Headstone, William Pepperrell Hale, 1738, Portland, 1966
Item Contributed by
Maine Historical Society
What do you usually see on a gravestone? What is the difference between a cemetery and a graveyard? What can be found at a burial site?
Pictured: Headstone of William Pepperell Hale, d. 1738, Portland.
What is material culture?
Material culture refers to objects created by a person or group of people for a specific purpose. Material culture generally refers to utilitarian, everyday things, and can encompass a wide variety of objects including but not limited to: bowls and other vessels, tools, utensils, clothing, toys, medical equipment, and furniture.
Pictured: leather fire bucket, Thomaston, 1793. What might this object of material culture tell you about the person who owned it or the person who made it? What purpose does it have?
Historians often use a combination of written documents, visual art, and material culture to try to reconstruct important parts of what life was like for a type of person or group at a certain moment in history.
Pictured: Dedication on the flyleaf of a Bible, Farmington, 1852.
Carved eagle feet for Anshe Sfard synagogue Torah ark, Portland, ca. 1917
Item Contributed by
Maine Historical Society
Many parts of material culture can tell us about how religion influenced daily life for communities at various points in Maine history. Several communities were built up around places of worship - as soon as a town had a large enough population (usually immigrants or migrants from other parts of the state or country) of a particular religion, newcomers of that religion would move to the part of town close to the related place of worship.
Pictured: Carved eagle feet for the Torah ark at the Chassidic Anshe Sfard synagogue in Portland, ca. 1917. The ark likely held three Torahs.
Is a gravestone part of material culture? What can you learn from a gravestone?
Pictured: Field stone of Jonathan Watson, d. 1728, Eastern Cemetery, Portland.
Maine was home to several profitable granite quarries. Most of the stone used to create gravestones was easily found locally. Slate was the preferred material in the 17th-early 19th centuries, but granite soon became popular, as well as marble.
Puritan communities wanted their gravestones to be able to last forever, so wooden markers were gradually replaced with stronger stone.
Pictured: granite sample, ca. 1900. Samples such as this were created to show customers the quality of the granite from a specific quarry.
Upright headstones, rather than tablets placed directly in the ground with the epitaphs facing upward, also withstood harsh New England weather better than a face-up stone could.
Over time, we begin to see the popular use of a number of different images carved onto headstones. What images do you see represented on this headstone?
Pictured: Headstone of Ruthe Lyman, d. 1785, York Village. Ruthe's headstone shows a cherub (winged face) motif.
Early American headstone iconography is similar to the iconography found in England, Ireland, and Scotland from the same period, but new styles were developed throughout New England as people moved away from cities and began to populate new regions.
Some of the most common icons found at the top of 18th and early 19th century headstones are death's heads, cherubs, and an urn and willow tree.
Pictured: Headstone of Moses Johnson, d. 1773, Portland.
The death's head is a winged human skull, sometimes also seen in combination with an hourglass, winged hourglass, or, as in this example, crossed bones. A skull with crossed bones was common on several Scots-Irish headstones, a tradition carried over from the Ulster region in northeastern Ireland.
Death's head icons are generally taken to symbolize the concept of mortality, or the soul in flight.
Pictured: Headstone of Mary Means McLellan, d. 1764, Eastern Cemetery, Portland.
The cherub is represented by a winged human face. Some scholarship suggests that cherubic figures might actually be putti: Classical winged, childlike figures with no religious context found in popular Rococo art and architecture. Other historians suggest that the cherub represents the soul in flight after death.
This cherub shows a remarkably naturalistic human face.
Pictured: Headstone of Mary Green, d. 1807, Portland.
The urn and willow tree combination is another motif found on several gravestones spanning the Colonial, Revolutionary, and Victorian periods, and is still in use today.
Rather than focusing on the idea of the interred individual's death (the death's head), or their soul ascending to heaven (the cherub), the urn and willow is taken to symbolize remembrance of the life the individual lived. The willow is bowed as if in mourning.
This headstone shows an interesting combination of the urn and willow and a cherub (carved onto the urn). It also shows Classical-style columns on either side of the central icon.
Pictured: Headstone of Mary Freeman, d. 1785, Portland.
Prominent members of society, such as religious leaders and town officials, often had more elaborate headstones and longer epitaphs than other members of society. Church deacons especially often had descriptive information about their lives, or included Biblical passages or popular sayings about the remembrance of death.
Shown here on church deacon Samuel Ford's headstone is a cherub or other angelic figure with a trumpet, sounding the words "Know ye the Hour." Deacon Ford died in 1787 and is buried in Woolwich.
When both death's heads and cherubs were in use in a community, historians and anthropologists can see from the dates on headstones and the amount of information about the individuals that wealthier or other more prominent members of a community would often choose cherubs over the more common death's head, showing us that economic factors may have had something to do with what iconography was available to different people.
Pictured: Headstone of Tabitha Longfellow, d. 1777, Eastern Cemetery, Portland.
Tabitha Bragdon Longfellow is described on her epitaph as the "virtuous consort" of Stephen Longfellow II, who was a town clerk. Her long, descriptive epitaph and detailed iconography give us hints about her status. Tabitha and Stephen were the great-grandparents of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Knowing that economic status could have an effect on how detailed a headstone might be, what do you think you can learn about John Wheelwright (d. 1745, Wells) from his unique portrait headstone, shown here? What do you notice?
Especially in rural areas, men who carved gravestones were generally professionals of a different skilled labor field, rather than trained artists. In coastal Maine and Massachusetts, ship laborers were often called upon to create gravestones.
Over time, gravestone carving became a profession of its own. Pictured here is The Marble Works in Sanford, ca. 1900. By 1900, several different materials were available for gravestones, and carving was a unique profession.
Shown here is the Saco shop of Charles H. Cleaves (ca. 1900), who was known as "The Angel Carver."
This interior look at Presque Island Memorials in 1900 shows the diversity of gravestone shapes and sizes available to the community in the carver's shop.
Colonial New England headstones are considered a folk art because of their utilitarian beginnings: they were created for specific purposes for full communities of people, rather than as works of art meant for display.
As carvers honed their techniques, they developed their own styles of common motifs, experimented with new icons, and often had signature ways of lettering the epitaphs.
One of the first full-time professional gravestone carvers in Maine was Bartlett Adams (1776-1828). More than 700 gravestones in Portland's Eastern Cemetery (the oldest burial ground in the city) can be attributed to Adams and/or his shop.
Adams carved this unique headstone for Rebeckah Lewis (d. 1788). The shape above the female figure could possibly be a shell, which was an icon that was used with some regularity but was more common in the mid-Atlantic regions, and symbolized a journey (into the afterlife). The female figure is likely not a portrait of Rebeckah herself, but a symbol of grief/mourning. Note the intricate detail surrounding the figure within the oval shape.
A carver from the Bartlett Adams shop in Portland, Alpheus Cary, created this headstone for Priscilla Slater (d. 1806). The rosette above the oval is another common detail, more frequently found on the "shoulders" of headstones. Flowers were used to symbolize immortality.
Anchors can be found on the graves of mariners, but can also represent hope. The female figure shown here is again likely not a portrait, but a common symbol of grief/mourning.
The presence of a shop in Portland meant that residents could turn to professionals for their (or their loved ones') headstones. As the profession grew into an art, some motifs became more affordable and therefore common.
Combining the information in written records (such as shop receipts and advertisements as well as epitaphs) and the iconography present in a region, historians can start to determine multiple aspects of living (and dying) conditions in various towns.
As gravestones became more affordable and readily available, family members could backdate stones for loved ones without markers or who had been buried under a wooden marker that was deteriorating. Styles and dates, or evidence of bodies being reburied into family crypts or plots, can give historians clues about whether a stone has been backdated.
Sometimes burials in early New England were rushed due to harsh winter weather and frozen ground, or bodies were placed in a temporary crypt until they could be buried in spring, which was another cause for backdating of some stones.
This Eastern Cemetery, Portland headstone bears multiple names, but begins with that of Edmund Mountfort, Esq., who died in 1737, followed by his wife Mary, who died in 1751. The shape of the gravestone, style of writing, and shield motif are anachronistic for the period and give some first-glance hints that this is a backdated stone. Reading further down the epitaph, you can read names of other Mountfort family members, with the most recent burial in 1848. Comparing this gravestone to other stones from the Victorian period, you might start to see similarities in the lettering style.
What can you determine about who created this Mountfort family stone, or when it might have been commissioned?
Note the striking difference between the Mountfort gravestone and the gravestone just to the left of it.
Most early Colonial headstones include "shoulders." Earlier headstones will have rounded shoulders, while later ones are more often squared.
Headstones were meant to look like headboards of the bed, and in the early Colonial period were coupled with footstones that were placed above ground at the foot of where the coffin or casket was buried.
Pictured: Headstone of Moses Johnson, d. 1773, Portland.
Over time, shoulders fell out of use. This gravestone of Charles F. Brown (a popular humorist who more commonly went by the pen name Artemus Ward) in South Waterford's Elm Vale Cemetery shows a hint of shoulders, but is otherwise the simpler rounded headstone shape that is still common in many cemeteries and graveyards today. He died in 1867.
Along with headstones and footstones, the sides of the coffin or casket in the grave were referred to as "rails," thus completely mimicking the idea of a headrest, footrest, and rails of a bed.
Puritan epitaphs will also commonly refer to a person as having "fallen asleep in" Christ or God. They believed that on Judgment Day, or the Resurrection, people would rise from the grave as if waking from sleep. This also led to the practice of headstones placed with the epitaphs facing east, so that everyone could rise in the expected direction of the Resurrection.
Over time, as public cemeteries and burial grounds grew, stones began to be placed in the neater rows seen in most cemeteries today. If you walk from an older part of a cemetery to a newer part, you will notice a difference in the way stones are spaced apart and lined up. Many cemeteries do still continue to face headstones east, based on the direction of the earliest stones in the burial ground.
Pictured: Village Cemetery, Thomaston stereograph, ca. 1871.
While Catholic headstones often contained Latin words and phrases (as Catholic services were given in Latin until the 20th century), Puritan headstones generally only used English, with the exception of some common phrases such as "memento mori" ("remember death" or "remember you will die").
Joseph Stockbridge, a Cumberland County probate officer, is remembered in a portrait motif here with the Latin phrase "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi," which is another more common phrase, translating to "Thus/So passes the glory of the world."
Myles Birket Foster illustration for the poem The Grave, ca. 1880
Item Contributed by
Maine Historical Society
Maine-born poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1852) wrote a handful of poems reflecting on death, grief, and burial grounds. Victorian sentimentality lent itself to thinking often of the process of death and mourning.
By the time Longfellow wrote the poem "God's Acre" in 1842, Colonial headstones had already passed into curiosity pieces for the general public. In the poem, he reflects on the Puritan ideas and symbols represented in the burial grounds of earlier American settler communities.
Photograph of Gravestone of Rachel Smullen, Lisbon Fall, 1956
Item Contributed by
Lisbon Historical Society
Unless someone had the economic standing to warrant a lengthy epitaph, most gravestones contained little more than names and dates. However, some information about relations to others can be found as well.
Shown here is the gravestone of Rachel Smullen of Lisbon Falls, described on her headstone as the wife of Joseph Smullen. Rachel died in 1853. Her gravestone is also a unique example of a well-preserved upward-facing epitaph.
Pictured here is the gravestone of Joseph Smullen of Lisbon Falls, who died in 1869. His stone does not say that he is the husband of Rachel Smullen, but it is situated next to hers.
What can we start to learn about household roles and relations during this period based on the limited information given on the Smullens' gravestones?
Gifts from the family of the deceased were often given as remembrance tokens to funeral attendees. Common in the Colonial and Revolutionary periods were rings, black scarves, gloves, and copies of the sermon given at the service, often printed with black borders and death's head or cherub motifs at the top.
This elaborate ring was created in remembrance of Samuel and Elizabeth Lothrop Bartlett, great-grandparents of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It was created in 1793, the year that Elizabeth died. The watercolor includes the motifs of two urns, a tomb, a woman and a willow tree.
On one urn is painted “E.B./1793,” and on the other “S.B./1769.”
Directions for the funeral of Jabez Fox, Falmouth Neck, ca. 1755
Item Contributed by
Maine Historical Society
Jabez Fox (1705-1755) of Falmouth Neck (now Portland) wrote instructions in his prayer book for how he wanted his funeral to be conducted. He asks for "Six pair of Gloves for the Bearers [of the coffin] & one pr. for Mr. Smith." He also requests "Let their [sic] be no Rings given after The Funeral is over."
Some people would end up with dozens if not hundreds of memorial rings!
Jabez also asked for a "plain but decent" coffin, so the omission of rings, asking for only a few pairs of gloves, and asking for a simple coffin might have been a choice on his part to save money. Other written information about him shows that he was a prominent figure in local politics, so even if he had the funds for a more elaborate burial, he appears to be making a conscious choice for simplicity. He is buried in Eastern Cemetery.
Who do you think "Mr. Smith," the seventh recipient of a pair of gloves at Jabez Fox's funeral might have been? What have you learned about the time period and customs that might give some ideas?
Transcription
This mourning pendant, ca. 1755, was created in memory of members of the Wiswall family of Falmouth (Portland). The painting in the pendant shows a woman, tomb with an urn and skull with crossbones, willow, and trumpeting cherub or other angelic figure.
The Wiswall family were loyalists during the time of the Revolutionary War. What can the symbolism on the pendant, along with the family's ties to England, tell you about the use of common funerary iconography at this time?
Engraved on the back, with the family named misspelled, is, "Mercy Wiswell/Ob. 26 July 1775 Aet. 43./Bradstreet Ob. 30 Jan 1773 Aet. 4./Robert Ob. 10 June 1773 Aet. 2./Elizabeth Ob. 23 July/1775 Aet. 9."
The locket commemorates the death of Mercy Wiswall and her daughter in a pneumonia epidemic in Boston.
Though many icons remained popular for quite some time during the Victorian period (roughly the reign of Queen Victoria of England, 1837-1901), several headstones began to bear flower motifs.
Pictured: Collage of pressed flowers, ca. 1846.
Mabelle Martin's casket, Bangor, 1899
Item Contributed by
Maine Historical Society and Maine State Museum
Victorian flower shops and etiquette guides commonly discussed the idea of the "language of flowers," which gave each different kind of flower (even color varieties among the same type!) its own meaning. Combining flowers together into a bouquet could communicate a message, based on the flowers chosen.
What flowers do we still think of today as "mourning" symbols?
Pictured: Illustration by John Martin of the casket of his daughter Mabelle at her funeral in 1899. Mabelle was a teacher, and John Martin noted in his illustration that her fellow teachers created the flower arrangements for the service.
Mrs. Henry William Herbert post-mortem portrait, ca. 1844
Item Contributed by
Maine Historical Society
With the advent of photography, Victorian mourning ephemera evolved into new styles. Mourning portraits (paintings) and mourning photographs became common as ways to remember a deceased family member.
This post-mortem (after death) portrait of Mrs. William H. Herbert was taken ca. 1843.
Because of the expense of photography and portraiture, a post-mortem or mourning portrait was often the only image of a loved one a family might have. This was especially true when a family lost an infant or young child.
Jewelry was still a common token of remembrance during the Victorian period, but in addition to rings and pendants, hair jewelry became common, especially after the Civil War.
Hair of the deceased person would be woven into patterns for jewelry such as earrings and necklaces to be worn in remembrance.
This hair earring was created ca. 1880.
Hair was also woven into unique forms of folk art during the Victorian period.
The hair flowers in this wreath were formed by “stitching” the hair with fine wire over a rod which forms a series of loops which were then formed into different flower shapes. This wreath consists of several different hair colors and is therefore representative of an entire family.
It dates to ca. 1860.
Flowers had been a common theme in epitaphs of earlier periods as well, particularly in reference to children or unmarried women as "buds" which would later "bloom in" or be "transplanted in heaven."
This sheet music shows a continued use of the sentimentality of flowers in 1905. Printed in Camden, "Now the Flowers Bloom Above Her" is a sentimental ballad by Maine songwriter William E. Cooper.
Transcription
Good Will Girl Laying Flowers on G.W. Hinckley's Grave, Fairfield, ca. 1965
Item Contributed by
L.C. Bates Museum / Good Will-Hinckley Homes
The practice of laying or planting flowers at graves as symbols of remembrance continued into the 20th and 21st centuries.
Pictured: A Good Will girl laying flowers on the grave of G.W. Hinckley in Fairfield, ca. 1965. Note the simplicity of the gravestone in comparison to the more icon-filled stones of the 18th and 19th centuries. George Walter Hinckley was born in 1853 and died in 1950.
Material culture related to burial rites can help historians track migration patterns and look at the changing populations in Maine over time.
The Chevra Kadisha was a burial society for Eastern European Chassidic Jewish immigrants living in Portland, established in 1890. Congregation Anshe Sfard founded a cemetery on Hicks Street in Portland in the early 20th century; it later became known as Mount Carmel Cemetery in the 1920s.
This document, written in Hebrew, is the first page of a record book of the burial society. It reads: "This (is the) Pinkas of the old Chevrah Kaddisha: doing the truest kindness. Est. 5650, The Community of Portland, ME."
"Doing the truest kindness" refers to burying the dead who cannot thank you.
Note that the established year of the society is given in the Hebrew calendar year, rather than the Gregorian calendar year.
This is one of two memorial or yahrzeit plaques that hung at Anshe Sfard on Cumberland Avenue in Portland until the synagogue closed in the 1950s.
The plaques list the names of members of the congregation who died, and the death dates. On the Hebrew date of the anniversary of the person's death, the bulb next to the name is lighted. The plaques were saved from Anshe Sfard and placed at Etz Chaim on Congress Street in Portland.
Jewish gravestones, depending on the congregation to which the person belonged, may be written in Hebrew, English, another language based on country of origin (such as Portuguese or Dutch), or a combination thereof. Common motifs include the six-pointed star (Star of David).
Newport, Rhode Island had a large Jewish-American population in the 18th century, and some of the early Jewish residents of smaller New England towns would choose to be buried at Newport rather than in church or town plots. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow remembered a visit to the cemetery in his 1858 poem "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport," which reflects the Portuguese and Spanish surnames of many of the first Jewish immigrants in New England. Some of the earliest gravestones of Jewish New England residents might even bear some similarities to icon styles that were popular with the majority of the (Protestant Christian) community.
William Widgery Thomas' Commissioner of Immigration certificate, Portland, 1870
Item Contributed by
Maine Historical Society
Maine, like much of New England in the 18th and 19th centuries, was predominantly Anglo-American (English-descended) and Protestant. It became difficult for people from different religious backgrounds to integrate into the mostly Protestant population, not to mention difficult for Protestant people to be accepting of people from different religions.
Most immigrants to Maine during this period were French-Canadian and Irish: both mostly Catholic populations.
In the 1870s, Governor Joshua Chamberlain appointed William Widgery Thomas to recruit new immigrants to settle in northern Maine and cultivate farmland in the area. Most French-Canadian and Irish immigrants were settling in central and southern Maine to work in mill towns.
Thomas recruited immigrants from Sweden during his appointment to the task. Part of his reasoning was saying that the Swedish language was more similar to English (than was French), not to mention that the Swedish immigrants were Lutheran, a Protestant sect.
The town of New Sweden was established in the early 1870s, and the residents mostly took up potato farming. Swedish immigrants also brought skiing to Maine.
Pictured: William Widgery Thomas' Commissioner of Immigration certificate, 1870.
Transcription
Pictured is Reverend Andrew Wiren, the first pastor in the newly incorporated colony of New Sweden in Aroostook County. He established the first Lutheran church as well as the first school in New Sweden, teaching classes to schoolchildren four days a week.
Immigrant communities would often be established around the place of worship for the inhabitants' primary religion.
The first burial in the brand new cemetery in New Sweden was unfortunately rather rushed: nine-month-old Hilda Clase did not survive the difficult weather on the trip the migrants took from the Canadian port at which their ship docked into the new settlement in northern Maine.
Some of the grave markers in New Sweden's cemetery were made of wood, and later replaced with stone. This wooden grave marker still shows its writing, which, like most of the earliest markers in the town, is written in Swedish.
The epitaph is a psalm, and memorializes Lina Johanna Hard, who was born in Sweden in 1846 and died in Maine in 1894.
Transcription
Capitol Hill Cemetery in New Sweden still has a burial ground plot full of markers written entirely in Swedish from the earliest residents of the town in the late 19th century. Over time, epitaphs may be written in English, but surnames might show lineage to some of the earliest immigrant residents of New Sweden. Additionally, historians can look at surnames and dates to find where the descendants of the first Swedish-American Mainers settled over time.
Pictured: A 1938 photograph of Capitol Hill Cemetery, New Sweden.
Belfast, Maine, named for Belfast, Ireland, was founded by primarily Presbyterian (Protestant) Scots-Irish migrants who moved into Maine from New Hampshire, where immigrants from the Ulster region had first settled. Later into the 19th century, Belfast attracted new immigrants from Ireland who were Catholic.
The town cemetery did not separate Protestant and Catholic burial grounds, but instead shows an interesting mix of both. Clues as to which town residents were Catholic or Protestant may be in the iconography or language on the stones. Generally, only Catholic gravestones would use the image of a cross, and were more likely to bear inscriptions in Latin.
Pictured: First Church, Belfast, ca. 1900.
Brunswick was one of many coastal ports as well as mill towns to attract a large number of French-Canadian, Catholic migrants. Cemeteries and graveyards throughout the town, of which there are several, reveal a number of different kinds of names and stones. Some contain a mix of English, French, and Irish names, along with a few Eastern European and Italian names. However, graveyards of Catholic Churches, particularly the graveyard of St. John's, reveal stones with epitaphs written in a mix of English, French, and Latin over long spans of time.
Pictured: St. John's Day in Brunswick, 1894. Note the cross at the top of the gate.
Gen. Joshua L. Chamberlain's grave site, Brunswick, 1981
Item Contributed by
Maine Historical Society
Brunswick is also home to a number of different kinds of memorials, including founders of Bowdoin College, Maine's first higher learning institution (founded in 1794, when Maine was still part of Massachusetts), and Civil War hero Joshua Chamberlain, who had a continued role in Maine politics for several years after the war.
Pictured: Joshua Chamberlan's grave site. What else do you notice along with the stone?
Generally known for (and sometimes stereotyped for) their simplicity of dress and places of worship, members of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, were known not to favor the use of graven images on their headstones. In the Quaker burial ground in Eastern Cemetery in Portland, many short stones can be found bearing only a person's name. Over time, Quakers began to favor the use of the more popular headstone styles and iconography. Today, Quaker cemeteries and burial grounds are relatively similar to most public cemeteries.
Pictured: Friends Church, St. Albans, 1907.
Maine was part of Massachusetts until 1820, so when slavery was abolished in Massachusetts in 1783, so too did it disappear from Maine. Slavery did exist in Maine's early decades of settler residence, however, but in practice it differed from the southern states mostly because of climate. Enslaved Africans and African-descended people in Maine were usually put to work in the domestic sphere (maids, carpenters), on farms, or on ships.
Some "slave cemeteries" can be found throughout locations of Maine's earliest settler colonies nearby the homes of the families that had purchased the enslaved people. There is no uniformity to these burial sites; some contain only stones without names or dates, some show names and not dates, some show both. Some "slave cemeteries" might be plotted opposite the family cemeteries of the white owners.
Some communities in Maine prior to 1783 had populations of both enslaved and free Africans or African Americans. Many formerly enslaved people were able to purchase their own freedom, with most starting businesses or purchasing a farm or sailing vessel. New Atusville, a community of formerly enslaved people formed in Machias in the 1770s and named for African American mariner London Atus, had its own small cemetery that was considered lost for some time, until residents saved the burial ground from being the site of new construction in the late 20th century.
Pictured: Bill of lading for an enslaved person, 1719.
Transcription
There are two primary African American burial grounds within Eastern Cemetery, Portland's oldest public burying ground. Section L is the older part of the African American grounds (with the earliest identified burial being Philip Acorn, who died at age 27 in 1797), and Section A the newer (beginning in the late 19th century). This cemetery map was printed in 1889. Section L is nearer the Abyssinian Meetinghouse, while Section A borders the front of the cemetery gates.
Transcription
Eastern Cemetery in Portland is home to two known specifically African American burial grounds. The older section includes burials of prominent abolitionists and businessmen including Reuben Ruby, a hack driver and one of the founders of the Abyssinian Church (est. 1828).
The Ruby family name is also one that can be found in private family plots where relatives settled in other parts of the state.
Pictured: Reuben Ruby hack advertisement, 1834. A hack was a precursor to the taxi cab.
The Abyssinian Church, or Abyssinian Meetinghouse, was established in Portland in 1828, very nearby to the Eastern Cemetery and close to the Portland docks, where several Black men were employed as dock workers or in various positions on sailing vessels and steamships. The church was the first all-Black congregation established in Portland, and also held meetings for abolitionists (people not only opposed to slavery but committed to ending the practice altogether) and hosted lectures by prominent abolitionists from throughout the country.
The Abyssinian Meetinghouse is one of the few wooden buildings to survive the Great Fire of Portland in 1866, due to congregation members keeping wet towels on the building and putting the fire out around the area before it could engulf the church. Unfortunately, the church fell out of use after the tragic sinking of the Steamship "Portland" in 1898: the ship had employed many members of the Abyssinian Church congregation as crewmembers, and the sinking had a profound and devastating effect on the African American community in the city.
Much of the congregation moved on to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (A.M.E. Zion Church) of Portland, established in 1914 and now the longest continuously operating historically black church in Portland. The Abyssinian still stands and has been the recipient of renewed efforts to save and revitalize the historic landmark. Many of the church's first congregation members are buried in Eastern Cemetery.
Family cemeteries are often small, commonly contained within a stone wall or wooden or iron gate, and would be established close to the homestead or farm the family owned. Family plots might hold only one or two generations, or several generations who all lived on the same property. Portland and Bangor had some of the largest Black populations in the 18th and 19th centuries, but many families moved throughout the state based on their occupations, with mariners settling on the coast, farmers inland, and businessmen and church leaders in various locations statewide.
Family cemeteries can help historians track migration trends throughout the state and see where Black families chose to settle and/or set up businesses.
Some of the most lucrative establishments owned by Black men in 19th century Maine were barber shops.
Pictured: The McIntyre family, Houlton, ca. 1900. Stanley and Edna McIntyre were both originally from New Brunswick, Canada, but migrated to Houlton in northern Maine in the early 1900s, where Stanley set up a barber shop and Edna worked as a podiatrist. Both of their daughters, Ruth and Leah, were adopted. The second man in the photograph is likely Leah's fiance.
What is a monument? How do people choose to be memorialized, and what kinds of people or events do communities decide to memorialize?
Pictured: Headstone of Joshua Allen, d. 1805, Eastern Cemetery, Portland. Do you think the sun motif is rising or setting? What makes you think that? What do you think a sun might symbolize? How might a rising sun represent something different from a setting sun?
Memorial Print for Lt. Albert G. Abbott, 1864
Item Contributed by
Kings Landing Historical Settlement
Monuments - memorial stones or structures erected in large scale and dedicated to the public - became especially popular during the Civil War. Town residents, mostly women, would raise funds from the community to pay for a structure to be built in honor of the soldiers who had died in the war, or to represent ideals such as valor, faith, or freedom.
This print shows a stone memorial as well as a number of additional images in memory of Canadian Lieutenant Albert G. Abbott of New Brunswick, who enlisted in the First Regiment of Maine Heavy Artillery in 1862. The print shows a weeping woman dressed in black in the foreground, and a willow tree draped over Union soldiers in the background. The stone itself is drawn in large scale and includes motifs of an eagle and military weapons and equipment.
Why do you think the Civil War was a time when the public chose to create monuments and memorials?
Monuments commemorating people, events, or ideas generally do not follow in the folk art tradition of individual headstones, but tend to be crafted purposefully using architectural styles from antiquity, specifically Classical Greece, Rome, and Egypt.
Archaeologists in Europe, and especially England, which still dictated much of the styles and trends that were popular in the United States, mounted multiple expeditions in the 19th century to locations in Italy, Greece, and Egypt, where they unearthed tombs, temples, and residences.
The Egyptian Revival style caught on in the United States when it came to constructing monuments, especially the obelisk, a pointed, freestanding column.
Obelisks can be seen in cemeteries throughout Maine to alert the eye toward commemorative monuments as well as tombs of prominent families. Large-scale obelisks can be found in town squares, or even at the entrances to cemeteries, usually commemorating local soldiers of past wars.
Pictured: Draft for soldiers' monument, Bangor, 1864.
General Henry Knox, a Revolutionary War hero and one of the founding fathers of the US, died in 1806 and was buried on the property of his Thomaston home, which he called Montpelier. His body was moved in the 1810s and then again in the mid-19th century, due to weather damage done to his previous burial sites.
The Knox family tomb in Thomaston, shown here, also bears a monument with a pyramid structure, another architectural style developed from the popularity of Egyptian Revival. The photograph was taken ca. 1871.
Franklin Simmons plaster model "Our Lady of Victories," Rome, ca. 1890
Item Contributed by
Maine Historical Society
Greek and Roman styles were adapted especially when it came to weight-bearing columns and statues. Taking ideas from these Classical societies of representing ideas, arts, and values as women (often holding or wearing additional motifs), European and American artisans created elaborate sculptures for town monuments.
"Our Lady of Victories" is the name of the female figure at the top of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Portland's Monument Square. The symbols associated with victory were often appropriated from the symbols of the Greek goddess Nike or Athena-Nike, who represented victory in battle. "Our Lady of Victories" is shown wearing a laurel wreath, carrying a shield and sword, and dressed in armor as well as Classical-inspired clothing.
Pictured is the plaster model for the statue, ca. 1890, created by Franklin Simmons in his studio in Rome.
Sargent Alonzo Stinson's gravestone also functions as a monument. He was a member of Company H of the Fifth Maine Regiment in the Civil War, and was killed in battle in 1861 at the age of 19. His headstone features war regalia as well, but in the form of the kind of rigid knapsack with a blanket roll at the top that infantry soldiers would carry with them.
His stone is also backdated: it was presented by surviving members of the Fifth Maine Regiment to the City of Portland in 1908, when it was dedicated in Eastern Cemetery.
Wars are not the only tragedies depicted on monuments. In 1912, residents of a mixed-race community on Malaga Island off of Phippsburg were told to evacuate for a number of different reasons relating to the economic and political interests of the state and property investors. Prior to the expulsion, the state exhumed the island's cemetery and reburied 17 bodies into 5 caskets in cramped plots at the former Maine School for the Feeble Minded in New Gloucester.
In the early 21st century, a monument was erected to the memory of the people who did not receive their own headstones when they were reburied, as well as memorializing the tragedy of the expulsion.
Pictured: Malaga Islanders with missionary, ca. 1909. Black, white, and mixed-race families all lived together on the island for around a century prior to the expulsion.
National Monument to the Forefathers model, Hallowell, ca. 1889
Item Contributed by
Hubbard Free Library
Maine granite quarries have also been commissioned to create monuments for other communities out of state. Many of the men who worked in granite quarries in the 19th century were Italian immigrants who were trained in the art of Classical sculpture.
Pictured here is the model for the National Monument to the Forefathers, which was carved and assembled by Hallowell Granite Works for the Plymouth Society in 1889. The female figure at the top is Faith, and the four figures (one not shown) at the base are meant to be humanized representations of Morality, Education, Law, and Liberty. The finished monument is 81 feet tall.
What can the values being depicted in the model tell you about what messages people in late 19th century society wanted to communicate with their public monuments?
Monuments and gravestones transcend human and idealistic subjects, too. This photograph shows the graves of Maine Governor Percival Baxter's pet dogs on Mackworth Island. Governor Baxter deeded the island to the State of Maine, and the sign next to the boulder reads that the state promised "to maintain forever this burial place of my dogs with the stone wall and the boulder with the bronze marker thereon, erected to their memory."
The large bronze plaque bears the date 1921, and the inscription "To my Irish Setters: Life long friends and companions. Affectionate, faithful, and loyal." The dogs names were Skip, Garry, Dexe, Mike, Fanny, Eirie, Garry II, Garry III, Peggy, Garry IV and Peggy II, along with "two little brothers" whose birth and death dates are both 1931, likely litter mates who didn't make it.
Columbarium and tablet, First Parish, Portland, Unitarian Universalist, 1909
Item Contributed by
First Parish in Portland
While Puritan sermons focused on the idea of bodies rising again on Judgment Day, the literal connotations of the "sleep of death" fell out of public belief over the 19th century, and cremation became more of a practice.
This is the columbarium and tablet dedicated at First Parish, Portland, Unitarian Universalist on April 25, 1909, to the memory of Hermann Kotzschmar. The ashes of the deceased are directly behind the urn, in the stone wall at the top of the steps leading to the choir loft and music office. Hermann Kotzschmar was a famous organist - the organ built into Merrill Auditorium in Portland is the same one on which he played in the 19th century and continues to be operational today.
Some prominent figures throughout history have chosen to be buried (and could pay to be buried) directly within the walls or catacombs of churches, which was well in practice in medieval Europe, when many church leaders, kings, queens, and knights would be buried or entombed in large structures within the church they led or attended.
If you can, try to arrange a visit to a local graveyard or public cemetery with the groundskeeper, park authority, or leader of the associated place of worship. What can you learn about the people who lived in your town in the past? What iconography can you find? What does that tell you about the society of your town at the time when that person was alive, or how they wanted to be remembered? What monuments do you see in your town or within your local cemetery? When were they constructed? Who were they for, and what ideas do they seem to be communicating? What more can you learn about your town from the names, dates, and images on stones in a burial ground?
Pictured: Graves of the Captains, 1876. This painting by Charles Frederick Kimball shows the graves of Lieutenant William Burrows, captain of the USS Enterprise, and Captain Samuel Blyth, commander of the HMS Boxer.
Both were killed when their ships engaged in battle off the coast of Portland on Sept. 5, 1813. They were buried side by side in Eastern Cemetery, with their graves facing the ocean.
