Manahawkin Baptist Graveyard - Stronger Than The Storm

As I wrote about the west coast of the U.S. last week, it’s only fair to maintain a sense of balance with an east coast story. Last week I was at the Jersey Shore (Long Beach Island) with my wife and daughter, and so I made a trip to one of the local cemeteries (isn’t that what you would expect the Cemetery Traveler to do while on vacation?). Manahawkin, New Jersey is the last town on the mainland before you enter the causeway over to the island.

Last year I wrote about Greenwood Cemetery, a largish seaside cemetery on Route 9 south of Manahawkin. This time, I opted to head north. My map showed a Baptist Cemetery about a mile up the road (north on Route 9, past the Route 72 intersection, as shown on map).

Long Beach Island, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy (NJ.com image)

Woke up at 6:00 a.m., got dressed and made it out the door without waking anyone. Walked over to what is left of the beach as the sun had just risen and grabbed a couple shots of the show. As I drove the seven miles up the island to the causeway, the view was indeed depressing. In the year since I had last visited, Hurricane Sandy had wreaked massive destruction on the island. Here, a scant eight months later, homes were still up on blocks after being shifted off their foundations. Many businesses were boarded up, many areas of the ocean beach was gouged so that instead of smooth sand declining from the dunes to the water, there were canyon-like drop-offs of epic proportions.

One of many homes washed off its foundation (NJ.com image)

Still, the locals have done a great job putting this place back together - they certainly live up to their slogan, "Stronger than the Storm." That said, I couldn’t help wonder if the cemeteries suffered any damage. (Which reminds me – someone contacted me recently with a request to use my blog post "Washed Out Graves" - about flooded graveyards - as part of a presentation on Disaster Preparedness for Cemeteries.) Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast of the United States on October 29, 2012, with New York City and New Jersey suffering the worst damage. It was the second costliest hurricane in U.S. history, surpassed only by 2005's Hurricane Katrina. 

Baptist Cemetery was easy to find, what with its little white clapboard church situated at the front of the old graveyard. Talk about shelter from the storm – there are some eighteenth and even seventeenth century headstones here that are in such well-preserved condition, you’d think they’d been under glass for a hundred years! But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Johnette Napolitano – the gravely-voiced singer from the rock band Concrete Blonde – was playing a concert in San Francisco on this particular Sunday evening in San Francisco when I visited the Baptist cemetery. I bring this up mainly to convince myself that it was not her I saw roaming around the graveyard at seven a.m. accompanied by a guy carrying a guitar case. Might not have been the most unusual thing I’ve ever seen in a cemetery, but given the time of day, it qualifies for the top ten. Besides, Johnette is kind of spooky herself (just watch this video). I said, “Hi. Didn’t expect to see anyone else here this early.” The guy sort of smiled and they walked around to the other side of the old wooden church, then disappeared.

Baptist Church and Cemetery, Manahawkin, New Jersey

If you’re a legacy reader of this blog, you may recall that in my early days of cemetery photography, I wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this. Not while I was alive and toting a camera, anyway. Why? No statues. Nary an angel. But after you’ve exhausted the possibilities of statuary photography (or rather, you've hit your own limits), you begin looking elsewhere. I’ve hence begun to appreciate other nuances of cemeteries (and there are thousands of such things, mind you). So the small country cemetery with nothing but stone slabs for gravemarkers does not escape my attention these days. And my photography and writing are all the better for it, I believe. So with that in mind, I began looking at the inscriptions and carvings on the stones.

Although there are a few newer (early twentieth century) granite monuments here, most of the head stones were of the large marble variety with the traditional images, poetry, and epitaphs. However, as I said, many were clearly readable and apparently not worn down by acid rain (is there less of this in coastal areas?). They were really quite beautiful, especially this pair of white marble nineteenth century markers with the clasped hands design. 

White marble headstones, about four feet high

To the left and behind the peeling white church building, I was somewhat shocked to find a small cluster of about five red sandstone grave markers, all but one standing upright. Obviously the oldest in the cemetery (eighteenth century), covered with some sort of lichen or mold that gave them the appearance of being old and worn. Red sandstone was quarried in North Jersey back in the 1700s and is commonly seen in cemeteries around Monmouth County (a bit north of here). Upon closer inspection, these stones were actually wonderfully preserved! I was amazed to see that the lettering and design carvings were not eroded at all, but simply camouflaged by the lichens. The text was clearly readable with border designs still quite crisp. This particular one (below) was dated 1794. A bit of proper cleaning and these stones would be the showpieces of the cemetery.

North Jersey red sandstone grave marker

Freshly-cut area where shrubs must have obscured headstones

Although the church (which I’m not sure was still “Baptist” as the maps indicated) was a bit ramshackle, it was obvious that the cemetery is being tended by someone. There was evidence that trees and bushes had been cut back and removed, to keep them from obscuring the gravestones. I thought this image (below) interesting – the marble stone on the left was still lichen-tinted from being in the tree’s shade for what must have been years, while its counterpart in the sun was lichen-free.

Though I could see no obvious hurricane damage in the cemetery, there was a very obvious reminder of nature’s powerful forces - a large granite monument to “The Unknown From the Sea” (a photo of which you can see at the beginning of this blog). This monument marks the graves of those unknown souls who have left the corporal realm by way of drowning, I suppose. It was in the center of a decoratively-fenced area of about 250 square feet toward the back of the grounds - plenty of room for folks who had tested their mettle against the mighty Atlantic Ocean, and lost.

Further reading:

Learn more about red sandstone and New Jersey gravemarkers in general in Adam R. Heinrich’s paper: 

 “Remember Me...” But“Be Mindfull of Death”: The Artistic, Social, and Personal Choice Expressions Observedon the Gravemarkers of Eighteenth Century Monmouth County, New Jersey.

CBS News video: Hurricane Sandy aftermath on Long BeachIsland, New Jersey

Hurricane Sandy aftermath photos 

Read about Manahawkin's Greenwood Cemetery in the "Jersey Shore Cemetery," blog by Ed Snyder

Bones in the Trees

Tree root with bones (photo Melissa Bailey/New Haven Independent)

I was just sitting here in the kitchen on this cold November morning, sipping Italian coffee and listening to Miles, when I saw an interesting post on Facebook. Amidst all the photos of mass destruction wrought by Hurricane Sandy, the post referred to an odd news article about a tree that was uprooted in a Connecticut cemetery.

I’ve written about cemetery trees in the past, about how they seem to have their own character - somehow lecherous and slightly macabre, their gnarled old branches reaching out to grab something or someone. You always suspect that the roots of those mighty oaks get tangled around unmentionable things deep beneath the surface. Well, wonder no more. When this large tree in an old New Haven, Connecticut cemetery was uprooted during Hurricane Sandy’s reign (end of October, 2012), there were human skulls and rib cages found tangled in its roots!

From The Examiner.com:

Visible among the roots of the giant oak tree, planted in 1909 on the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, was the back of an upside-down skull with its mouth still open. The skull was attached to a spine and rib cage.

"I noticed what I thought was a rock at first, I kind of poked it and a piece came off in my hand, and I noticed it was bone fragments. So I took a stick and knocked some of the dirt away and noticed it was an entire skull and body and vertebrae, ribs."

Human rib cage tangled in tree roots (Melissa Bailey/New Haven Independent)

When I shared this news story with Facebook friends, I got two interesting comments related to cemetery trees. One was, “A friend & I were talking just the other day about how cemetery trees are really our ancestors.” That’s pretty profound. Another person added, “There was a superstition in the South that when a tree planted over a grave blows over, the ghost of the grave's occupant is set loose. That's the starting premise of Gene Wolfe's PEACE.”  [Wolfe is a science fiction/fantasy writer.]

Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia

I’ve seen many instances of arboreal overgrowth in many cemeteries, some of which may have resulted in a spirit being freed. When an old tree fell over in a storm recently in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, the grounds keeping crew was surprised to find a headstone in the middle of the tree trunk! Obviously, this was the work of maybe fifty years of tree growth that had gone unchecked. They sawed off the tree trunk around the headstone and left it that way.

Princeton Cemetery, Princeton, NJ

In a similar scenario, I was walking through Princeton Cemetery in Princeton, New Jersey when I came upon the toppled tree you see in this photo at right. Not one, but two small marble headstones can be seen in the center of the tree trunk! The roots of the tree most likely wound their way through the bones of those buried below. I originally thought this to be a good reason for placing a casket inside a protective concrete vault, to keep the tree roots from messing with the bones. However, the strength of tree roots cannot be underestimated.

Trees can damage monuments and headstones by lifting them off the level ground, or even push them over, as you can see in this photo from Philadelphia’s Mount Moriah Cemetery. Here, the roots didn’t do the damage, but a low-hanging tree branch actually grew out about twenty feet away from the trunk, slowly but surely knocking a six-foot-tall granite obelisk off its base! Ironically, the inscription on the base said, “See that my grave is kept green.”

So the lesson? If you’re responsible for taking care of a grave, don’t let that nearby tree get too big. Oh, and another lesson, this one more subtle - if you read the account of the bones tangled up in the New Haven tree (link below) you’ll note that the tree was actually in a park, not a cemetery. 

More accurately, it was in a cemetery that had been converted into a park in 1821! When such projects are implemented by towns, cities, and municipalities, the newspapers always say that the bodies were relocated to such-and-such cemetery. However, many times there is evidence to the contrary. Even if they attempt to dig up all the graves, they could miss a few. In my personal experience, the architects and planners must expect this, as the typical new construction project involves a level-with-the-ground playground or parking lot – something that does not require digging a foundation! 

The situation in New Haven was this (according to the New Haven Independent): “The last bodies were buried there in the 1700s ... In 1821, the stones were moved to the Grove Street Cemetery, and the ground was raised to level off the Green. The bodies remained behind.” (For the complete story on the New Haven cemetery tree, click here:

Skeletal Remains Found In Upended Tree; The Death Investigator Exhumes Skull.)

And the Dead Shall Rise

It’s still dark this morning, and raining lightly, two days after Hurricane Sandy left the east coast of the United States. With New York City’s subway tunnels filled with water and the Atlantic City boardwalk washed away, I consider myself (in Philadelphia) quite fortunate to have suffered nothing more than a potted plant blown off my garden wall. Alright, extremely fortunate.

With all this focus on property damage, you would think someone would mention a cemetery here or there. That’s where I come in. It happens to be Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead, see link below) as I write this (hence the sugar skull cake in the photo above – hey, cakes rise, don’t they? Get the clever irony – “And the Dead Shall Rise?” … all right, that was pretty weak).

Coffin rising from the ground, Crisfield, MD (ref)

At also happens to be the Christian All Souls Day. As Hurricane Sandy’s waters recede, the U.S. death toll continues to rise. Let’s remember those fifty-five souls today - along with the sixty-nine people who died in the Caribbean prior to Sandy making landfall in the United States.

So, as I was mentioning, cemeteries, like any other property, can incur storm damage. Note the expelled coffin rising out of the ground in the photo above, from Crisfield, Maryland. The image was borrowed from the news article, “Hurricane Sandy forces coffins of the dead to rise up from the ground” (www.dailymail.co.uk). "Coffins of the dead ...?" As opposed to coffins of the - living? Whoever wrote that is being a bit dramatic, wouldn't you say?

Anyway, cemeteries suffer damage right along with the rest of us. I imagine that Atlantic City Cemetery looks much worse right now than it did this past summer when I took the photo above. (Ironically, a mausoleum might be the safest place to be during a hurricane!) A storm had obviously ripped through the place, which one might assume happened just before I arrived. Truth is, such damage may go uncorrected for quite a while. Under some circumstances, cemeteries, like any other business or private entity, must wrangle with their insurance companies to be paid for storm damage! 

Toppled headstones

I was in Pittsburgh’s (Pennsylvania) wonderful Allegheny Cemetery back in 1990, and was amazed to see dozens of giant fallen trees – some out in the open, some crushing dense clusters of tombstones and monuments. I mentioned this to someone in the office who told me that a hurricane hit six months prior and toppled fifty trees. The cemetery was slowly cleaning up, at its own expense − having so far removed half the fallen trees. I asked, “Don’t you have insurance for this?” I was told, “Well, since the weather service declared it a ‘tropical cyclone’ as opposed to a ‘hurricane,’ the insurance company wouldn’t pay.” I was actually put in the exact same position last year by my own insurance company, Allstate, after Hurricane Irene – I mean ‘tropical storm’ Irene – ripped a hole in the back of my house.

Notes:
The headstones in the photo above were not toppled by Hurricane Sandy. I just inserted the photo for effect (so how did they fall?).

The "sugar skull" cake at the beginning of the blog was in window of Brendenbeck's Bakery, Chestnut Hill, PA (http://www.bredenbecks.com/). Looks luscious, doesn't it?
Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead