The Chesapeake book of the dead : tombstones, epitaphs, histories, reflections, and oddments of the region / by Helen Chappell ; photographs by Starke Jett V.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chappell, Helen, 1947-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cemeteries--Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.).

Cemeteries.

Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.)--Social life and customs.

Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.).

Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.)--History--Anecdotes.

Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.)--Genealogy.

Physical Description:

xii, 135 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

Baltimore, Md : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.

Summary:

For the many people who enjoy walking through old cemeteries, exploring forgotten and overgrowth graveyards, and reading the names, the dates, and the epitaphs of the dead, the Chesapeake Bay region offers a rich assortment ordinal resting places, many dating back to the early 1600s. From Williamsburg to Havre de Grace, it is not uncommon to see a number of the living wandering among the markers of the dead. Some are genealogists and historians, others come in search of quietude and a tangible connection to the past.

In The Chesapeake Book of the Dead, Helen Chappell and photographer Starke Jett survey this rich legacy, from the vast and imposing Arlington National Cemetery to lone graves so modest as to have been lost almost as soon as they were dug. Chappell and Jett visit graveyards of the famous and the obscure, wander through cemeteries dotted with both elaborate funerary and simple, weather-beaten headstones, and discover epitaphs which range from the literary to the amusing to the poignant. As old grave sites disappear under developers' bulldozers, through neglect, and at the hands of unscrupulous headstone collectors, this remarkable book offers a unique and elegiac look at our past and its tales of love and tragedy.

Among the cemeteries this book visits are Southeast Washington's Congressional Cemetery (posthumous home to composer John Philip Sousa, FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, pioneering feminist and muckraking journalist Anne Royall, and Choctaw chief and notable military tactician Pushmataha); Baltimore's Green Mount Cemetery (built in the 1830s as Ba1timore's first sylvan graveyard); and Westminster Burying Ground in downtown Baltimore. Here lies the grave of Edgar AllanPoe, which a mysterious figure visits each year on Poe's January birthday to leave roses and a bottle of brandy. The book also describes the final resting places for such celebrities as Dorothy Parker (Chappell located her ashes at the NAACP headquarters in Baltimore), E Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (buried in Rockville, Maryland, at Scott's wishes, because, he insisted, "I belong here, where everything is civilized and gay and rotted and polite"), and cosmopolitan actress Tallulah Bankhead (interred in her sister's plot near Chestertown; Maryland).

Included throughout this fascinating book are essays on mourning fashion arid deathbed performances, graveyard ghost stories, discussions of efforts to save historic cemeteries, and notes from the diary of a nineteenth-century doctor who today is buried in Rising Sun Cemetery alongside many of his patients. Chappell's lively prose, accompanied by Jett's haunting black-and-white photographs, will delight all those drawn to the seclusion, peacefulness, and melancholy of old graveyards.

Contents:

In the Midst of Life, We Are in Death 1

Parting Shot 11

She Came Back from the Grave 15

Tales from Tidewater Virginia 19

Customary Woe: Colonial, Federal, Victorian 25

Batwings 33

Harriet Tubman Is Buried Away 37

A Lonely Place to Lie 43

The Last Word: Mourning and Dying in Style 45

Congressional Cemetery 53

Murdered by Cyrus Stack 57

Death and the Doctor: Notes from a Nineteenth-Century Diary 61

Green Mount, Baltimore 65

Kids Just Know These Things: Four Graveyard Ghost Stories from Kristine Neaton, Age 12 73

Oak Hill and Rock Creek 81

Scott and Zelda 87

Floating Coffins 91

Arlington National Cemetery 95

One That Got Away 97

Larger than Death: Tallulah Bankhead 99

On Death and Burial: A Conversation in a Country Store 101

Old St. Paul's Cemetery 105

Arvel Johnson on His Native Soil 109

Miss Olivia and Miss June 119

Paying Our Respects to Mr. Poe 123

Arts and Crafts 129

A Tribute to the Graveyard Mind 131.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [133]-135).

ISBN:

0801860415

OCLC:

39533875