Copp's Hill Burying Ground: Grave Art, Witch Hunters, and Spectral Evidence

I have been a little under the weather this week, but last weekend I did stroll to Boston's North End to visit Copp's Hill Burying Ground. It's the second oldest cemetery in the city and has a lot of really interesting history attached to it.

A folk story claims that the cemetery gets its name from the word "corpse" and was originally called "corpse hill." I suppose if you say "corpse" with a heavy Boston accent it does kind of sound like "copps." Try it and you'll see what I mean. Sadly, this story doesn't seem to be true. The burial ground  was actually named after the Copp family who lived nearby in the 1600s.

The first interments happened in 1659; the final ones sometime in the 1850s. An estimated 10,000 people were buried there over those two centuries, although there are only 1,200 gravestones. In the 19th century urban planners wanted to give Copp's Hill a more parklike feeling so they laid out pedestrian paths and arranged the gravestones in neat, orderly rows. They didn't bother to move the bodies though. These facts mean two things. One, there are a lot of unmarked burials at Copp's Hill. Two, many of the burials are probably mis-marked. When you walk there you're probably stepping on someone but you'll never know who.

Copp's Hill Burying Ground is on a high elevation overlooking the harbor, and I think because of this there is some serious decay among the older gravestones. Still, there are some nice examples of New England funerary art here. The oldest gravestones are decorated with the classic winged death's head motif. The Puritans weren't big on sugar-coating bad news.

In the mid-1700s, a different motif began to appear on New England gravestone's: cherub's heads. These are slightly more cheerful than the death's heads and perhaps reflect a gentler strain of religious thought that began to appear in the area at that time.

The third motif appeared in the late 1700s. Some historians speculate that the willow and urn motif represents a more abstract and philosophical approach to death, while others argue that this and all the other motifs are simply just fashions unrelated to religion or philosophy.

Whenever I visit Copp's Hill I always stop by the Mather family tomb. This is the resting place of three of Boston's most famous Puritan ministers: Increase Mather and his sons Cotton and Samuel. For such an important family their tomb is surprisingly low-key.

The Mathers are mostly remembered now for the roles Increase and Cotton played in the Salem witch trials, but during their lives they did a lot of good things for Boston and New England. Increase Mather (1639 - 1723) served as president of Harvard College for 20 years, wrote numerous books and articles about New England history and politics, and successfully got a new charter for Massachusetts Bay Colony from King William III after the initial one was revoked. All this while serving as a minister until his death.

His son Cotton (1663 - 1728) was also a very influential person in early New England. Cotton was very interested in science and conducted experiments with plant hybridization. He also supported the first smallpox vaccination campaign in Boston. Cotton Mather published more than 400 books and pamphlets on a variety of topics during his life.

Unfortunately, Cotton was also a fervent believer in the literal reality of witchcraft. He thought that witches lived in Massachusetts and were subverting God's plan for a Puritan society in New England. In 1689 he published Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions which described the trial and execution for witchcraft of Goody Glover, an Irish washerwoman from Boston. The book also describes the strange behavior of several children supposedly afflicted by Goody Glover. Memorable Providences is now believed to have laid the groundwork for the larger Salem witch trials that came three years later.

Although he lived in Boston Cotton Mather was active in the Salem trials. He attended several executions, including that of fellow Puritan minister William Burroughs. When Burroughs successfully recited the Lord's Prayer, something it was believed a witch could not do, Mather supposedly intervened and said that even the Devil sometimes could take the form of an angel. The execution went forward and Burroughs was hanged. Mather also wrote about the trials while they were occurring and they helped to glorify God.

During the Salem trials the court turned to the ministerial community for guidance in how to deal with spectral evidence. It was believed at the time that witches had the ability to send their souls (or specters) out of their bodies to afflict their enemies. Often only the person being afflicted would see the witch's specter. The judges wanted to know if this really happened and if they should accept accounts of it as evidence.

To answer the judges Increase Mather published a book called Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits Impersonating Men. In it he clearly stated that the judges should ignore spectral evidence for many reasons, most importantly because demons could take the form of innocent people and afflict someone. He was about to publish it when he was asked by his son Cotton to add a chapter defending the trials and the judges.

You see, Cotton had been asked by the colony's governor to write a defense of the Salem trials. It was called Wonders of the Invisible World and although in it he too dismissed spectral evidence he also claimed the other evidence was strong enough for the trials to continue. Because he didn't want Increases's book to contradict his own he asked his father to add a chapter supporting the trials to Cases of Conscience. Increase agreed, even though it muddied the main argument of Cases. When the judges read it they thought Cases of Conscience supported what they were doing and continued to accept spectral evidence. The Salem witch trials only stopped when Governor William Phips declared that spectral evidence could no longer be accepted.

That's all pretty bad, but to make things worse Increase and Cotton Mather never apologized or said they were wrong about the trials. They continued to maintain they were right, even after the Salem trials ended and many of the judges publicly acknowledged they had done something horrible. Even after some of the key witnesses admitted they had lied. Even after public opinion turned against them the two ministers refused to admit any wrongdoing. Over time they slowly lost their political influence and today are often seen as villains of the Salem witch trials. Certainly there is a lesson to be learned here about pride and accepting blame.

Well, that's a lot to chew on. Next week I'll write about some less grim stories from Copp's Hill Burying Ground.

Death's Head, Cherubs and Urns: Gravestone Art in Bradford Burial Ground

This past Saturday was cool and pleasant, and you could sense that fall is on the way. So why not get into the autumnal mood and visit a historic old cemetery? We decided to visit Bradford Burial Ground in Bradford, Massachusetts.

In 1665 settler John Heseltine gave land to the town of Bradford to be used for a church and a cemetery. The church is long gone, but the cemetery still remains and is now on the National Register of Historic Places. The oldest gravestone is from 1689, but it is believed that there are older burials in the cemetery along with multiple unmarked graves. The Burial Ground is sometimes called the Ancient Burial Ground, which is kind of a nice name.

Walking through the cemetery we noticed the three major motifs you see on old gravestones in Massachusetts: death's heads, cherubs, and willows and urns. Death's heads are the earliest motif of the three, appearing first in the 1600s. Cherubs appeared by the mid-1700s, while the willow-and-urn motif became popular later in that century. Some historians have argued that the evolution of New England funerary motifs arose from changes in New Englanders' religious views, with the death's head representing the grim Puritan world-view, the cherub a more humanistic approach to religion, and the willow-and-urn a more intellectual one. Others have claimed this is not true and that the motifs just changed with the fashions of the time. Specific motifs lasted longer in some towns than others due to the influence of local stone carvers, and there is quite often chronological overlap between the motifs in the same cemetery. 

DEATH'S HEADS

The Bradford Burial Ground has a nice assortment of stones engraved with death's heads. There's something morbid but also charming about these stones. Maybe because this motif is frequently used to illustrate books and on Halloween decor I've just gotten used to it. It also is one of those quintessentially New England things, like clam chowder made with cream or old white wooden churches. 

This stone is beautiful and very well-preserved. 

The flowers carved on the side borders contrast with the winged skull. 

This death's head is more abstract than the others and its wings are replaced with flowers.  The stone also has what looks like a typo: "Hear lyes buried...", but spelling was less circumscribed in the early 18th century. 

What looks like another abstract death's head, but without the typo. Is this  even supposed to be a skull or is it a face?

CHERUBS

In my mind cherubs are those cute little angels that appear on Valentine's Day cards and in Renaissance paintings. The cherubs in Bradford Burial Ground are definitely not cute. They're actually quite grim. Latin inscriptions (memento mori) appear on the cherub stones, but not on the earlier death's head stones. 

Similar to the cherubs are these carvings, which are sometimes called "portraits." They aren't supposed to actually look like the person buried under them, but are symbolic representations of a human. Like the cherubs they are somewhat grim and have the Latin "memento mori" under them. 

WILLOW AND URN

These stones are less morbid and grim than the earlier stones. They are more melancholy. The willow and urn were symbols of mourning from the ancient Mediterranean and appeared in New England as part of the Classical revival in art and architecture. 

A more ornate carving adorns this stone. 

Although they are more gracious, some of the willow-and-urn stones are inscribed with dire warnings to the living. For example, one stone has this carved on it;

Think blooming youth when this you see
Tho young yet you may die like me
Like you a rosy youth was I
Yet in my youth was called to die

Another stone tells us this:

Think, friends, when you these lines have read
How soon we're numbered with the dead
Our years are few and quickly fly
O friends remember you must die

Consider yourself warned. Carpe diem! 

AND THE REST...

Not every gravestone fits into one of those three categories (and maybe those portraits are really a fourth category). For example, some are just decorated with a floral motif: 

Others feature just a name but with no decoration at all, not even a death date. Were these the graves of paupers or people whose families couldn't afford more elaborate gravestones?

And this headstone features a finger pointing heavenward, letting us know where the grave's occupant has gone. This is a motif I've seen in a few other cemeteries in this area, but it's not as common as some of the others. 

I hope you had a great summer and are excited for the coming of autumn!