cemeteries

How Does Your Garden Grow? Imagining the Cemetery

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By Lauren Maddox

As Halloween comes and goes, our minds drift to the dark and the macabre–we can’t help but think about spooky skeletons, werewolves, witches, ghosts, and vampires or about what those figures really represent to us: death. Death isn’t something people like to think about very much. America, in particular, has always held death at arms length with only squeamish acknowledgement.

The Church began to regulate burials around the 7th century across Europe–rituals for the dead and dying became increasingly Christian, and burying bodies in consecrated ground became an important tenant for dealing with the dead. In these early days of Christian burial, bodies were buried in mass graves so that the bones could be exhumed and stored in ossuaries in the walls of the church. But, due to lack of space, eventually bodies began to be buried in the church yard. Graves would be marked with simple stones, or is some cases, wooden crosses, unless the family was able to afford a more complicated memorial for their loved ones.

The churchyard grave was thought to be a place under the protection of the Church– it was a safe place where loved ones could be guaranteed to pass into an easy afterlife. But as populations boomed and the Industrial Revolution’s dangerous growth and unadulterated industry began to accumulate a body count, the ideation of the churchyard began to change. Instead of being a place where one might visit their loved ones and feel comforted by their presence, they became places in which disease festered and spread. Floods would unearth the recently buried and rain that passed through the churchyard might become contaminated. The proximity of the churchyard burial ceased to be a comfort and became a source of anxiety too-close-to-home.

  • Map of St. Louis, MI in 1884. Click the link to see this map in our Digital Collections!
  • Detail from 1884 Map of St. Louis featuring the Bellefontaine Cemetery and the Calvary Cemetery.

Because of this, in the 19th century, the cemetery moved out of town. Death was an upsetting reality to have in your backyard for Americans, so cemeteries were moved away from the populated areas of the city and from the water supplies for the city. And, in a final symbolic gesture, cemeteries were gated to show that they were no longer part of the world of the living. Looking at these two late 19th century maps of St. Louis and Philadelphia, you can see how far out of town the cemeteries were moved for the safety and peace of mind of the living.

But, ironically, the cemetery also became like a public park. According to Keith Eggener, author of Cemeteries, cemeteries were free oases where people could escape the hustle and bustle of their city lives. People would bring picnics, bicycles, take strolls, and use the cemetery as a brief respite from daily life. They became immensely beautified– the cemetery was not only important as a place that separated the dead from the living, but also as a place that the living could visit at their leisure and leave again when they were satisfied.

We might be a little more comfortable with our cemeteries these days, but they’re still not going to be our ideal afternoon spot. But during Halloween season, when death is on our minds, it’s important to remember our relationship to the place where spooky skeletons and vampires reside. And maybe accept that those scary figures are pretty harmless– Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery is a beloved tourist destination, where people go to see the beautiful parks. But, remember– always “keep your distance, remain quiet and show respect for the dead.”

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