The Start of the Civil War

Today marks the 150^th Anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. The conflict between northern and southern states had been brewing for over ten years.  In February of 1861, seven southern states withdrew from the United States and formed the Confederate State of America with Jefferson Davis as their president.

Twenty Union states supported the U.S. Federal government and acknowledged Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States of America.

The War Between the States, also known as the War of the Rebellion, the War for Southern Independence, and the War Between the North and South, officially began on April 12, 1861 when Confederate forces attacked a U.S. military installation at Fort Sumter in Charleston County, South Carolina.  After this battle, four more southern states would secede and men from both regions of the country would begin enlisting by the thousands.

There were numerous reasons given for the Civil War.  Those included the social and economic differences between the northern and southern states, the election of Abraham Lincoln, states’ rights verses federal rights, and slavery and the Abolitionists Movement.

The Civil War lasted four years.  During that time over 210,000 men died, fighting for their beliefs.  

In all, 140,414 Union soldiers were killed in action, with a total of almost 365,000 Union dead from the war.

For the Confederacy, 72,524 were killed in action, with fewer than 260,000 Confederates killed during the entire war.

The first national order to mark military men’s graves came in 1861 from the War Department.  After the war, uniformly designed stones for the Civil War dead were erected.  

Private stones could also be placed and might differ significantly from the standard curved top, white marker seen in military and national cemeteries throughout the U.S.  Inscriptions on the stones could vary.  Most showed a name, along with the unit served in and a death date.  More details might include rank, military decorations or religious emblems.  

It is interesting to note that stones marked ‘citizen’ or ‘civilian’ were actually markers for escaped slaves who fought on the Union side. They were known as ‘contraband’ during the war.  The markers for Union African-American troops have the designation ‘USCT’ over their names.  This stood for United States Colored Troops. Civilian employees of the U.S. Army were also buried in the military cemeteries.

Many Confederate tombstones have a peon or pointed top.  Legend has it that Confederate soldiers joked about the pointed tops, saying that it would “keep the Yankees from sitting on them.”

The first National Cemeteries were created after the Civil War by Edmund B Whitman as a way to honor the war dead.  There are now 146 National Cemeteries in the United States, at least one in each state in the country, with the best known one at Arlington, Virginia, near Washington D.C. 

On the back of the Confederate Monument at Arlington National Cemetery there is an inscription attributed to Reverend Randolph Harrison McKim, a Confederate Chaplin.  It reads:

Not for fame or reward

Not for place or for rank

Nor lured by ambition

Or goaded by necessity

But in simple

Obedience to duty

As they understood it

These men suffered all

Sacrificed all

Dared all – and died.

To find out more about the soldier of the Civil War, their records, and the battles,  visit –

The Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System at http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/

The National Park System at http://www.nps.gov/features/waso/cw150th/

And the National Archives at http://www.archives.gov/

* Special thanks to Terry Cox for the use of her Civil War Reenactment photos!

~ Joy

Women as Mourners

(Apologies for the delay in this post, I was in Lexington, but my blog copy was not : )

Women have always been the expressers of emotions.  We are the ones who oversee the major passages that occur in life – the births, the marriages, the sicknesses, the deaths, each with its own rituals that women have performed for eons.  Death, in every culture, has always had many special rites and women have had the distinct responsibility of attending to that province.

In ancient Greece, women mourners performed the funeral dirge at a person’s death.

In ancient Rome, female mourners would be hired to keep long vigils while the body lay in state and then accompany it to its final resting place.

In ancient Egypt, women hired as mourners followed the funeral procession, wailing loudly. They were also depicted on the tomb walls.

In ancient Israel, women were the ones who prepared the body for burial, as we have though the ages, in all cultures.

In Ireland, women mourners would keen over the body.  This keening was more of a poetic nature set to a vocal wail while the women would rock or clap.

In China, women mourners are still hired today to show respect for the deceased and to help guide the grieving emotions of those attending.

Known as professional mourners, wailers, criers, weepers, keeners and carpideiras, these women were hired to lament the deceased with loud weeping, wailing, hair-pulling, clothes-tearing, even tambourine and chest beating, depending on the dead’s status and the amount of money invested in the mourning. This was done to encourage others to join in with organized, rhythmic expressions of grief.  In some countries, a hired mourner expressed all of the grief that the family could not bring themselves to do in public.

Demonstrative mourners were hired to attend the funeral services, to weep and chant.   The funeral procession not only bore the deceased to their final resting place, it also was a public display of their status in life. Hired mourners would take part in the procession, wailing and grieving, in an organized manner, as benefited the standing of the deceased.

Hired female mourners are depicted throughout literature.  From the Iliad to the Bible to Shakespeare, women have held the role of lamenter and griever.  Even in the cemetery, it is the women who stand over the graves, heads bowed, faces bearing sorrow and anguish, silently lamenting someone’s passing.

Professional mourners were used in Europe until the early nineteenth century, when they were replaced by the funeral mute.  The funeral mute was someone with a sad, melancholy face, dressed all in black, who would stand near the door of the home or church during the funeral to express grief.  They would walk behind the horse-drawn hearse, with a grieving, albeit, silent face.

The professional mourner and the public display of such emotions fell out of favor with the Catholic church and they began to suppress them.  Female mourners were replaced by religious figures such as priests intoning similar elegies and dirges, leading chants and funeral hymns, and heading up the religious procession to the burial grounds. In today’s contemporary world, funeral directors and undertakers have taken on the role as professional mourners, organizing the grieving process for families and leading the way to the cemetery. The only thing missing from our modern funeral mourners are the appearances of grief, and the tears.

Today in China, Taiwan, Brazil and Africa, female mourners are still hired to wail and grieve for the deceased.  But, during the past century, the world has changed its views regarding the vocal lamenting of grief and death.  We have become a quiet, stoic society. The tradition of the professional mourner has almost died out.  But the statue of the female mourner, I suspect, will always be there watching over us with saddened and sorrowful eyes.

~ Joy

Ancestors' Day

Today is Ancestors Day in many Asian countries, a day to remember and honor the departed.  It is also known as Tomb Sweeping Day or Qing Ming, which means pure brightness. Ancestors Day is celebrated 15 days after the spring equinox and is the climax of a 2-week celebration when it’s believed that the ghosts of the departed walk the earth.  

It is a time when the living remember and pay tribute to their ancestors, by meditation, prayer and by making offerings to those who have become trapped in the spirit world.  In order to help these detained spirits overcome their bad karma and guide them back into the cycle of reincarnation, family members offer food and money to them so that they will watch over the ancestral family.  Relatives color eggs, have picnics and fly kites during Qing Ming to celebrate the rebirth of nature – the cycle of reincarnation. The festival began during the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907,) and over 450 million people around the world will celebrate Ancestors Day this year. 

It is during this festival that family members tend to the graves of their forbearers.  The gravesite, temple or crematorium is cleaned and tidied, dirt is swept away and cremation urns are polished.  Food, along with paper that resembles money or electronic items, called joss paper or ghost money, is offered to the departed to bring them happiness in the afterlife.

Food offerings consist of what the ancestor was fond of eating, steamed fish, chicken, or eggs, served with rice and wine.  The food is prepared and offered cold, since cooking is not allowed on this day.  The food is then arranged in a certain manner, similar to the practices of feng shui, on the home alter in order to bring the family good luck, plentiful harvests and more children. Incense and candles are lit both on the home alter or at the burial site.  Food is also taken to the tomb to be offered, but the public offering consists mostly of bread and water.

The joss paper money, also known as hell money, is offered to the dead so that they can continue to have necessary and valuable things in the afterlife.  This guarantees that the deceased will be happy, and ensures they will be helpful to living relatives who may need to ask for special favors or assistance from them.  Joss paper is squares or rectangles of bamboo or rice paper with images stamped upon them.  Shops in China now offer joss paper versions of credit cards, televisions, computers, even iPads and iPhones.  The current price for two paper iPads and four iPhones made from joss paper is about 90 cents in U.S. currency.  These gifts or offerings are then sent to the deceased by way of burning. The burning of these tributes has led to frequent problems involving uncontrolled fires. More than one thousand tons of paper is burnt each year during the festival. Statistics from last year indicate that over 1,650 fires broke out during the celebration, resulting in 17 deaths and 32 injuries.

We, in the U.S., do not have such a festival to honor our ancestors. As close as we come is Memorial Day, held the last Monday in May, a day to pay tribute to those who have died while serving our country.  That date may jog our memories to drop off some floral tribute at the cemetery.  But to actually have a designated time to honor our ancestors, to tend to and repair their graves, and to just relax and enjoy the park-like atmosphere of the cemetery, we don’t really do that, not anymore.  I can remember my grandmother and great grandmother talking about ‘Decoration Day’ of years past.  About how they would prepare a picnic basket with cold fried chicken, drop biscuits and iced tea, then cut and gather peonies and roses to place on the family graves. After everything was ready they would gather the family and head out to the local graveyard where they spent the afternoon tending the relatives graves. When the work was done, they’d enjoy a picnic.  I’ve always liked that idea, spending an afternoon cleaning, tending and visiting with our ancestors, our links to the past.  So maybe today, on this Ancestors' Day, I’ll gather some spring flowers, grab a box of chicken and head out to ‘visit’ my grandparents.  It’s just another way to offer thanks for all that they did for me.  I’m sure they won’t mind if its store-bought chicken and biscuits - but a paper iPad? Ummm…no.   But, if I could get joss paper with an old radio tuned to the Grand Ole Opry?   They would be in heaven!

~  Joy

Grave Humor for April Fools' Day

Today is April 1^st - April Fools’ Day.  A day celebrated around the world with jokes, hoaxes and pranks.  Also known as All Fools’ Day, the tradition is believed to have begun in France in the 1500’s.   

Although wit is not something you expect to find in a cemetery, our ancestors did have a sense of humor about life…and death. Epitaphs, those tributes and verses engraved on tombstones, can provide a bit more insight into the deceased’s character, all the while offering it with a wink and a nod.  With that in mind, I thought a bit of  ‘grave humor’ was in keeping with the day.

In Hillside Cemetery at Eastport, Maine, Lorenzo Sabine was buried in 1877.  On his stone is one simple word,             Transplanted

Boot Hill Cemetery

Tombstone, Arizona started in 1879 as a mining boomtown that grew up quick and grew up mean.  It briefly became part of the ‘Wild West,” where cattle ranchers, cow boys and carpet baggers all held sway, with a gun. It was during 1881 that Marshall Wyatt Earp and his brothers fought the cowboys at what became known as the shootout at O.K. Corral.  In the infamous Boot Hill Cemetery in Tombstone, almost 300 of these former citizens are buried and remembered with some interesting epitaphs.

Here lies Butch.

We planted him raw.

He was quick on the trigger

But slow on the draw.

Wells Fargo Agent, Lester Moore was also buried in Boot Hill with the following epitaph:

Here Lies

Lester Moore

Four slugs from a 44

No Les

No more

England is also the home of many cheeky inscriptions –

On the stone of Anna Wallace in a cemetery in Ribbesford, England is this supposed inscription:

The children of Israel wanted bread

And the Lord sent them manna

Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife

And the Devil sent him Anna

From a London cemetery comes this,

Owen Moore

Gone away

Owin’ more

Than he could pay

Even the barristers appear to have had a sense of humor.

Sir John Strange

Here lies an honest lawyer

And that is Strange

Rebecca Freeland was buried in an Edwalton, England cemetery in 1741 with this rejoinder –

She drank good ale

Good punch and wine

And lived to the age of 99

Some cleaver epitaphs may be a bit too clever.  When I researched to locate these, I found that the cemetery locations continued to change from one state to another, from one mention to another.  But, regardless of existence, they are humorous.

Here lies the body

Of Jonathan Blake

Stepped on the gas

Instead of the brake

Here lies the body of our Anna

Done to death by a banana.

It wasn’t the fruit that laid her low

But the skin of the thing that made her go.

This inscription has been reported in a cemetery in Hartscombe, England and also in New Jersey.  Same name, different days of death – in England on June 22, in New Jersey on June 30 but no year of death is given.

On June __,

Jonathan Fiddle

Went out of tune.

In Elkhart, Indiana the stone for S.B. McCracken, a teacher reads –

School is out.

Teacher has gone home.

The famous also have some epitaphs that produce chuckles –

 

Mel Blanc, the man behind hundreds of character voices for Warner Brothers Studios, went out with the tagline of every Warner Brother’s cartoon….

That’s All Folks

American singer, actor and 50’s Rat Pack member, Frank Sinatra closed out with a line from one of his songs,

The best is yet to come

Television host and media mogul, Merv Griffin ended his life segment with –

I will not be right back

After this message.

For Spike Milligan, an Irish comedian, writer and actor,

"Duirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite"

English translation:  “I told you I was ill.”

 It is also rumored that a similar epitaph exists in an unnamed cemetery in Georgia for a B.P. Roberts with the words -

I told you I was sick.

The sudden passing of John Belushi left us with a smile –

I may be gone but

Rock and Roll lives on.

Then there are the anonymous epitaphs:

Again, from England –

 

This spot is the sweetest I’ve seen in my life,

For it rises my flowers and covers my wife.

 ~

Beneath this silent stone is laid

A noisy antiquated maid

Who from her cradle talked to death

And ne’er before was out of breath.

This epitaph is seen in nineteenth century cemeteries throughout the U.S.

Behold and see as you pass by

For as you are, so once was I 


As I am now, so will you be

Prepare unto death and follow me

But someone supposedly felt a reply was needed to this plea and carved, somewhere - 

To follow you, I’ll not consent

For I don’t know which way you went.

And to close out with my favorite:

Here lies an Atheist.

All dressed up and no place to go.

Have a Happy April First, and remember in those immortal Main Ingredient song lyrics…

“Everybody plays the fool, sometimes……”

~ Joy