Tag Archives: Rhode Island cemetery

Cemetery of the Week #171: Chestnut Hill Cemetery

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Mercy’s grave, as photographed by the Rhode Island Historical Society. https://wp.me/p7ud3-184

Chestnut Hill Cemetery
Also known as Chestnut Hill Baptist Church Cemetery, Rhode Island Historical Cemetery #22
467 Ten Rod Road (Route 102)
Exeter, Rhode Island 02822
Opened: 1838
Size: 10 acres
Number of interments: approximately 1000

Rather than Bram Stoker’s Dracula, rising from his grave to roam the night, New England vampires could prey upon the living while confined inside their coffins. There are almost 20 documented instances of vampires being exhumed in New England, beginning even before to the American Revolution.

One of the last recorded vampire tales in New England took place in the 1880s. George and Mary Brown farmed outside the town of Exeter, Rhode Island.  Mary Brown was struck by an illness, probably tuberculosis, that drained her vitality.  She withered and died in 1883.

The following year, Mary’s eldest daughter, Mary Olive, died at the age of 20.

Several years passed before George and Mary’s son Edwin began to fade.  The local physician suggested that Edwin and his wife move to Colorado Springs to recover.

The cold, dry air did seem to help Edwin, but while he was recuperating, his sister Mercy began to fail.  Edwin rushed home to say goodbye to her. She died in January 1892 at the age of 19.

Since winter had frozen the ground solid, Mercy’s body was placed in the receiving crypt at Chestnut Hill Cemetery. Receiving crypts were common, back before cemeteries developed heating blankets that could thaw the winter ground.  Old cemeteries often still have these crypts, although nowadays the sheds are used to store mowers and other equipment.

Back in the 1890s, Edwin’s health deteriorated.  George Brown’s neighbors decided Edwin was suffering from Vampire’s Grasp. The only way to save him would be to “perform the folk ritual.”

On March 17, 1892, the doctor and George Brown’s neighbors dug up the graves of Mary and Mary Olive. George stayed home. Both women’s corpses were badly decomposed, as one would expect after almost a decade in the ground.

Then the receiving crypt was opened.  Mercy’s coffin was still inside it. When the mob opened her coffin, Mercy had turned sideways inside it. Rather than considering if she had been buried alive — or merely jostled as she was carried to the crypt — onlookers took that as assurance she was the vampire.

Other than her strange position, Mercy’s body looked as expected. But when the doctor removed her heart and liver, they leaked blood.

The neighbors placed the organs on a rock in the cemetery and set them afire. The ashes were collected up and mixed with liquor to be fed to Edwin.  Unfortunately, the remedy didn’t save him.  He died six weeks later, in May.

When Bram Stoker died in 1897, newspaper clippings about Mercy’s exhumation were found in his possession. H. P. Lovecraft, who lived in nearby Providence, mentioned Mercy in his story, “The Shunned House.”

Whether she roamed from her tomb or not beforehand, Mercy now turns up as a ghost in this “nondescript little cemetery.” Apparently, blue lights hover close to her grave.

Mercy’s gravestone is anchored to the ground to prevent it from being stolen. There is reported to be a guest book in a tupperware box for you to sign. Remember that this cemetery is still in use, so if you visit, behave yourself.

Useful links:

Findagrave listing: https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/1451811/chestnut-hill-cemetery

Odd Things I’ve Seen visitation report and photos: http://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2007/12/grave-of-mercy-brown-vampire.html

Mercy’s story with the family obituaries: https://rihs.wordpress.com/2016/10/31/have-mercy/

The Atlas Obscura listing, with directions to another Rhode Island vampire’s grave as well: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/grave-mercy-brown

The reference about Stoker & Lovecraft: https://www.hauntedplaces.org/item/chestnut-hill-cemetery/

 

Cemetery of the Week #102: Old North Burial Ground

Fireman monument, North Burial Ground, Rhode Island

Fireman monument, North Burial Ground, Rhode Island

Old North Burial Ground
5 Branch Avenue at North Main Street
Providence, Rhode Island 02904
Telephone: (401) 331-0177
Founded: 1700
Size: 109 acres
Number of interments: more than 73,00 people
Number of surviving gravestones: 35,000
Open: Seven days a week from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Office hours are Monday-Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Overshadowed by exquisite Swan Point Cemetery, which was established in 1846, the Old North Burial Ground is the oldest public cemetery in Providence.

The public tomb, erected by the City of Providence in 1903.

The public tomb, erected by the City of Providence in 1903.

In 1700, a plaque on the public holding tomb (built in 1903) records, “This land was set apart by the town of Providence as a place for the burial of the dead.” By 1848, when surviving records began to been kept, 22 acres had already been filled.

Among those buried in the North Burial Ground are a number of Rhode Island governors, Providence city mayors, congressmen, senators, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Horace Mann, the champion of universal free public education, is buried here, as is Sarah Helen Whitman, a poet who inspired several of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems.

Anchor and windlass grave marker in the Old North Burial Ground, Providence

Anchor and windlass grave marker in the Old North Burial Ground, Providence

Maps of notable burials for a self-led walking tour are available from the office.

My favorite grave monuments are the ones that demonstrate Providence’s shipping history. I didn’t note the life commemorated by the anchor and windlass, but in general, anchors symbolize Christian faith, as something that holds fast through the tempests of life. Captain Joseph Tillinghast’s monument has this epitaph:

Tho’ Borea’s blast and Neptune’s waves
have tossed me to and fro,
yet in spite of both by God’s decree
I harbor here below.
And though at anchor now I ride
with many of our fleet,
yet away again I shall set sail
our Admiral Christ to meet.

Another chatty stone that caught my eye belongs to Jabez R. Blanding, who became a Brevet Captain in the Civil War. His monument says, “After serving with distinguished courage in the US Army from the commencement to the those of the Civil War, he was basely assasinated (sic) while in the discharge of his military duties at Grenada, Mississippi April 30, 1866 in his 25th year.”  I’m curious to know the story behind that.

Angel guiding two children to Heaven, North Burial Ground, Rhode Island

Angel guiding two children to Heaven, North Burial Ground, Rhode Island

I found this stone to the memory of two children very touching, too. An angel is leading one by the hand while another is eagerly flying toward heaven. That image must have been a sliver in the heart each time their parents visited the grave.

Some useful links:

My review of New England Cemeteries: A Collector’s Guide by Andrew Kull

Rhode Island Cemeteries database

City of Providence Parks & Rec site for the cemetery: they recommend hiking or jogging through the cemetery.

Some information on the Revolutionary War history recorded in earliest part of the North Burial Ground.

GPS information provided by CemeteryRegistry.us

A New England Road Trip Companion

New England Cemeteries: A Collector's GuideNew England Cemeteries: A Collector’s Guide by Andrew Kull

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The book jacket describes this as the “first and only” guide to the cemeteries of New England. I’m curious to know if that’s true. I know there were guides to Mt. Auburn and the other garden cemeteries published in the 19th century (unfortunately, I don’t have any of them in my collection), but I don’t know if there was an overall guide to the region — or if this is just a publisher’s hype.

Either way, this is a really fun book. If you’re making a road trip, as I’ve been lucky enough to do, throughout New England and wonder what lovely graveyards you might find along the way, this is the ideal guidebook. Andrew Kull seems to have actually visited these cemeteries and has opinionated, entertaining observations about them. I like that he directs H. P. Lovecraft “cultists” to ask directions to the author’s grave when they visit Swan Point Cemetery in Providence. I like also his assertion: “Burial Hill in Plymouth enjoys, without question, the most magnificent site of any cemetery in New England.” Doesn’t that just make you want to see for yourself?

The primary flaw is a dearth of photographs, although there are a few. In addition, New England Cemeteries jams 260 cemeteries, graveyards, and burial grounds into a mere 240-some pages (plus index and an essay on how to make grave rubbings), so you’re not getting in-depth information. In fact, you’re not even getting cemetery addresses, though the book does include opening hours, which were current in 1975. Still, for company on a road trip, Kull’s book is a useful and entertaining companion.

New copies are exorbitant, but you can find reasonably priced used copies on Amazon: New England Cemeteries: A Collector’s Guide

View all my Goodreads reviews.

Cemetery of the Week #58: Swan Point Cemetery

Swan Point Cemetery
585 Blackstone Boulevard
Providence, Rhode Island 02906
Telephone: 410-272-1314
Founded: 1846
Size: 210 acres
Number of interments: approximately 40,000
Open: Depending on the weather, Swan Point is open daily from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time and from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m. during Daylight Savings. Children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult.

Founded on just 60 acres in 1846, Rhode Island’s Swan Point Cemetery absorbed people who had been previously buried in the West Burial Ground and other earlier graveyards around Providence. The oldest section of the cemetery, overlooking the Seekonk River, contains graves that date back as early as 1722.

In 1886,  Chicago-based landscape architect H.W.S. Cleveland was hired to develop Blackstone Boulevard through the cemetery. He’s responsible for the wall of large boulders that front Blackstone Boulevard for more than a mile, which was completed in 1900. In 1903, the Butler Avenue trolley car was extended to the cemetery, where a fieldstone shelter was constructed for riders. Many people came out just to walk the grounds.

The Aylsworth family monument

Even now, Swan Point’s chief draw is the beauty of its landscaping, which varies from lawn to forest trees to rhododendrons, azaleas, magnolias, and other flowering shrubs. In all it contains more than 200 kinds of trees and shrubs, most of them labeled. In the spring, daffodils gild the old section by the river.

Swan Point is full of lovely Victorian statuary, as well. Twenty-three former governors of Rhode Island are buried in Swan Point, each under a suitably grand monument.

Also among the better known people buried at Swan Point Cemetery is Major Sullivan Ballou, wounded in the first battle of Bull Run, whose beautiful farewell letter to his wife featured in Ken Burns’s Civil War documentary.

H. P. Lovecraft’s tombstone

Swan Point’s most famous permanent resident is Howard Pillips Lovecraft. In New England Cemeteries: A Collector’s Guide, published in 1975, Andrew Kull wrote that Lovecraft’s grave was “somewhat difficult to find, since the name is inscribed on the monument of another family.” He recommended “cultists” ask at the office. When I visited in 2002, I thought my husband and I might be regarded as weirdoes, but the secretary treated our request as a common occurrence. She pulled out a drawer full of manila files. Inside Lovecraft’s file waited a stack of maps, already copied. She traced our route and sent us on our way without batting an eye. “Look for an obelisk that says Phillips,” she directed. “He’s right behind that.”

We took the main drive through the cemetery, swung around the 40-foot-tall Barnaby column — topped by a blindingly white muse — zigged and zagged briefly, then saw the Phillips monument directly ahead. The original monument on the plot belonged to Lovecraft’s grandparents. The back of it held Lovecraft’s parents’ name and dates. At the bottom, he was remembered as Howard P. Lovecraft, “Their Son.”

A smaller stone rose nearby. After New England Cemeteries: A Collector’s Guide saw print, Dirk W. Mosig — at that time, the leading authority on Lovecraft — solicited contributions to erect an individual tombstone. He unveiled it during a small ceremony in 1977. The low red granite marker spelled out Howard Phillips Lovecraft, August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1938, and added the epitaph, “I am Providence.”

Those words came from a letter Lovecraft wrote to his Aunt Lillian, eventually published in 2000 in Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters, edited by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz. Lovecraft wrote, “I will be dogmatic only to the extent of saying that it is New England I must have — in some form or other. Providence is part of me — I am Providence…”

One might have suspected that Howard Phillips Lovecraft was destined for oblivion. As a child, frequent psychosomatic illnesses kept him from school. He learned to recite poetry at the age of two and read the Arabian Nights (scarcely a children’s book) by the time he was five, so he acquired his view of the world — and vocabulary — from books, not from people.

Despite his inexperience with the world, “The Beast in the Cave,” his first fiction, appeared in 1905, when he was 15. Twelve years later, he still lived with his mother, which allowed him to write his gloomy tales in peace. Inspired by the fantasies of Lord Dunsany, Lovecraft wrote his first novel, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, in 1926. He was 36. Eleven years later, he’d be dead. Except for a brief sojourn in New York City, he spent his entire life in Providence.

Most of his fiction appeared in pulp magazines like Weird Tales and went uncollected into book form until after his death. Despite that, he is considered the 20th-century Poe, a pioneer in combining elements of horror and science fiction.

When Mason and I visited Swan Point Cemetery on a lovely April day, offerings piled on Lovecraft’s granite block. In addition to pennies lined carefully along the top of the gravestone, someone had left white pebbles. A bouquet of iris and ferns crumbled in the grass.

The air in Swan Point was vibrant with birdsong, fragrant from the exquisite elderly fruit trees laden with blossoms. The cemetery gave the sensation that life continues, despite darkness, despair, and death.

Useful links:
Swan Point Cemetery’s homepage

My review of Famous and Curious Cemeteries

A PDF birding list of more than 100 species seen at Swan Point is available on the cemetery’s website. In fact, a book called The Birds of Swan Point Cemetery is available from Amazon: The Birds of Swan Point Cemetery

Other garden cemeteries on Cemetery Travel:

Cemetery of the Week #12: Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit, Michigan

Cemetery of the Week #17: Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York

Cemetery of the Week #28: Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts

Cemetery of the Week #31: Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cemetery of the Week #42:  Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio

Cemetery of the Week #53: Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York

Cemetery of the Week #55: Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, Colma, California

Cemetery of the Week #57: Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania