Collecting area: Gravestones

A consulting architectural historian and urban planner based in Shreveport, Louisiana, Eric J. Brock was born in San Francisco, California, but with deep family roots in New York, New England, and the coastal Deep South. The author of sixteen books and several hundred popular and academic journal articles on Louisiana history, Brock is a member of the board and former president of the Oakland Cemetery Preservation Society of Shreveport, a former board member of the Louisiana Preservation Alliance, a member of Save Our Cemeteries of New Orleans, of Friends of New Orleans Cemeteries, and a current or former member of multiple preservation and museum organizations. Brock has a deep interest in cemetery preservation and in the multi-faceted role of cemeteries as archives of architectural, historical, genealogical, and artistic importance and as benchmarks of cultural change and development.

With an emphasis on New Orleans and Shreveport, the Brock collection consists primarily of articles and newsclippings on Jewish and other Louisiana cemeteries.

A senior archives and records management specialist at the New York State Archives, Warren F. Broderick has published extensively on topics ranging from gravestone carving to the history of the upper Hudson River Valley. He is co-author of Pottery Works (1995), editor of a new edition of Granville Hicks’s Small Town (2004), and a contributor of numerous journal articles of historical subjects.

The Broderick Collection includes photographs of tombstones in Old Catholic Cemeteries in, Lansingburgh and Lebanon Springs, N.Y., and St. Josephs Cemetery, Pittsfield, Mass. The collection includes a folder of slides taken of St. Josephs Cemetery by Barbara Rotundo.

A local historian from Bethany, Connecticut, Alice Bice Bunton (1924-2000) was a long-time member of the Association for Gravestone Studies. Author of a book on the historic houses of Bethany in 1972, she attended AGS conferences regularly beginning in the late 1970s. Bunton died on October 18, 2000, at the age of 75.

Many of Bunton’s photographs documenting cemeteries in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey were taken during tours associated with the AGS annual conferences. Also included in the collection are AGS conference brochures and other printed material, newspaper clippings, grave rubbings, and a small amount of correspondence.

A teacher at the New York State School for the Deaf since the 1970s, Frank Calidonna is a professional photographer based in Rome, N.Y. A long-time member of the Association for Gravestone Studies, Calidonna has a long standing interest in Victorian cemeteries and, among other projects, made a photographic study of the Victorian Mount Cemetery in Rochester, N.Y., in 1991.

The Calidonna Collection contains 55 black and white prints (5×7″) taken of monuments and gravestones in Mount Hope Cemetery, ca.May 1991, documenting the stylistic variation, ranging from high Victorian to relatively recent. The collection also includes two brochures for Mount Hope.

Founded in 1977, the Association for Gravestone Studies (AGS) is an international organization dedicated to furthering the study and preservation of gravestones. Based in Greenfield, Mass., the Association promotes the study of gravestones from historical and artistic perspectives. To raise public awareness about the significance of historic gravemarkers and the issues surrounding their preservation, the AGS sponsors conferences and workshops, publishes both a quarterly newsletter and annual journal, Markers, and has built an archive of collections documenting gravestones and the memorial industry.

Consisting of self-published and limited-run compilations of gravestone transcriptions from historical cemeteries, the AGS Cemetery Inscriptions Collection offers rich documentation of epitaphs and memorial language, with an emphasis on colonial and early national-era in New England and Ohio. The collection is arranged by state and town.

An attorney from Boston, Theodore Chase became a noted scholar of gravestones. He served variously as president of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, keeper of the cabinet of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and he was both a president of the Association for Gravestone Studies and editor of its annual publication, Markers.

This collection document Theodore Chase’s long involvement as an officer of the Association for Gravestone Studies during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Among other materials, the collection includes records of Board of Trustees meetings (1988-2003), materials on organizational legislation, official presidential correspondence (1981-1986), and files from Chase’s tenure as editor of Markers (1988-1992). This collection also includes a significant set of gravestone rubbings.

Husband and wife Paul Francis and Olive (“Tommie” Fox) Colburn were active members of the Association for Gravestone Studies from the 1980s. Natives of Lowell, Mass., and long-time residents of Berwick, Me., the Colburns shared an interest in New England gravestones and marker symbolism, with Tommie enjoying a particular specialty in metal-based markers.

The Colburn collection represents a cross-section of the couple’s work documenting and lecturing about New England grave markers and marker symbolism as well as Victorian funerary practice. Of note are a small number of items reflecting Victorian mourning culture, including images of funeral wreaths and arrangements, three mourning handkerchiefs, and a funeral card.

An historian and archivist from northern Virginia, Brian A. Conley spent years studying the cemeteries of his native Fairfax County.

The collection contains final and draft copies of Conley’s Guide to the Cemeteries of Fairfax County, Virginia (1994), along with a small number of printed works on Virginia cemeteries or other resources used in his research.

Michael Cornish first became interested in gravemarkers while writing a senior thesis at the Massachusetts College of Art, and since that time, he has prepared numerous exhibitions of his photographic work and conducted important research on colonial markers. Widely known for his work on the carver Joseph Barbur of West Medway, Mass., and a group of “tendril carvers” in southeastern Massachusetts, Cornish speaks frequently to historical societies around Massachusetts, delivering slide shows tailored to the particular area. An inventory photographer for the City of Boston’s Historic Burying Ground Initiative, he has also consulted for several towns regarding the preservation and rehabilitation of their burying grounds. As a member of the AGS Board of Directors, Cornish has worked in various capacities and played an active role in organizing and participating in the annual conventions, programs, exhibits, and tours.

The Cornish Collection includes many thousands of photographs and direct rubbings of early New England gravestones, primarily in Massachusetts and Connecticut, focusing on their beauty and artistic merit. Originally inspired by the work of Harriette Merrifield Forbes, and encouraged by Dan and Jessie Farber, Cornish photographed in a variety of formats, including Kodachrome transparencies, black-and-white negatives, and black-and-white prints. The collection also includes research notes relating to his work on Barbur and other stonecarvers.

Edwin S. Dethlefsen and his colleague James Deetz did pioneering work in the historical archaeology and material culture of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century gravestones in New England. Through a series of articles in the mid-1960s, based on intensive study of well documented sites in Massachusetts, Deetz and Dethlefsen developed a basic framework for understanding the stylistic evolution of gravestones. Their work was foundational for later studies in material culture and folk art, but also the broader study of death and bereavement and colonial culture.

The Dethlefsen Collection consists of nearly 2,900 negatives (black and white, 35m and 2×2″) of gravestones, primarily from eastern Massachusetts and Newport, R.I. Among the towns documented are Boston, Cambridge, Charlestown, Concord, Dorchester, Harvard, Lexington, Marblehead, Marshfield, Plymouth, Quincy, and Scituate.