Angels and a Menage å Trois in the Cemetery

7 comments:

Joan Ellen Gage said...

Fascinating! Did you find any Gages, as my Dad is a geneology fiend? We do have relatives in New England, especially.

October 9, 2013 at 10:00 AM

by Joan Gage said...

Hi Joan Ellen! There were some Gages--I know a Dr. Gage was an important person about a century ago in Shrewsbury MA, near where we live, but since "Gage" is not really my husband's name (the real name is Greek and as a reporter he had to shorten it to get a by-line that fit in one column) and because it was raining pretty hard while I was in Rural Cemetery, I did not do a very good job of tracking down Gage tombstones.

Joan

October 11, 2013 at 7:08 PM

civil war researcher said...

I loved the pics from Rural--the Crompton Mausoleum is very beautiful. A friend of mine was a family member and is buried outside of it on the grounds. When a family member dies and is buried there they open the mausoleum so you can pay respects to those buried inside and it interesting to see the interior.

October 13, 2013 at 4:24 AM

over60andfabulous said...

How wonderful to find another blogger 60+ !! I am following - your pictures are lovely - my family has been here since 1776 & this is such an interesting topic. Thank you for sharing.
All the best, Mimi
http://inmyprimetime.blogspot.com/

October 14, 2013 at 11:46 AM

by Joan Gage said...

Thank you to both Civil War researcher and Mimi, who's over 60 and fabulous! It's fun to meet friends who are as fascinated by cemeteries as I am.

Joan

October 15, 2013 at 4:25 PM

Marie Sultana Robinson said...

My maiden name is Crompton. This is my family crypt. The faces of the angels are the women of my family. Yes, we used to open the crypt when we had funerals. Nearby are the Smiths which were part of the family as well. To most it's beautiful to me, it's a step into the past and family. Beautifully done pictures.

October 7, 2015 at 12:29 PM

Marie Sultana Robinson said...

If you are researching the Civil War. George Crompton retooled the looms so they could manufacture the bolts of cloth to make uniforms. He was used as a model for the soldier in the Civil War monument downtown.

October 7, 2015 at 12:31 PM

Angels and a Menage å Trois in the Cemetery

As predicted in my previous post, I spent  Friday photographing in Rural Cemetery, Worcester (MA) as a participant in the Worcester Art Museum's class "Exploring Photography at Rural Cemetery",  taught by my friend Mari Seder.

 

It was really fun, despite the rain which followed us all day, alternating between a mist and a downpour. Then we went back to the Museum where Mari reviewed and critiqued our photos.  Even though we were all photographing in the same place, each of us focussed on different aspects of the cemetery.  One woman, who is a civil engineer, found wonderful geometric compositions in small architectural details and shadows and corners of stones.  Another concentrated on the beautiful trees and foliage, leaves and flowers.  And I discovered  that my obsession with the human form showed up in nearly all my photos--either with inclusion of my fellow photographers or the angels and cherubs that I found in the cemetery.  (If you come to my house you'll discover I've been collecting angels for ages.)

I thought this looked like the witch's house in Hansel and Gretel but when I got up close I learned it was the mausoleum of Inventor George Crompton.

 And it has quite a few cherubs, each with a different face and attitude.

This one was my favorite (below.)

We all circled this lovely (if battle-scarred) angel erected by the Gorham family.

I photographed her from all angles.

This one (below) I called a guardian angel. He is directing this departed soul toward Heaven.

But our attention turned from angels to scandal when we took shelter from the rain in the door of the Greek-temple-like mausoleum below.

The name over the door was "Kennedy" and here's the story, as reported in Rural Cemetery's "Guide and Walking Map" brochure-- a tale told with delightfully antiquated euphemisms:

"Ellen 'Nellie' F. Rogers and Walter G. S. Kennedy were married at ages 67 and 63 respectively. They then adopted Mr. Kennedy's 'chum' Charles A. Williams, a former piano salesman who was age 45 at the time, as their 'son'.  It was the stir of Worcester society to have such an event! We have one of the richest women in Worcester marrying a music teacher and adopting the comrade of Mr. Kennedy's...Nellie Rogers, the daughter of an old and wealthy Worcester family, lost her father at a young age and was left in a peculiar situation as a result.  She and her mother could enjoy the interest only of Mr. Roger's vast estate and only upon the death of one of them could the other inherit the fortune of the estate.

"Nellie and Walter traveled  the same social circles for nearly a quarter of a century before their friendship ripened into greater intimacy until one day she packed her trunks, 'took the family silver' and moved to Sicily with Walter and Charles in tow.  There she purchased a villa on the Sorrento Bay and she and Walter married in France.  On the day old Mrs. Rogers got word of the events, she passed away and left Nellie, Walter and Charles to inherit the fortune!  Rural Cemetery has benefitted from this fortune with the erection of the Ellen Rogers Kennedy Memorial Chapel in 1930."

After reading this, we peered with renewed interest into the holes in the locked metal doors of the Kennedy Mausoleum.

Peering even closer, we could make out the stained glass window and the sentiments carved  into the wall.  On one side:

"Death is not departure but arrival

Not falling asleep but waking."

And on the other:  

"It is life which is the night

And death is daybreak."

And by poking a camera through a hole to photograph the interior, we discovered a tantalizing mystery: There were only two crypts inside the mausoleum, leaving us wondering which of the scandalous threesome sleep inside, and in what order?

This is just one of the many mysteries that lie beneath the marble and slate stones of Rural Cemetery in Worcester.

Photographing in Cemeteries

(The photos below were taken in Hope Cemetery, Worcester, unless otherwise labelled.) 

I’ve always been drawn to explore cemeteries, especially when I travel.  And I love photographing monuments and gravestones. Often the words on the stone are intriguing-- clues to a cryptic but dramatic story. 

A cemetery in Minster Lovell, Gloucestershire, England

My kids would probably attribute my love of cemeteries to my morbid streak, but I disagree—I love cemeteries because they are filled with testaments of love as well as hope for a future reunion with the  departed.  Lovingly tended graves are a physical pledge: “You are not forgotten.  You live in my heart.”

So it’s no wonder that, for a photojournalism course I took last year at the Worcester Art Museum with photographer Norm Eggert, I chose for my project photos taken over many visits to Hope Cemetery in Worcester.

I posted some of those photos on Dec. 3, 2012, in  “A Cemetery Called Hope.” I began the essay this way: “Hope Cemetery is the place where my body will be buried.  I like visiting and photographing cemeteries because they’re filled with virtual symbols of love, expressed in the words engraved on the stones, the flowers, candles, flags, toys, burning incense, balloons, statues, birthday cakes, prayers, rosaries, letters, even bottles of whiskey and un-smoked cigarettes left by visitors on the graves.

“All these things are an expression of the hope that one day we may be reunited with our departed loved ones.  No one knows if that’s true, but that’s why ‘Hope’ is an appropriate name for a cemetery.”

Over the years, I‘ve visited beautiful and incredibly moving cemeteries in many countries.  Some that stand out in memory include the “City of the Dead” in Glasgow, Scotland; the famous “Pere Lachaise” in Paris (where I saw a mourner pour a whole bottle of Scotch on the grave of Jim Morrison—and I was enchanted by the monument to Heloise and Abelard—the nun and the philosopher/monk, apart in life but together forever in death.)   

Heloise and Abelard, Pere Lachaise, Paris

One of my favorite cemeteries, which I happened on by chance, is the “poor people’s cemetery” on the island of Martinique, where each grave—every one of them homemade-- looks like a little house with a photograph of the deceased over the door.

Day of the Dead poster, Oaxaca, on my studio wall

The ultimate cemetery experience is staying up all night in Mexican cemeteries during the Day of the Dead celebrations.  I’ve had that privilege as a member of chef Susana Trilling’s  “Dias de Muertos” cooking adventures in Oaxaca.(See “Seasons of My Heart” for a list of all her culinary tours.)   

The Mexicans have a much more comfortable relationship with death than we do in the United States.   On the days of the dead (children are believed to return on October 31, adults the following day)—the surviving family members decorate the graves with flowers, candles and (often) elaborate sand paintings and then settle in to spend the night and welcome visitors with food, music, beer and whatever else the dead person liked in life. The whole holiday resembles a fiesta more than a funeral.

Of course I take photos when I’m visiting a cemetery, and often I’m photographing and weeping at the same time.  Most graves don’t make me cry, and some make me laugh, like the one that showed the deceased posing with his favorite cockfighting rooster.

But when I see an elderly person talking to a gravestone, and especially when I see the stone of a young child who barely tasted life, but whose grave is decorated at every season by parents who never stopped mourning—that’s when I start crying.

 At Hope Cemetery I was frequently brought to tears by the small, flat gravestones in the “Garden of the Innocents” where the city of Worcester will pay for the burial of infants and children whose parents can’t afford a plot and gravestone.

 Most touching of all the small stones, where parents leave toys and holiday decorations, was this one where the parents carved the message by hand: 

 Given my penchant for photographing cemeteries, it was a sure thing that I would sign up for a class at the Worcester Art Museum that takes place next Friday, led by my friend, photographer Mari Seder.   All day, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., we will be photographing in Worcester’s Rural cemetery—within walking distance of the Museum—with a break for a picnic lunch.  I’ve heard that Rural Cemetery is even older and more picturesque than Hope Cemetery, and I’ve been wanting to visit it; an experience which will be even better with Mari’s guidance and photographer’s  eye.

Mari is a prize- winning photographer who spends half the year living in Worcester and the other half in Oaxaca, Mexico, where she’s had exhibits of her stunning photographs of Mexican women and their household altars.  Here’s a photograph she took of the grave of a 12-year-old Mexican girl, Juanita Velasquez Cruz, who lived from 1890 to 1902.

I’ve already traveled to Oaxaca twice for the classes that Mari offers there in photography, painting and collage, and once I got to tag along with her to photograph in Puebla, as well, where the Indian-decorated churches of Cholula, virtually encrusted with zillions of folk art angels, blew my mind.  You can see them on my blog post “Angels in the Architecture”.

 Mari’s day-long class at Rural Cemetery on Friday is part of a new series of immersion classes offered by WAM that allows students to spend an entire day with regional artists in an intensive day-long class in each artist’s speciality,  learning their secrets and getting face time with these experts in the fields of photography, collage, illustration or Celtic art.

Now that fall colors are burnishing the trees, I’m hoping for some remarkable photographs to come out of Rural Cemetery this Friday.  Stay tuned.