Early American Graveyard Rabbit

What's in a Name? Typology and Early American Nomenclature

One of the many wonderful features of the NEHGS (New England Historical Genealogical Society) is that they send out a weekly newsletter filled with useful tidbits. One of my favorite items is the "Name Origins" by Julie Helen Otto. In a recent edition, Otto sought to explain one those odd colonial names "Titus" and gave the origin as, "TITUS (m): New Testament. Much used by the Hinmans of Woodbury, Conn."

Although Otto's purpose is to be pithy, I felt that this was explanation was missing something crucial both in terms of origins and what it would mean to invoke that name. Although the name Titus does appear in the New Testament (in St. Paul's Corinthians, Galatians, 2 Timothy, and his letter to Titus), that is not its origin. Titus is an old Roman name. More particularly, Titus is the name of the Roman Emperor who ruled from 79-81 CE and who was a military commander before that. He is most famous for laying siege to the Temple in Jerusalem and destroying it. He was considered a "good" emperor. When Paul wrote his works, this Titus was one of the most famous men alive. The name Titus became popular in England during the Protestant Reformation (and hence for settlers in New England) for reasons I will outline below.

While it may seem odd to name a child after the person who destroyed the Temple, Josephus's History of the Jewish Wars lauds Titus and blames the destruction of the Temple on the Jews, not Titus himself. This book was popular work in the colonies, and one of the first books bought for many early libraries, including Newport's Redwood Library. Josephus's popularity helps us understand what view of Titus colonists valued. In The Jewish Wars, Josephus claims the Temple "was destroyed by internal dissensions, and the Romans who so unwillingly set fire to the Temple were brought in by the Jews' self-appointed rulers, as Titus Caesar, the Temple's destroyer, has testified. For throughout the war he pitied the common people who were helpless against the [Jewish] partisans; and over and over gain he delayed the capture of the city and prolonged the siege in the hope that the ringleaders would submit." This view of things corresponds to the belief in various parts of the New Testament that Jews (not Romans) were ultimately responsible for the death of Jesus.

Ms. Otto notes that the name Titus was popular among the Hinmans of Woodbury, Conn. This family was noted for its military service, so that may be part of the reason for the convention. Given the general popularity of the name Titus during the Protestant Reformation, though, there are most likely typological reasons for using the name as well. Puritans used typology when naming people as it signaled their belief that they were living in the era during which the messiah would return. Puritan typology comes in two forms. (1) Figure and events ("types") from the Old Testament that predict figures and types ("antitypes") from the New Testament and thus predict the arrival of Christ and (2) Figures and events ("types") from the Bible or Biblical era that predict current events ("antitypes") and hence predict the return of Christ. The use of the name Titus is the second kind. The use of the name during the reformation probably referenced both Paul's disciple, but also the "type" of Emperor Titus, destroyer of the corrupt Temple which in the Puritan's day represented what was in their minds the current corrupt Church--Roman Catholicism. The Biblical "Titus" would have been a fitting exemplar (role model) for New England Protestants because he helped reconcile the Christian community of Corinth (Greece) with Paul. He also went on to organize other churches. That is, to name someone Titus was to show him as a founder as well as a purifier.

As a side note, although Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus was performed in the 1590s, it is unlikely that this is the inspiration for the use of the name by Protestants during the reformation. First, Puritans hated plays. Second, although the play is often seen as an allegory for disputes between the Protestants (Goths in the play) and Catholics (the Andronici Romans), the Titus of this play (an earlier Roman general) is "Catholic" and morally corrupt. He is not someone you'd want your child to emulate.

When looking at the early New England predilection for Biblical names, it is useful to keep in mind what a name signified and the eschatological weight it carried. To name someone Titus was to give voice to your dreams not only for what your child would become, but also what the future would hold.

Credits:
Image at Top is from the Arch of Titus (Rome) and depicts the Romans carrying of the Menorah from the Temple in Jerusalem. Photo posted on wikipedia and by Laurel Lodged

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.

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!