Photographs of Sculpture on American Gravestones
An unusual but valuable collection at the American
Antiquarian Society is that of the photographs of grave markers.
Old burial grounds are treasure houses of early American sculpture
and of historical and genealogical information. As Harriet
Merrifield Forbes noted in her study on gravestones, "The colonists
used their finest skill and raised their most enduring and
characteristic works of art in memento mori." In recent years,
however, these storehouses have been endangered by vandalism,
natural erosion (hastened by air pollution), and theft.
The original core of the gravestone photographs collection at
the Society consists of a gift given in 1930 by Harriet Merrifield
Forbes. This author and pioneering photographer donated five
volumes of photographs and hundreds of glass plate negatives.
These negatives have since been copied onto modern film. The
negatives are indexed in a card catalog that is arranged by town,
with further subdivision by burial ground when needed.
There are approximately 1,260 negatives in this part of the
collection, filed by last name of decedent. In addition, there are
five boxes of Forbes papers, two of which contain correspondence
and historical notes relating to gravestones and gravestone cutters.
The larger and more modern part of the collection is the gift from
the late Daniel Farber and his wife, Jessie Lie Farber.
Beginning in 1967 with a gift of three loose-leaf volumes, it has
swelled to include ten volumes of photographs and approximately 9,000
individual photographs of some 7,500 tombstones. Cataloging data
on the individual photographs includes indexes of carvers, locations, and
decedents. Other data has been entered, but is not currently indexed.
In 1997 the collection of gravestone photographs, including those of
Harriet Forbes and Dr. Ernest Caulfield, another scholar of gravestone
sculpture, was published as a set of CD-ROMs by AAS and Visual
Information, Inc. of Denver. The set is available in libraries across the
country and through the Research Libraries Group Cultural Materials
Initiative.
This collection, while not comprehensive, is very strong for
central and southern New England, with scattered coverage of Maine,
New Hampshire, and Vermont. Also here are photographs of stones
from England, the Maritime Provinces of Canada, and the Middle
Atlantic and southeastern United States. Most of the markers
pictured were made prior to 1800.
The Society also has a growing number of books on the subject,
accessible through the online catalog under the heading
"Sepulchral monuments." By building a lasting and careful record
of one form of early American art and history, this collection
helps to ensure that an invaluable resource will be available for
future generations.
- Martha Gunnarson, former co-supervisor in the Newspaper
Cataloging Project. Revised by Georgia B. Barnhill, Andrew W. Mellon
Curator of Graphic Arts
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The Farber Gravestone Collection is an unusual resource containing over
13,500 images documenting the sculpture on more than 9,000 gravestones,
most of which were made prior to 1800, in the Northeastern part of the
United States.
The late Daniel Farber of Worcester, Massachusetts, and his
wife, Jessie Lie Farber, were responsible for the largest portion of the
collection. The website and
online
image database have been created by David Rumsey and Cartography
Associates.
For current information on the cataloging status of this and
other AAS collections, choose "Collection Access" below.
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