Happy New Year! I hope you had a great 2024 and are looking forward to an even better 2025. To bring in the new year, we will start with how the "modern" layout of cemeteries came to be.
When you think of cemeteries, many picture quiet, somber spaces reserved for mourning the dead. However, cemeteries once played a much more dynamic role in American society. In the 19th century, the Rural/Garden Cemetery Movement transformed resting places into vibrant, multifunctional spaces that influenced urban planning and reshaped cultural attitudes toward death. Which can be seen by looking at even the way monuments are before and after. Before the movement, you see many monuments with a dark view of death. Symbols like the skull and cross bones, the arrow of death, hourglasses, and Father Time are all knocking at your door. The story of the movement offers a window into how Americans reconciled industrialization, urban growth, and the need for spaces that, in a way, made one not fear death but instead nurtured both the embracing of life and death.
A New Kind of Cemetery
The origins of the Rural Cemetery Movement start with the challenges of urbanization during the early 19th century. Industrial growth brought waves of people into American cities, leading to overcrowded burial grounds. Churchyards became packed with remains and a source of public health concern. Though we now know better, medical professionals of the time feared that diseases could spread from the buried dead to the living.
A solution came from an unlikely source: Paris. The French capital had established rural-style cemeteries outside its city limits, featuring beautiful gardens, winding paths, and a peaceful atmosphere. This model inspired Americans, leading to the creation of the first rural cemetery in the United States: Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1831.
Designed by Dr. Jacob Bigelow, Mount Auburn was envisioned as a place that celebrated life as much as it honored the dead. A place made available to escape the city living and embrace the beauty of life. The landscaped grounds were filled with flowers, trees, rolling hills, and walkways, creating a serene environment that invited visitors to reflect, mourn, and reconnect with nature.
America’s First Parks
Mount Auburn created a spark to ignite similar projects across the country. These rural cemeteries were strategically located just outside urban areas, offering respite from the noise and pollution of city life. For 19th-century Americans, these spaces became leisure destinations as much as mourning. Families picnicked, strolled, and gathered in cemeteries, creating the idea of the public parks as we know them today in the United States.
Historians like Thomas Bender and Stanley French have discussed the movement’s influence on urban planning. The philosophy behind rural cemeteries—blending natural beauty with human utility—directly inspired the creation of iconic urban parks like Central Park in New York City. These cemeteries showed that thoughtfully designed landscapes could serve both the living and the dead.
Please view this video where CrazyCemeteryLady talks of the Old Burying Ground in Lexington, Massachusetts. Notice some of the symbolism used on these markers prior to the Rural Cemetery Movement.
Please note - This is a summary of a twelve-page historiography final. If you would like to view the paper in its entirety and/or view the sources used, please visit https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_nQ1GVJ76Oi0-XXGU2ySNMoMdte3Qn5t/view?usp=drive_link
Within the sources used are many works that will help you understand the movement from the start, as stated in the words of Bigelow.
Come back next week for Part Two.
With love,
TashasGraveAdventures
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