to a greater extent and elabora- 
tion in the West — that land of “the large 
and charitable air” — than has been attempt- 
ed elsewhere. It is true there were so- 
called garden cemeteries before Dr. Bige- 
low began his efforts. The cypress groves 
of the Turk have been so characterized, 
but a heterogeneous mass of trees placed 
without order or thought at the head and 
foot of the graves is not a garden, and the 
famed Pere La Chaise was a garden 
turned into a cemetery, not a cemetery 
made as a garden. In fact, so little altera- 
tion did it make on the ideas and methods 
of burial with the French people that, in 
1839, twenty-five years after Pere La Chaise 
had been opened, the opening of a new 
civic cemetery at Montmagny was the cause 
of public scandal and led to serious riots. 
Living out of doors may have to some 
extent suggested and contributed to the 
success of burial parks here, but it was in- 
evitable — when Church and State separated, 
as they did early in the history of our 
New England towns, and burial became a 
dvic rather than an ecclesiastical business 
— that the afflicted should seek some other 
avenue for the emotion satisfied by burial 
near the Church. As a further evidence 
of this, we note that the first garden ceme- 
tery in England was established by Dis- 
senters. because of the restrictions placed 
on burials in the cemeteries controlled by 
the Established Church. Abney Park Cem- 
etery, established at Stoke Newington in- 
1839, was not only distinguished as the 
home of the noted hymnist, Isaac Watts, 
but the burial place, so tradition avers, of 
the body of Oliver Cromwell, after his 
grave in Westminster had been desecrated 
at the Restoration. In this case, while a 
garden was made into a cemetery, a nur- 
sery was established in connection with it, 
where thousands of trees and shrubs were 
propagated with the intention of continu- 
ing its character as a garden instead of 
handing it over to the tender mercies of 
the monument maker. 
Nearly every city ©f consequence now 
has its garden cemetery, and nearly all of 
them are laid out with such care and taste 
that they have become, beyond question, a 
leading feature of American municipal life, 
and while public parks have, of late years 
— as in the nature of the case — gone be- 
yond the cemeteries, I venture to think 
that these owe some of their success by 
following the footsteps of the makers of 
burial grounds. 
The problem often in the minds of some 
cemetery authorities as the cities extend 
the area to and around their property, is 
as to their final form of management and 
their destiny. Some recent discussions in 
California and elsewhere have accentuated 
this question to a marked degree. It seems 
to me that just because these places have, 
in most cases, been laid out with taste, 
they are nearly all capable of being re- 
constructed to meet new conditions, but 
whatever befalls some of the managements, 
or of the cemetery with or without funds, 
it will be in the interest of the municipali- 
ties to keep them as open breathing spaces, 
having, if not the same mission as the 
public park, at least the capacity to give 
but little less than the same benefit. If I 
were to enumerate the many beautiful parks 
now used as cemeteries, there would be so 
much blushing in this assembly as to in- 
crease materially the temperature of the 
room. Let me mention only the efforts of 
Adolph Strauch, and our beloved brother, 
McCarthy, and I think you will agree with 
me that whatever may be the ups and 
downs of public opinion as to burial and 
burial places, municipalities that are lucky 
enough to have such spaces within their 
bounds will not willingly let them be neg- 
lected or converted to any less sacred use 
than that to which they were dedicated. 
By an act of the Massachusetts Legis- 
lature, dated June 23, 1831, the Massachu- 
setts Horticultural Society was authorized 
to establish Mt. Auburn Cemetery. Be- 
cause of certain history, not pertinent to 
this paper, the owners of lots, through an 
act of the legislature dated March 31, 1835, 
became sole proprietors of the cemetery. 
In that act the corporation was empow- 
ered to receive money for the perpetual 
care of buildings, tombs, monuments, etc. 
It was not, however, until 1876 that the 
corporation began to sell land with a pro- 
vision for its perpetual care. Forest Hills 
Cemetery, and undoubtedly a number of 
other cemeteries elsewhere, had adopted 
this plan some years before, but the con- 
ception of the perpetual preservation and 
care of a burial place is much earlier than 
our civilization. 
Thanks to my friend, Mr. King, of 
Springfield, I have been able to see in 
New York City a tomb for which per- 
petual care was arranged as early as 2650 
B. C. It is the tomb of a distinguished 
Egyptian, named Perneb, and is now in 
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New 
York. It was common for the kings and 
rulers of Egypt, not only to provide for 
such religious services as they consid- 
ered necessary after death, but to devote 
estates to the preservation of the tomb 
itself. Thus, to quote from the pamphlet 
issued by the Museum authorities: 
“a noble of Perneb’s position often en- 
sured this provision by leaving an 
endowment, the income from which was 
to be devoted to the maintenance of the 
tomb and its ritual.” 
I have not been able to ascertain the par- 
ticular character of the document, or, as 
we would call it today, the perpetual care 
contract, but it appears they followed 
what I call the pernicious practice of 
marking a lot in conspicuous letters, “Per- 
petual Care,” for on the walls of one of 
the passages we find figures — quoting 
again from the pamphlet — 
“walking in the direction of the inner 
room and bear in baskets, or in the 
hand, jars of beer, joints of meat, live 
birds and other good things.” 
FIG. 2. GOOD ARCHITECTURE, BUT LACKS MASSIVE STONE WORK. 
