Sunday Pastries With the Dead 41

The circa-1846 Hooded Grave Cemetery in Catawissa, PA.

We’re deep in Pennsylvania for this week’s special Sunday Pastries. How deep, you ask? An Amish horse-drawn buggy passed me on the road just beyond the graveyard, as if to underscore the extremely ripped-from-history ambience of this otherworldly place.

We’re at what’s known as the “Hooded Grave Cemetery,” which features the only two wrought iron “caged graves” in the United States. This design is far more common in the UK, where they were prevalent during the 1800s; over the pond, they’re known as “mortsafes.”

Aside from these two structures—which have kicked up quite the mystery for local historians—the cemetery looks like any other tiny family plot that dots the rural roads in this area; there are only 24 burials here.

The cages have birds (signifying the soul’s flight to heaven) capping each arched end; Sarah Ann’s are gold and Asenath’s are silver.

Some posit that the structures were created to deter grave robbers from stealing the bodies and selling them to medical schools (a very common practice in the 1700s and 1800s), while others say they may’ve been erected in accordance with the folklore of the Great New England Vampire Panic. Whether they were meant to keep the living out or the (un?)-dead in, we may never know. The most reasonable explanation seems to be that they were decorative; this area boasted many iron ore mines at the time, and the family involved was connected with the business and considered quite well-to-do, so these could’ve been both a show of wealth and expertise.

Sarah Ann’s headstone is signed by a carver with the surname Hughes, from nearby Danville, PA. Asenath’s footstone, bearing her initials, remains outside the cage.

Within the caged graves are two of the region’s earliest settlers: sister-in-laws Sarah Ann Thomas Boone and Asenath B. Campbell Thomas, who died within six days of each other at age 22 and age 20, respectively, in June 1852. No cause of death is listed, but based on cemetery records it’s most likely that they passed from childbirth complications. Asenath’s daugher (also named Asenath) was born the day her mother died, and passed away five months later. Sarah died 16 days after her child Sarah Frances Boone Bosley’s birth (unlike Asenath Jr., the younger Sarah lived into adulthood and died at age 68).

Rebecca’s toppled headstone, which appears to include a traditional mourning scene on the tympanum (a figure representing her husband beside an obelisk) lies beside a footstone bearing her initials.

Historians say a third cage was removed in the 1930s due to disrepair; it’s believed to have topped the nearby grave of 25-year-old Rebecca Thomas Clayton, who died one month prior to Sarah Ann and Asenath. There are other Thomas family members buried here, so why are these three women the only ones who received such ornate monuments? Perhaps it’s because young female cadavers were the most in-demand from body snatchers, known then as “resurrectionists,” and rural Pennsylvania cemeteries were easy targets because robbers could work without being detected. That may explain why these monuments, which would be far more at home in a city cemetery, have cropped up in the middle of nowhere. Plus, the Thomas family hailed from Scotland, where mortsafes were prevalent, so maybe these were made as a nod to their roots.

Whatever the explanation, these intricate arched structures stand in stark contrast to the surrounding swaths of rolling farmland as gorgeous gothic relics of a bygone era.

Until next Sunday, fellow taphophiles!