Sunday Pastries With the Dead 42

A circa-1730 Pennsylvania cemetery positioned between an est. 1803 one-room schoolhouse and an 1864-era church.

I had an unexpected pocket of time this week and decided to seize the spooky moment, so—at long last—let’s get our historical graveyard tour on!

Today we’re in a stunning area of rural Pennsylvania that was settled in 1730 by Presbyterian Scotch-Irish immigrants fleeing persecution in England. Around 30 families colonized the land of the Lenni Lenape, who were swiftly banished from their territory by 1737’s horrific Walking Purchase. Missionaries arrived here through the 1740s under the guise of attending to the indigenous peoples’ “spiritual needs,” though not many were left to “save” by then.

A moment for the irony of the exiled becoming the exilers. The great American legacy.

Many of these founders are buried in the cemetery, the first of almost 450 interred within. If they sensed my position regarding their earthly actions, they didn’t challenge it—in fact, it was a fairly quiet stroll, communication-wise.

The oldest surviving headstone here dates to 1763, but records report that the plot was strewn with the fieldstone pile-marked graves of its earliest inhabitants from 1730 to 1750. The cemetery is bordered by a stone wall, which was “at least seventy-five years old” in 1925, according to an archival record from that year—it’s clearly been patched and restored several times since then, though the north section has collapsed into rubble.

At the east side of the burial ground is a charming old one-room schoolhouse, established in 1803—these days, it hosts a local history museum. On the west side is a brick church built in 1864, which currently serves as the area’s cultural center. The structures are bright red brackets encompassing the sandstone, slate, and marble marker-strewn cemetery—they make for a sunny trio, all well-maintained and surrounded by rolling farmland.

The headstones that immediately captured my curiosity are what I initially pegged as portrait stones, but—upon further investigation—look to be the early work of a new carver or apprentice attempting to perfect his soul effigy carving skills. If they were indeed intended to be portraits of the deceased, they’d have different distinguishing characteristics—instead, as you can see from these two fairly crisp examples (on the left, circa 1763…the oldest stone here…and on the right, circa 1765), they look largely similar, and quite primitive.

Several other extremely weathered specimens here bear his signature style—you can even see the ghost of his attempt at soul effigy wings on the above left-most stone. More dead (ha!) giveaways as to his fledgling abilities are the thickness of his stones, the crude shaping of the tympanums, and the hatch-like marks left on the sides of the stones. Though his lettering is pretty good, so by then he’d had practice at that (one more hint that this may’ve been an apprentice—master carvers often had new trainees focus on one aspect of headstone creation first, either lettering or symbols).

I absolutely love a find like this—it shows the early progress of a carver, speaks to the growing need for formal craftsmen in the area due to increasing population, and serves as a stunning entry into the annals of early American folk art.

To further illustrate my point, this next find offers a helpful visual side-by-side comparison—on the left is a 1766 stone made by an amateur carver (likely a farmer or carpenter taking on work in the off-season), which is clear by the uneven shallow lettering, roughly-shaped stone, and scant details (it simply reads E.G. JUNE 1766). On the right is a professionally made 1817 headstone with more intricate lettering (even a full name line of italicized font!) and a beautifully-shaped tympanum. The ability for folks to locally source and afford formal headstones shows us how residency—and income—increased here over the course of fifty years.

I love the delicate decoration on these two stones—the 1823-era tympanum rosette seen on the left and center images, and the sunbursts, vine and tulips, and heart on the right 1794 stone. At first I thought those were plus signs inside the heart, but they’re more likely rosette-esque design elements.

The heart carving also appears on this absolutely stunning 1765 ledger stone (those rounded edges!), which is clearly by the same maker—he reminds me of New Jersey’s Ebenezer Price, who sometimes signed his stones with his initials surrounded by a heart. Price was in demand and quite prolific, working from the mid 1700s until his death in 1788, so technically this stone could be his—it would’ve cost a pretty penny to haul it by horse-drawn wagon and/or waterway between this part of Pennsylvania and his shop in Elizabeth, New Jersey, but it’s possible. It’s quite spare compared to most of Price and his apprentices’ work, though—it’s far more plausible that this was a local PA carver’s homage to the very respected stoneworker.

And what would a cemetery with interments spanning into the late 1800s be without a Zinkie? I’m particularly tickled by the short, forthright epitaph on this one (make it my out of office message!) For those who need a refresher: these zinc monuments were manufactured between 1874 and 1914 by Bridgeport, CT’s Monumental Bronze Company. They were marketed as “white bronze,” sold (often door to door) through catalogs, and were entirely customizable—they’ve also stood the test of time far better than their more expensive stone counterparts.

Their blue-grey appearance and crisp symbols make them very easy to spot, though you can also identify a Zinkie with a simple knock (yes, it’ll sound hollow!) There’s a fun urban legend attached to the monuments, which suggests that they were used by bootleggers and enterprising groundskeepers to hide alcohol during prohibition and beyond. If you knock on a Zinkie and it doesn’t give a telltale metallic clang, it’s possible there’s still booze stashed within!

To cap off the visit, let’s admire the beautiful striations of this late-1700s marble, which reminds me of blue cheese. It was quarried in Philadelphia and is known as “Pennsylvania Clouded Limestone”—you may remember it from SPWTD 40’s cemetery.

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