The Graveyard

In early New England, most people were buried in graveyards near the meetinghouse, though some were laid to rest in family or neighborhood plots. Some graves were never marked, while others were identified only by wooden boards or unshaped rocks, but more commonly they were marked by stone slabs, usually of slate, sandstone, or marble, inscribed with chisels and set up as permanent memorials. Often a pair of stones marked a grave, with one at the head and a smaller one at the feet, and headstones recorded the names and ages of the dead and often something about their lives or how they died. Graveyards changed over time: before 1800 or so, burying grounds were usually overgrown with weeds and rarely visited, but families and communities gradually paid more attention to them, and by the mid-1800s they were becoming the landscaped cemeteries familiar today. Early New England gravestones were also often adorned with carved ornamentation and symbolic images reflecting changing views about death, including skulls and other reminders of death in the 1600s to 1700s, winged faces picturing the soul leaving the body in the 1700s, and urns and willows, classically inspired symbols of death and hope, in the early 1800s.

Sturbridge, Massachusetts · United States