Early American Graveyard Rabbit

Transcolonial Gravestone Trade

Occasionally there is a gravestone you having been waiting months to see. I just got back from a research trip in Barbados. One of the gravestones I had been most eager to visit while I was there was the stone of Samuel Hart (1773) in the Nidhe Israel Jewish Cemetery in Bridgetown. It was a classic New England stone displaced in a tropical paradise.

I had seen a tantalizing detail of Hart's stone on Evan Millner's Jewish Barbados blog and had recognized it as the work of William Stevens, a famous carver from Newport, Rhode Island. Many of Newport's early Jews came via Barbados, and throughout the eighteenth century, exchange between Newport and Barbados was crucial part of the circuits of the triangle trade. The triangle trade is usually thought of as focusing on sugar, rum, and slaves. Until my recent visit to Barbados, I hadn't fully appreciated to what extent that trade had also included gravestones. I knew that many Jews in the colonies imported tombstones from Amsterdam, London, and Venice. Hart's stone revealed that gravestones also traveled between the colonies.

Hart's stone is a wonderful example of the way in which colonial carvers tailored their stones to meet different markets. On the one hand, Hart's stone closely resembles the carvings made by Stevens on the 1775 table stone of Martha Malbone in Newport's Anglican cemetery. On the other hand, it also had some distinctively West Indian (and Jewish) features. Like some of the stones in Newport's Jewish cemetery, the inscription is in three languages: Hebrew, English, and Spanish. The way these languages were arranged on Hart's stone, however, had a distinctively West Indian flair. Like many Jewish gravestones in Barbados and Jamaica, the English inscription is used as a border around the stone, a feature not found in Newport's Jewish cemetery (see stone below from Jamaica that also uses the English border motif) .


Hart's stone highlights his membership in both the New England and West Indian Jewish communities. Although Hart died in Bridgetown Barbados of a "Purtrid Fever," Hart was a member of an important Newport Jewish family. The Spanish portion of the inscription underscores Hart's Newport connection: it tell us Hart is "de la Ciuda[d] de Newyork /Mercador quien havia Nuevamente Arrivado de New Port en la Colonia de Rhode - / Island en Nueva Inglaterra / America del Norte" [from the city of New York, Merchant who has recently arrived from Newport in the colony of Rhode Island in New England, North America]. When members of Newport's Jewish community died in Boston New York, or the Southern Colonies, their extended family often shipped their bodies back to Newport to be buried with their kin. Although Hart was not shipped home (probably to prevent the spread of whatever caused his putrid fever), his family drew connections to him through using a Newport carver. At the same time, the West Indian style of the English border embedded him within the funerary tradition of the community with which he was buried.

Hart was not the only New Englander to die in Barbados and be commemorated with a New England slate stone. While I obsessed over Hart's stone, Barbados historian Karl Watson pointed out that there were several other New England stones in the nearby Anglican cemetery of St. Michael's Cathedral. At St. Michael's, the oldest stones have been moved onto walkway that skirts the edge of the church. Once upright markers, the stones now lie flat with their once buried jagged edges exposed like the roots of teeth. Sometimes the tops of the stones are now buried partway under the church's thick walls. Like Hart's tombstone, these markers often explicitly emphasize the deceased's connection to the New England. They are also a poignant reminder of how family members sought to tie the dead to their homeland, even when they were buried thousands of miles away.

Home is Where the Heart is...

In the Hunts Bay Cemetery in Jamaica, there is a small fragment of a gravestone, belonging to Esther ("De Ester"). The rest of the fragment reads "fil...," probably filha, daughter in Portuguese. The size of the stone and the identification of the deceased as a daughter (rather than wife) suggests this was probably a child's gravestone. What intrigues me most about the fragment, however, is the house inside of the wreath at the top.

It is unusual to find gravestones with houses carved on them either in the Jewish Atlantic World or in colonial American cemeteries more broadly. On some level this is surprising. In Hebrew, the euphemism for a cemetery is "Beth Haim" (house of life). Also many scholars have noted that the traditional upright markers of colonial cemeteries look like doorways. Usually this is understood as a symbol of the grave as a portal into the afterlife. An actual house is a different matter, though, as it symbolizes the family and protection, not the world to come. Some argue that the house is an inherently feminine space: it is not only the domain of women, but also a place of security and shelter. It interests me that the house also appears on the stone of Esther de la Pena (Amsterdam 1697), a detail of which is shown below.

This exquisite stone from Beth Haim Ouderkerk features the family coat of arms at the top; below is an inscription and a depiction of the family's country estate shown above with sailing ships in the background. (Esther's husband Daniel was a shipping magnate, and surely it is trade that bought the beautiful estate.) At the very bottom of the stone is a reference: Psalm 128:3 ("Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine, in the innermost parts of thy house; / thy children like olive plants, round about thy table"). On one level, the country house seems like a status symbol; on another level, however, it is a moving metonym for the deceased wife: she is like the "innermost" part of the house, a private, familial space.

The house motif is more commonly found in American women's poetry than on gravestones; however, here too graves, houses, and women are conjoined. Emily Dickinson made analogies between poems and houses, not only because of the associations of houses with femininity and domesticity, but also because both are about enclosure or restriction. For Dickinson, being in the house was similar to the suffocating "constriction" of a tomb. Literary critic Leslie Wheeler argues that for Dickinson, possessing a body ultimately became so restrictive that death signified a welcome release, and that "the narrowness of the tomb yields a paradoxical freedom" (The Poetics of Enclosure 15). I somehow think this is not what the carvers of these stones meant: Both the Pena house and the house on young Ester's tomb face outward, windows open. The Pena house is surrounded by five vibrant trees (the children?); although it faces away from the bay (mercantile life) towards a more private vista, it hardly looks like a mausoleum. Rather it is a prosperous, sheltering space, reassuring in its solidity.

Anatomy of a Gravestone: Identifying Stone Carvers

At first glance, the gravestones of Redolphus Malbone (1767 LEFT) and Isaac Lopez (1762 RIGHT) look remarkably similar: their graves are marked by small upright markers with cherubs at the tops and vegetation images along the sides. While many children’s graves were marked either only by a plain marker or not at all, the parents of Redolphus and Isaac chose to mark these graves with well-carved stones made by the two of the most important carvers in Newport: William Stevens and John Stevens II (1702-1778), sons of the illustrious carver John Stevens I.

In addition being a physical reminder of the children, the stones present a important message about the parents’ hopes about the children's ability to live on after death. The stones vertical are carved in a shape associated with a curved doorway into the world to come. The side pillars (“borders”) were seen as analogous to the pillars in the third temple that harkened of the messianic era. The topmost portion of each stone (the lunette), bears an optimistic message of redemption conveyed by the simple straight-faced cherub: while the death’s heads common throughout other parts of New England reminded the living of the conflict between the mortal and immortal portions of the deceased, “cherub stones tend to stress resurrection and later heavenly reward” (Deetz and Dethlefsen 31).The cherub was a metaphor for the soul of the deceased: it was poised in flight between this world and the next (Tashjian and Tashjian 1992: 1974: 83). The stones’ borders reinforce this message of rejuvenation: the Malbone stone contains the fig border commonly used by William Stevens in the 1740s-1770s (Luti 134), while the Lopez stone contains a variant on the fig-lily pod theme used by John Stevens II. Figs were “believed to ward off the evil eye and offer general protection against hostile beings and powers” (Biedermann 129), and fruit and flowers are generally associated with fecundity and fertility. In an uncertain world, the stones were largely optimistic.

Vincent Luti argues that five areas are essential for identifying individual carvers for stones made in Newport: (1) Lettering, (2) Wings, (3) Mouths, (4) Eyes, and (5) Borders (Luti 26-27). Identifying characteristics of William Stevens during this era include (1) An off-center “e” in the “y^e” and “full-bellied 5, with a flat-capped serif,” (2) scoop wings and pedestal bibs, (3) bow-mouths, (4) eyelids with lashes and an owlish and bulging eye and (5) fig or lily pod borders. Cherubs were bald or wigged. William Stevens stones from the 1760s-1770s that were wigged tend to have plain wigs, raked wigs, or scroll coil wigs (Luti 103-105, 134). William Stevens stones are easily confused stylistically with the early work of his brother-in-law and one-time apprentice John Bull who early on in his career imitated William Stevens’ style. Distinctive elements of John Bull’s stones that don’t appear on Stevens’ stones include (1) an onion fleur-de-lis, (2) a circular line undercutting the feather spray or “bib” under the cherub’s chin, and (3) the tail of the “g” is tucked into the loop (Luti 231, 244). The stone of Redolphus Malbone contains no John Bull markers, but does contain the following elements characteristic of William Stevens: (1) An off-center “e” in the “ye” (2) bow-mouths, (3) an owlish and bulging eye, and (4) fig or lily pod borders. Luti has attributed Isaac Lopez’s stone to John Stevens II (Gradwohl 39-40). Although it is very similar to William Steven’s stones, it bears several strong distinguishing features: a distinctive border and pupils that “look heavenward.” From 1745-1778 John also took up his brother’s previously distinctive of-center y^e lettering (Luti 80).



During the 1770s, William Stevens shop and home was located on Long Wharf while John Stevens II’s home and shop were located at 29 and 30 Thames respectively (Luti 32, 99). Their father John Stevens (1646-1736) began the Stevens carving dynasty that continues until this day.


Image credits:
1. Gravestone of Redolphus Malbone (1767, Trinity Cemetery) Photograph by Eric Leibman, 2007.
2. Gravestone of Isaac Lopez (1762, Touro Cemetery) Photograph by Laura Leibman, 2007.
3. Gravestone Anatomy from Dean Eastman's "Tiptoeing Through the Tombstones" Common-Place. http://www.common-place.org 2(2) January 2002.
4. Map of Newport by Laura Leibman based on A Plan of the Town of Newport in Rhode Island Surveyed by Charles Blaskowitz, engraved and publish'd by Willm. Faden Map. London: 1777. Map Collections 1500-2004. American Memory. Lib. of Congress 14 Aug. 2007 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3774n.ar101301.

God's Little Acre: Slavery and Race in a Colonial Burial Ground

"God's Little Acre" has become one of the most talked about sections of Newport's famous Common Burial Ground. Although many Americans (particularly in the North and West) like to think of slavery as a "Southern problem," slavery was an important part of the northern economy well up until the time of the Revolution. Indeed in the colonial era, much of Newport's economy was based directly or indirectly on the triangle trade. For those who want to learn more about Northern slavery, Joanne Pope Melish's Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and "Race" in New England, 1780-1860 (Ithaca: Cornell U P, 1998) is an awesome resource and a good read. As the place where Newport's people of color went after they died, God's Little Acre has become an important resource for scholars interested in race in the colonies.

Although often touted as an "African American" burial ground, the occupants of God’s Little Acre were diverse economically, racially and religiously. The 1774 Rhode Island census asked for the number of “whites,” “blacks,” and “Indians” in each household. Members of each of these categories were buried in “God’s Little Acre.” Moreover, the categories themselves do not map precisely onto twenty-first century notions of race, as an advertisement for a runaway “Indian boy” from the Newport Mercury shows: this graphic of a dark-complexioned man had for years been used by the Mercury to signify fugitive (black) slaves, but suddenly it seemed to apply to Indians as well. Indian and black intermarriage was on the rise in New England in the 1770s, and increasingly white New Englanders began to image “Indians” and “blacks” in a combined category of “colored” people (Silverman Faith and Boundaries, 232-33). Not surprisingly then, members of each of these groups, as well as a few (usually poor) whites, were buried in God’s Little Acre.

Newport’s African American community was also tremendously diverse in the 1770s. Approximately thirty percent of Newport belonged to the fluid category of “black.” Around one third of the whites in Newport owned slaves, but according to the 1774 census, there were also 153 free blacks living in 64 black households during the colonial era. There was no section of town specifically designated for African Americans: whites and people of color often lived in close proximity to one another in colonial Newport. Freed blacks and slaves in Newport had a range of occupations and economic experiences. While many blacks in Newport had severely limited social and economic prospects, some did quite well: Newport Gardner (Occramar Mirycoo), slave of merchant Caleb Gardener, knew English, French, and African languages, and taught Western music; slave Caesar Lyndon was highly literate and served as a scribe; Charity “Duchess” Quamino, slave of William Channing, gained her freedom and was renowned as a pastry chef. A number of blacks owned property around Newport (Youngken African Americans in Newport, 17, 49-50; See Newport Gardner's House at left). Although the African Union Society held services in the Peter Bours house (47 Division Street, below) as early as 1781, African Americans belonged to a variety of congregations (Youngken African Americans in Newport, 62). The gravestones in God’s Little Acre reflect this economic and religious variety.
Peter Cranston Jr. fell somewhere in the middle of this range of this economic and social diversity. The inscription highlights what W.E.B. DuBois would call the “twoness” of Peter Cranston’s life: as Peter Cranston’s stone indicates, his parents were Peter Cranston and his wife Phylis Rivera. The stone also indicates, however, that Peter—like his father--was owned by Aaron Lopez, the uncle of Isaac Lopez. Peter Jr.’s mother Phylis, however, was a “servant” of Jacob Rodriquez Rivera, Aaron Lopez’s father-in-law (Stores). Since Peter Jr. belonged to Aaron Lopez, presumably Peter Jr. lived in the Lopez home along Thames Street, albeit in the attic. His mother Phylis would have lived several blocks away in Easton’s Point, at the corner of Washington and Bridge in the “Lantern,” the oversized home of Jacob Rodriguez Rivera. Other members of the Cranston-Rivera clan surround the stones of Phylis, Peter, and Peter Jr. In death then, the Cranston-Riveras were able to achieve what they could not in life: a unified family space, no longer torn apart by slavery. The Cranston-Rivera stones make up a small portion of the approximately 450 stones in God’s Little Acre that are still standing and are identified by name on the 1903 map of the cemetery (Tashjian and Tashjian 1992: 166). In turn, God’s Little Acre makes up only a small portion of the over 8,000 graves in the Common Burying Ground (Tashjian and Tashjian 1992: 163). To learn more about this portion of the cemetery, and to see more stones, go to African Slave Markers in Colonial Newport, a website by Keith Stokes and Theresa Guzman Stokes. .Theresa Guzman Stokes

Colonial Geography: Early American Cemeteries

Throughout this blog, you will notice I have a very large definition of early America that includes not only North America, but also Central America, Latin America, and the Caribbean. I also occasionally reference the gravestone art of the European communities that fed these colonies, particularly England, Holland, and the Iberian Peninsula. Most of the gravestones I have posted so far are from Jewish colonists, particularly Sephardim (Spanish-Portuguese Jews) who came to the Americas to escape the Inquisition and engage in trade. My current book project is on visual world of these early American Jews. In the course of doing research, I have photographed the early Jewish cemeteries in Newport (Rhode Island), Philadelphia, Curacao, Suriname, Jamaica, and Amsterdam. In two of these communities (Newport, Curacao) I have also worked extensively in the early Protestant and Catholic cemeteries in order to be able to discuss what makes the Jewish iconography of the era distinctive. We are in the process of creating a fully searchable on-line database for these images ("Jewish Atlantic World"), that is now live at cdm.reed.edu/cdm4/jewishatlanticworld.You will also start to notice that I have a lot of images from early New England cemeteries. When I was working on my first book, Indian Converts, I worked extensively in the early cemeteries on Martha's Vineyard and to a lesser extent in the "Old Indian Cemetery" in Mashpee. I also visited and photographed other important colonial cemeteries in the region for comparative purposes. Many of these images are cataloged in the Indian Converts Collection which also contains Study Guides on subjects such as Reading Gravestones and Death in early America.

If you have an interest in hearing about colonial cemeteries in any of the locations I have mentioned (or that appear in green on the map of New England above), just let me know!

Colonial Disease and Illness

Epidemics ravaged both white and Native populations in colonial New England. The source of these epidemics is not surprising: low resistance, poor sanitation, and inadequate medical knowledge. As Dr. William Douglass put it in 1760 about white medicine, “more die of the practitioner than of the natural course of the disease” (Duffy 4; cites Douglass). Relatively few doctors in colonial American had attended medical school: in 1721 only one of Boston’s ten “doctors” had a degree (Duffy 7). The drugs used were prescribed in excessively large and unmeasured qualities. Even if given properly the prescriptions were of questionable use: even Cotton Mather, a famous scientist, advocated the use of urine as an unparalleled “Remedy for Humane Bodies” (Duffy 8). As seen by the cures prescribed by Dr. Zerobabel Endecott, colonial medicine often appears in retrospect to be more like spells than medicine. Bleeding patients and inducing vomiting were common cures (Duffy 8-9). In addition to epidemics, famine and dietary sicknesses such as scurvy took their toll (Duffy 11).

This gravestone from the Dutch colonial island of Curacao notes how Isaac Haim Senior (a Sephardic Jew) suffered infinite martyrdoms in his illness (“Padezido Infenittos / Martirios na Enfermindade”). The bottom portion of the stone depicts his deathbed scene (upper right). The original of Isaac's gravestone is in Beit Haim Blenheim (Curacao) and was damaged by pollution from the nearby oil refinery. This reproduction is in the synagogue museum.

For more on colonial illness and disease and for full citations, see the Indian Converts Collection