HISTORY AND FOLKLORE FROM THE CEMETERY
This Oak wood Cemetery lamb marks the grave of Willie and Anice (Annie) Cowper, children of Pulaski and Mary B.
Cowper. Willie died in 1865 and Annie died in 1868.
Have you ever thought of a cemetery as a
good place to go for a history lesson? Perhaps
you have realized the importance of old ceme¬
teries as a record of people's birth and death
dates. But cemeteries can provide much more
information than that. Dr. Prioli asked his
workshop audience many questions based on
Oakwood Cemetery, a nineteenth-century
urban cemetery located in Raleigh. Oakwood
served as an example, but the questions raised
by Prioli may be applied to all types of cemeter¬
ies, whether they are rural or urban, family
plots, or large cemetery parks.
Tombstones provide a unique doorway to
the past. This doorway happens to be highly
visual, filled with art, history, social values,
personal relationships, religious beliefs, and
even folklore. Is a grave simple or elaborate?
Are names only recorded or did the family
highlight some fact about the deceased's life?
Is the carving on the memorials of good qual¬
ity? How many generations of a family are
buried together? What types of stone or other
materials were used to make the monuments?
The key to gaining knowledge from any ceme¬
tery is to be observant. As Prioli pointed out,
many nineteenth-century cemeteries were not
regarded merely as places to bury the dead.
Oakwood Cemetery, for instance, is an early
southern example of a "garden-park" design
that became popular all over the country. It
started in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the
1830s and spread to urban areas where land
for recreation was becoming scarce. Put sim¬
ply, people had to be buried somewhere and
this took up a lot of land. So why not use that
same land as a park as well? People could bring
picnic lunches, enjoy trees, grass, flowers,
birds, and sunshine, and receive lessons in art
and on the lives of respected citizens. Add a
few benches and create an outdoor art muse¬
um. This is quite a different view of cemeteries
from ours. And fascinating stories lurk around
unexpected corners in old city and rural ceme¬
teries.
Consider Oakwood's Confederate section,
the oldest part of the cemetery. In 1866, after
the Civil War, a Wake County memorial asso¬
ciation decided to locate all Confederate dead
buried in the county, disinter them, and bring
them to a single burial spot in Raleigh. Land
was donated for the project by Henry Morde-
cai, and work began on Oakwood in February,
1867. Before the cemetery grounds were
ready, however, Federal officials in occupied
Raleigh were ordered to create a national
cemetery where only Union dead could be bur¬
ied. The Federals selected Rock Quarry Ceme¬
tery as their site and ordered all southern sol¬
diers buried there removed at once or "their
'Associate Professor, Department of English. North Carolina State University
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