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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
Much has been written in recent years about 19th-century rural cemeteries. Beginning with the establishment of Boston's Mount Auburn Cemetery in 1831, these rural retreats rapidly replaced existing church burial grounds and by the 1850s had led to the development of urban parks and garden suburbs as well. Like urban parks and garden suburbs, rural cemeteries were meant to provide relief from the crowding, grid-iron regularity, and grittiness of the country's rapidly expanding industrial centers by embracing the openness, spontaneity, and verdant freshness of nature. Trees, shrubs, and flowering plants punctuated and enhanced the gentle contours of the land; lakes and roadways reflected and extended nature's beauties; manmade structures, too, nestled into the undulating rhythms of the land, exhibiting a oneness with the varied and carefully orchestrated richness of the natural setting. The garden suburb and the rural cemetery shared a further distinction of being located on the periphery of existing cities and were frequently entered through imposing gates that effectively announced their separateness from the surrounding terrain. Even more fundamental, however, but not fully understood, is the fact that at the core of the creation of both the rural cemetery and the garden suburb was a desire to emphasize and consolidate the American family by providing it with a new physical setting and a new set of symbols. By the Civil War, virtually every large American city had a rural cemetery, where its dead were buried in ample family lots that were adorned with imposing family monuments, and set off from other family lots by elaborate iron fences or stone copings similar to those that edged the family home.
Author's note: The author wishes to thank the Center for Metropolitan Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis for its generous support for this project and officials at Bellefontaine Cemetery. Versions of this paper were presented at the College Art Association meeting in Los Angeles in February, 1985 and at the Midcontinent American Studies Association meeting at the University of Iowa in April, 1984.
1. Cemeteries are set off by gates far more frequently than suburbs, although in St. Louis gates and miniature gatekeepers' cottages are extremely common in both suburbs and at the entrances to the city's many private residential streets.
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56. Quoted from an unidentified Boston newspaper in The Picturesque Pocket Companion, p. 34.Google Scholar
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68. Whether these carvings are individualized portraits of the deceased or merely stock figures is difficult to determine. Stock figures were extremely common in the 19th Century and were often attired in historical rather than contemporary clothing, as both the Bennett and the Waters figures appear to be.
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70. In 1850 single lots were available in two classes at a cost for adults of six and four dollars, and for children under ten, of three and two dollars, respectively. In 1883 there were three classes of single lots costing fifteen, ten, and seven dollars for adults, and nine, six, and four dollars for children under ten. See The Charter and By-Laws of the Rural Cemetery Association, pp. 20–21Google Scholar; and Bellefontaine Cemetery Association Original Charter (1883), p. 24.Google Scholar
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