Lawn Cemeteries

The third type of gravescape in the U.S. is the lawn cemetery.  (The first two being graveyards and rural cemeteries, which we discussed last week.) The lawn cemetery, or modern cemetery as it is also known, gained favor around the end of the Civil War.

Highland Lawn Cemetery, Terre Haute, Indiana

As the name suggests, a lawn cemetery is covered with grass, with small tombstones and markers used to designate burial plots instead of large monuments and statues.  This is thought to present a more solemn and aesthetic visual appeal of the grounds to visitors, and to create a cemetery that is much easier for the groundskeepers to maintain. 

Adolph Strauch has been called the  ‘father of the lawn cemetery’ because of his work on Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Strauch was a well-known landscape artist of the nineteenth century who designed many parks in Cincinnati and Chicago.  He assisted in recreating Spring Grove Cemetery and Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery into modern lawn cemeteries by reducing the spate of monuments and statues found there, and by including lakes and trees on the grounds.

Stone railing separating family plot from cemetery

But this pleasing appearance of expansive landscapes does come with some drawbacks.  The disadvantages of the lawn cemetery includes the fact that cemetery authorities may restrict or forbid plot owners from altering the gravesite with plants, flowers or railings.  They may limit the size and/or shape of the stone.   And they may also refuse to allow any flowers or decorations to be used at a grave, thereby creating that uniform appearance most lawn cemeteries have.

Advantages of the lawn cemetery includes the creation of pleasant, approachable landscapes, the absence of pretentious monuments used to express a family’s social station in life, and the economy of allowing cemetery authorities to use and maintain the land in the most efficient manner, therefore reducing the cost of the plots themselves.  With these approaches, lawn cemeteries found a way to set themselves apart from the elements associated with graveyards and rural cemeteries.

Monument at Oak Ridge in Springfield, IL

They are the status quo of gravescapes used in the U.S. today. But while there is much to recommend them, lawn cemeteries still lack a certain sentimental appeal that attracts those of us searching for those qualities of nostalgia, melancholy and romantic sensibility in our cemeteries.

 ~ Joy     

Graveyards of the Past

As I mentioned earlier this week, there are three types of gravescapes that have been used in the U.S. since the early 1600’s - graveyards, rural cemeteries and lawn cemeteries.

Today we’ll take a look at the graveyard. 

Cemetery in Terre Haute, Indiana

Just the name conjures up visions of an old, desolate hill with worn headstones, heavy shadows and forbidding trees.  

(Cue the Hollywood lightening and howling winds.) 

The word graveyard, according to wikipedia.org, comes from the Anglo-Saxon words of  ‘graf’ meaning a pit, 

and ‘yairden’, which means an open place or garden. From the settlement of the U.S. through the 

eighteenth century, graveyards were what we called the places where we buried our dead.  

White River Chapel and cemetery, Bowman, Indiana

Many graveyards were located adjacent to churches and burials there were at the invitation of the church leaders.  Other graveyards were dedicated family plots. Family (or private) burial grounds can still be found in rural areas, but health codes have led to their diminishing numbers. During the settlement of this country most rural families had a burial site on the family farm.  Or early settlers would gather and select a plot of land on which to bury their families together.  Depending on necessity, it may have been on the first farmland settled in the area, or in a wooded area or on a hilltop not far from their homes.

Hamer Cemetery, Mitchell, Indiana

Graveyards were maintained in the American countryside until after WWII when they eventually fell out of favor.  Several reasons have been given for their demise, including the lack of space for new burials, the opportunity for contagious diseases to spread quickly throughout a community, and frequent requests for churches to bury those who were not their parishioners.

Finding my Great-Great Grandparents,
Pike County, Indiana

Regardless of how you view graveyards, there is no adequate way to describe the feelings that surface when you finally locate your family’s graveyard and stand among your ancestors.  Here is their final resting place, near the land, the people and the community they loved.  A gravely awe-inspiring feeling of connection – 

of coming home to your roots!

Rural Cemeteries

I read something today that I found intriguing.  There are only three types of gravescapes that have been in use in the United States since the 1700’s.  During the colonial period it was graveyards, with most attached to churches and known more for their efficiency of task than their modest memorials. 

Then, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, rural or garden cemeteries came into vogue.  Here was a place to ‘take the air.’  A genteel way to see and be seen.  It was a chance to escape from the dirt and noise of the city for a few hours and enjoy a contemplative stroll among exquisite sculpture, interesting architecture, and acres of rolling hills and valleys.  A ‘rural’ cemetery was not just a place in the country to bury your dead; it was an attraction, a landscaped area that appealed to those nineteenth century traits of nostalgia, melancholy and romantic sensibility.

Highland Lawn, a rural cemetery in Terre Haute, Indiana

Then, with the twentieth century, came the lawn cemetery; everything kept low and confined.  They’re easy to build, easy to tend, and easy on the eye – if not a bit mundane.

Mourner at grave

 I, for one, am a big proponent of the rural cemetery. These are the cemeteries I love to wander in; where you set off to explore one area and end up a mile away, having never realized how far you’d traveled, too caught up in the sites and sounds of this quiet, peaceful world. Where the structure of a mausoleum is more dramatic and pronounced than your child’s school or your place of worship.  Where entire life stories are told with just a few stones, some symbols and a statue.  We lost an interesting connection between life and death, a sharing of two worlds, when we stopped erecting sculpture depicting family weeping at the gravesite, obelisks soaring to the heavens, and empty benches awaiting a visitor. 

Bench at Highland Lawn Cemetery

 So, one of my goals this year, is to visit several rural-garden cemeteries.  Many that are not well known and three that are, including Woodland in Dayton, Ohio, Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky and Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis.  What better place to explore and enjoy such ‘A Grave Interest’ than in a rural cemetery!