Sunday Pastries With the Dead 44

A tribute tour of the 1841-era Albany Rural Cemetery where my father is buried, for the 20th anniversary of his death.

Albany Rural Cemetery is one of America’s most stunning examples of the mid-1800s rural cemetery movement, which marked a rise in consciously-designed park-like burial grounds featuring winding roads, grouped family plots, and monuments created by sought-after artists.

Albany Rural was established in 1841, and remains an active cemetery. It encompasses 467 acres and over 135,000 people are buried here, including 21st U.S. President Chester Arthur, New York Central Railroad founder Erastus Corning, Alexander Hamilton’s sister-in-law Margaret “Peggy” Schuyler Van Rensselaer, sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer, 34 U.S. Congress members, five New York governors, and many more fascinating and noteworthy people.

One of them also happens to be my dad, who died of pancreatic cancer twenty years ago on November 28, 2004. I was near my hometown in Upstate New York this past October for a funeral, and managed to carve out three hours to explore some standouts at Albany Rural. This tour is by no means all-encompassing—it would take me months to chart every section and lot. This cemetery is on par with Brooklyn’s famous Green-Wood (which is just 11 acres larger); there are impressive memorials at every turn, and countless fascinating stories to be told among the tombs. I never could’ve put this initial piece together without doing diligent pre-research, creating a curated list of which graves to visit (sorted by locale!), and using GPS on my phone within the cemetery to find each. “Overwhelming” doesn’t even begin to cover it…

Let’s begin with the man of the hour, my dad Thomas Francis Calautti (or “Bert,” as he was known to friends and family). His headstone is a simple contemporary granite marker, with two key elements: an epitaph that reads “He sleeps so well because he is loved,” which is a quote from his favorite movie at the time, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, and a paw print on the base to symbolize my childhood dog (and dad’s best friend) Sam, who died two weeks before my father. That last part is a suck-the-air-from-a-room sad story that I haven’t yet steeled myself to write. I was 23 when dad died, and I knew none of what I know now about graveyard history, yet I still somehow found this gorgeous cemetery (divine intervention?) and picked out a lovely plot next to a forever green section that’s walkable to some of Albany Rural’s most notable monuments. I visit dad whenever I’m in the area; it’s an incredibly peaceful little corner of a truly marvelous place.

Tiffany & Co. is famous for their iconic stained glass lamps and jewelry, but did you know that the company was in the cemetery memorial business for a short time? In the late 1800s, Louis Comfort Tiffany devoted an offshoot of his organization, Tiffany Studios, to stained glass mausoleum window and headstone designs. There are around 800 of Tiffany’s granite monuments in the United States (this is an excellent article about those at Green-Wood Cemetery), and I found four remarkable examples at Albany Rural (here’s a Facebook post from ARC with more details). From left to right: Bradford Cogswell (died 1895), Julia Jermain McClure (died 1889), Thomas Hillhouse Jr. (died 1893), and Grace McClure Olcott Vanderpoel (died 1895).

Charles Fort (left, died 1932) was a famous researcher of anomalous phenomena; he’s best known for coining the term “teleportation.” His areas of reportage included UFOs, ghosts and poltergeists, spontaneous human combustion, levitation, raining organic matter, unexplained disappearances, and much more. He’s also one of the first people to hypothesize about alien abduction and spacecraft lights in the sky. In short: Agent Fox Mulder would’ve loved him. To this day, strange coincidences are referred to as Fortean, and he’s been a major influence on many science fiction and horror writers, including Stephen King, Philip K. Dick, and Robert Heinlein. Even director Paul Thomas Anderson pulled themes from Fort’s work for his 1999 film Magnolia. Big screen biopic about this legend when??

Gilbert Milligan Tucker Jr. (right, died 1968) was a first-class passenger on the Titanic, and escaped via lifeboat number seven. His was the first lifeboat to leave the ship, despite the women-and-children-only rule (he actually jumped 15 feet down into the boat at the last minute), so Tucker Jr.—an assistant editor with his father’s agricultural magazine company—was clearly a man of, ahem, importance. In short: Caledon Hockley would’ve loved him. Here’s a nice piece with more details about Tucker Jr.’s life and escape from the Titanic.

Lizzie Calhoun (died 1877) is one of the very few who are, ironically, buried where they passed away. Lizzie was part of a respected local family and had a promising future—she was beloved by many and valedictorian of Albany High School. But her commencement speech would go undelivered... On June 1, 1877, she and a friend hopped into a two-seater carriage for a ride in Albany Rural (a common outing at the time, as cemeteries were considered parks). As a 21-year-old employee of Lizzie’s stepfather drove the carriage on one of the cemetery’s steep roads, the reins got caught and the horses were spooked—they ran off, and the driver was dragged behind. Lizzie jumped out, but her friend hung on inside the carriage. Somehow, her friend escaped with only a sprained ankle, but Lizzie was found “weltering in blood” from a head wound and died on the spot. Her gravestone includes ivy for immortality and a bouquet of flowers for remembrance, and her view looks out over the cemetery’s North Ridge Road, the drive upon which she was killed.

Left is the cemetery’s famous Parsons angel, aka: The Angel of the Resurrection, sculpted by Oscar Lenz on a massive Celtic cross by architect Marcus T. Reynolds, for the prominent Parsons family. Lenz created the angel in bronze, which is now superbly oxidized.

Right is the beloved Angel at the Sepulchre sculpture, commissioned by New York Central Railroad treasurer Robert Lenox Banks for his first wife Emma Rathbone Turner Banks, who died in 1866 at age 30. It’s considered Albany Rural’s most famous monument, as it was made by celebrated sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer, and is regarded as one of his masterpieces. Much has been done over the years to curb the environmental “melt” on its marble, but the details are quite softened and the elements tragically seem to be winning. That view, though—wow.

Speaking of Erastus Dow Palmer, he’s buried within sight of his sculptural triumph, in a phenomenal marble box tomb featuring cameo-style angels in profile and palm leaves symbolizing eternal life in heaven. Palmer, who died in 1904 at age 86, was self-taught, and is considered one of America’s best 19th-century artists. He has works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at the United States Capitol.

Not far from Palmer is the memorial of one of his most renowned apprentices, sculptor and stonecutter Charles Calverley. Calverley worked his way up from a job at a marble shop making headstones, mantelpieces, and lintels to a position creating ornate items in Palmer’s Albany studio. He later opened his own shop in New York City, and became known for crafting intricate busts of famous figures including Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. As you can see from the signature on the back of his burial monument, his spectacular oxidized bronze bust is a self-portrait made in 1892, 22 years before his death at age 80—the monument also includes a lovely plate of his wife Susan Hand in profile.

It’d be uncouth to visit Albany Rural and not pay tribute to its best-known resident, 21st United States President Chester A. Arthur. Arthur famously ascended from Vice President to the role of President after President James Garfield was shot and killed. Arthur finished out Garfield’s term, but wasn’t nominated for reelection, and he died in 1886 at age 57. His striking granite pedestal box tomb resides in the family plot purchased by his father, and is flanked by an oxidized bronze angel holding a palm leaf (between Arthur and Palmer, this was clearly a popular symbol at the time). The monument was created by well-known Baltimore sculptor Ephraim Keyser—it reportedly cost $10,000, a sum raised by Arthur’s friends.

Some beautiful marble stones that I passed include a lovely portrait of “Precious Georgie,” as the piece is known, which was made by previously mentioned sculptor Charles Calverley during his marble shop days (in honor of a four-year-old boy who died of scarlet fever), a tragic lamb-topped piece (symbolizing one who died young) for baby brothers James and John, and a moving memorial for Civil War Captain Thomas Quirk—killed at age 25 in 1863 at Gettysburg—which shows his Union hat and rucksack “worn” by his headstone.

Who could not be struck by these two utterly devastating weeping angels?

A few more amazing oxidized bronze sculptures. Left is the Boulware family monument, titled Meditation and created by our old friend Charles Calverley.

Center left is the extraordinary bronze monument of Georgiana Myers Palmer, wife of famed impressionist painter Walter Launt Palmer (who happens to be the son of aforementioned Erastus Dow Palmer). Walter commissioned previously noted architect Marcus T. Reynolds for the piece after Georgiana died in 1892 at age 30, while in labor with their infant son Jessie (he passed the next day and is buried with Georgiana).

Center right is an arresting bronze relief on the mausoleum of George Porter Hilton, president of the Hilton Bridge Company, who he died in 1909 at age 50. This piece, a collaboration between Parsons angel sculptors Oscar Lenz and Marcus T. Reynolds, shows the Angel of Death giving poppies (symbolizing death) to a tired but triumphant figure.

Far right is the stately bronze-topped monument of U.S. Congressman, 11-term Mayor of Albany, and ironworks magnate Erastus Corning, who died in 1872 at age 77. It sits at the top of a hill in the center of a large family plot, and shares expansive views with the Angel at the Sepulchre.

A few other staggering monuments I couldn’t help but stop to admire in my wanders. You can really see the Greek and Gothic influences on sculptors during the 1800s, and an open book signifies either a life ended too soon (before it reached “the last page”) or the book of life.

There are many towering monuments topped by box tombs at Albany Rural, including this piece on the left covered by a draped cloth (symbolizing the veil between life and death) and the example on the right that’s accented with a winged hourglass (a popular memento mori symbol).

This even more intricate circa-1849 box tomb configuration beneath a baldachin is ornamented with upside-down torches, symbolizing life being snuffed out (shout-out to the visitor who left the interred a jack-o’-lantern offering).

Several nearby Colonial-era cemeteries were moved to the grounds of Albany Rural to make way for public space, most notably the State Street Burying Grounds, reinterred in 1868 (the original locale is now the site of Albany’s Washington Park). Sadly, the headstones have long since fallen over and succumbed to the elements—I was able to make out a few ghostly soul effigy symbols.

That concludes this very special Sunday Pastries in honor of my dad—thanks for joining me! If you love these posts and want to help fund my research and reporting, you can upgrade to an optional paid subscription or pledge to support my work by clicking the button below. Until a future Sunday, fellow taphophiles!