The Graves of Pirate Island

I learned about Petty’s Island from a photographer friend of mine. About a year ago, he told me about an abandoned graveyard on an island off the Camden (NJ) shoreline—at least that's what I THOUGHT he said. Of course I was up for such an adventure. Problem was, he didn’t know exactly where the island was or how to get to it. He suggested we might have to rent a rowboat. I was intrigued. After a few miscommunications (I don’t hear very well—too many KISS concerts as a teenager), I realized that Glenn, a Professor of Art History, was not talking about a cemetery, he was talking about a tugboat graveyard on the island! Alright, I’m still down with that—it has to do with death and dying.

So I began to wonder why, after living in Philadelphia for thirty years, I had never heard of this island. After talking about it with several people, including fisherman with whom I work, I realized that no one seemed to know about it! I became more intrigued. I pictured a small tree-covered expanse of land, closer to the Jersey side of the river, littered with scuttled rusty tugs and other nautical detritus. Glenn and I would row out to it in the mist, across the channel, cameras and adrenaline at the ready.

I did some research. Around the late 1700s, Petty’s Island was a — PIRATE HANGOUT! A robbers’ nest for seafaring criminals who either knew they were wanted by the authorities or did not expect to be welcomed by them with open arms. Since they could not set foot on the mainland, they would drop anchor on Petty’s Island, where they probably built the first gambling casinos and slots parlors (I would assume). Man, if I had a metal detector, I wouldn’t be looking for lost rings at the beach in Atlantic City, I’d be on this island! I mean, I kind o fancy meself a pirate anyway—I carry an old, wooden-handled iron hook with me when I go exploring in abandoned cemeteries (as my father used to say, it’s not the dead you need to fear—it’s the living). And I’ve been known to enjoy the odd pirate cruise, which is a fine way to meet comely wenches (see "Philly Pirate Cruise" link below).

And just so you don’t think Petty’s Island is just ANY old pirate island, here’s its pedigree:

[Petty’s Island] is thought to be the place where Captain Blackbeard docked his ship when visiting Philadelphia. The island was a hotbed for gambling and dueling in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and acquired a reputation for lawlessness and danger; adding to this danger was the large number of shipwrecks which occurred around the island, some of which are still visible at low tide.  —Wikipedia

Cap'n Ed

Okay, so now I really wanted to explore this island! But where exactly was it? At one point I told Glenn of a small nautical map and chart shop near the river—The Pilothouse. One day I stopped in to ask some questions. Pirate books lined the windows—“Terror on the High Seas,” “Scallywags of the Caribbean,” that sort of thing. I was feeling the total swashbuckler when I entered the empty store. A little old man (no eye patch) came out of the back and asked if he could help me. I said, yes, and that I might be looking for a map, or some information. “Someone told me there was this island off Camden with an old ship's graveyard…” I swear he responded in near-hushed tones: “Aye, sounds like ye be speakin’ o’ Petty’s Island!”

“So I guess you’ve… been there?” I asked, hesitantly. He said no, but he knew people who had (and lived to tell about it, I hoped.) I asked if he could show me there the island is on one of his maps. He went over to a rack of rolled up charts, chose one carefully, and brought it back to the counter. He unrolled it, weighed the edges down, and began tracing the Delaware River with his finger from Wilmington north. While doing so, I asked, “Do you know how people can get to the island?” To which he replied, “Well, there’s a bridge. You can drive over.” What? Oh. My grandiose piratical fantasy fizzled out.

Then his fingertip lands on the part of the map depicting Petty’s Island. It’s the size of Texas. It’s no small, tree-covered island at all! No wonder no one knows its there—if you look across the Delaware River at Camden from the Philadelphia side, the coast line you see is actually the freaking ISLAND, It’s that big! (Between 300 and 400 acres, by some accounts, just under the Jersey side of the Ben Franklin Bridge.) Another fantasy dashed. The island is separated from Camden by a narrow river channel. To add insult to injury, the mapseller THEN adds, “I think it’s owned by CITGO, they have an oil refinery there.” Turns out the island is actually owned by the Venezuelan government (!), which in turn owns CITGO. Whaaatt…?

The Island
Hugo Chavez owns it. New Jersey controls it. Developers and environmentalists covet it. And one brazen trespasser wants us to pay homage to its forgotten king. Welcome to Petty's Island, a fin-shaped slice of strange, in the middle of the Delaware River.

—Otterbein, Philadelphia City Paper, Jan. 26, 2010

Glenn had not played me for a fool. He just had the same limited information as everyone else. Perhaps he had come across the newspaper article cited above. This article refers to a Northeast Philadelphia cemetery in which descendants of the island’s “King,” Ralston Laird, are buried. Not content with simply referencing Otterbein’s account, I went to the Knights of Pythias Cemetery in North Philly (near Juniata Park) to find and photograph the stone myself. This cemetery, like some others in the Philadelphia area, was at some point left to ruin (which brings to mind homeboy Ben Franklin’s quote: "Show me your cemeteries, and I'll tell you what kind of people you have"). Happily though, this particular cemetery in which we find the Laird family plot, seems to be undergoing restoration. About a third of the grounds is still an overgrown forest, with an oddly imposing twenty-foot-high bamboo glade enveloping dozens of headstones smack dab in the middle of the woods! This certainly gave a more tropical feel to my pirate adventure.

Laird was one of the final inhabitants of Petty’s Island, having died in 1911. He’d immigrated from Ireland to Philadelphia in the 1850s, but due to persecution of the Irish, he adopted Petty’s Island as his home. During the 52 years he lived there, he welcomed other immigrants who were having difficulty adjusting to their new world. A community was built, people fished, farmed, and lived with minimal taxation. After Laird’s death, the island appears to have been purchased by the Venezuelan government, and used as an oil refinery/holding facility for its national petroleum company, CITGO.

The island’s history is brief. Originally purchased from the Lenni Lenape Indians in 1678 by Elizabeth Kinsey (a Quaker who had fled persecution in England), it was later sold to William Penn (in 1681). John Petty bought it in 1732. The island’s pirate era may have coincided with its period as a slave trading depot, in the late 1600 to early 1700s.

Petty's Island, showing access road from Camden

During an excursion to Camden in search of the nearby abandoned Johnson Cemetery (see link BELOW), I found the access road to the bridge to Petty’s Island to be gated and guarded by CITGO personnel. After a few phone calls, I was told that it was private property and that no one was allowed on the island save employees. I don't know about you, but that sounds like an invitation to me!



Further Reading:

"The Island" in Philadelphia City Paper
The Fight to Save Petty’s Island
The Film, “Petty's Island: A Sacred Part of America’s Story” 
Philly Pirate Cruise
Links to Abandoned Johnson Cemetery blogs: (1) and (2)

Cemetery in the Devil's Woods

There’s an odd little graveyard in an odd little corner of southeastern Pennsylvania, the Birmingham-Lafayette Cemetery in Chester County. Specifically, it’s in the Brandywine area, bordering Delaware, in Birmingham Township. An old girlfriend introduced me to it, and not under the best of circumstances.

Brandywine is fairly creepy, what with its bloody place in the American Revolutionary War, its cold and barren Andrew Wyeth-type stone farm houses, and its Devil’s Woods. The Battle of Brandywine Creek (also known as the Battle of Birmingham) was fought here on September 11, 1777. Due to a miscalculation by General George Washington, regarding the advance of British troops, the battle was a decisive victory for the British. This left Philadelphia, the revolutionary capital, undefended, and as a result the British soon captured it. Driving along Brandywine Creek is kind of an unnerving experience, especially at dawn. There are no houses—you’re out in the boondocks. There are no streetlights, and you can’t see any road signs, so a GPS is virtually useless. I got lost a number of times. One early morning as I was leaving her house and driving south along the creek, I got a bad case of the creepies. As mist rose off the water and pale colors slowly asserted themselves in the ancient woods, I imagined British, Hessian, and American troops fording the creek, battling, shedding blood, and dying. It really didn’t take much to imagine this—I could almost see it as I drove along.

I didn’t know until sometime later that the nearby cemetery is home to a mass grave for the hundreds of British and American Colonial troops that died in this big and bloody battle of the American Revolution. You just know any cemetery with a mass grave has to have many suffering spirits lurking about! The cemetery itself is only a few acres in size, with assorted large memorials and many smaller oddments. The few buildings nearby, e.g. the Birmingham Friends’ Meeting House, were actually standing at the time of the battle. The Quakers continued their service in this building on September 11, 1777, as the battle outside raged on. The Meeting House was then taken over by Generals Lafayette and Pulaski for use as a makeshift field hospital. The dead were buried in the mass grave across the road in what became the Birmingham-Lafayette Cemetery.

The cemetery is spooky because it’s so peaceful and quiet. Yeah, I know that’s one of the modern purposes of cemeteries, to be meditative retreats, but this is just weird because it’s so far out in the woods. The graveyard is not landscaped for quietude or anything, like the Victorian sculpture gardens—it’s just a flat tract of land with a tree-lined road going down the center. The stone walls of this (originally) Quaker burial ground were actually used by the American army in its first line of defense during the Battle of Brandywine Creek. Paradoxically, this cemetery was a battlefield! The dead were just buried where they fell. A monument was erected to mark the spot where George Washington’s Major General, the Marquis de Lafayette, was wounded during the battle. The cemetery was renamed in his honor.

Living in a city, the lack of people and houses is somewhat unnerving. All that’s here are woods and silence. Doesn’t make it any more comforting knowing about nearby Devil’s Woods, or the “Cult House” (you can read more about these by clicking the link below). The area is rural, country even, and densely wooded. Cemetery trees are one thing, but this place is just too creepy. No doubt due to its weirdness and the legends accompanying it, M. Night Shyamalan fimed his movie “The Village” in the vicinity. (You may recall that the film is about a village of brainwashed people living deep in a dark wood). According to Matt Lake in the book Weird Pennsylvania, nature can even sense the evil in the area, as the trees that line narrow Cossart Road (better known as “Satan’s Road”) rear back from the roadway as if recoiling from something unspeakable. Along that road is the “Devil's Tree,” a big tree that itself is in the shape of a human hand reaching into the ground, not unlike this one in the cemetery itself (see links below).

So my introduction to the Birmingham-Lafayette Cemetery happened this way. My girlfriend (of a couple months) and I were out driving in her car one day and without warning, she just stopped at a supermarket a few miles from Birmingham-Lafayette.  Silently, she got out of the car and went in. I followed. She bought a large potted flower and headed back to the car. Silently, she drove to the cemetery. Slowly coasting dawn the single straight road that divides the grounds, she stopped. She picked up the flower, got out of the car, and began walking toward some headstones. She stopped in front of a newer-looking one, put the flower down in front of it, and just stood there. I looked at the inscription on the stone and realized it was her father’s grave. He had died two years ago on this day.

I waited. Eventually she came back to the car, totally dry-faced, and apologetic. I more than made up for her lack of tears by totally breaking down. My father had been dead two years as well. I hadn’t mentioned this to her, and I hadn’t yet cried.

She found it as difficult to let go of her father as my father had found it difficult to let go of life. On his deathbed, he was scared. He was terror-stricken. This anvil of a man, this cursing, coarse and vulgar stone mason cried, and said to me while grabbing at my hands, “It’s not fair!” It was the only time I ever cursed in his presence. I raged bitterly at the situation that had befallen him and said, “Nothing is fucking fair.” What took both her father and mine was a fairly quick illness that caught them in their sixties. I think my dad would have made a ferocious Revolutionary War farmer-fighter.

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
                               —Dylan Thomas (1952)

I don’t ever have to go back to this cemetery. The photograph relieves us of the burden of memory, says Susan Sontag in her essay, “Uses of Photography," (in On Looking, J. Berger, Pantheon Books, 1980). “With the loss of memory the continuities of meaning and judgment are also lost to us…the camera records in order to forget. “


Links of Interest:

Brandywine Battlefield Historic Site
Map of Brandywine area including Brandywine River Museum, home to many wonderful Wyeth family paintings
Andrew Wyeth links on Amazon
 
Local Legends:
Devil's Road and Cult House
Leaping monsters of Brandywine
YouTube Trip up Devil’s Road

In Search of Pirate Graves!

Yul Brynner in The Buccaneer

Like most people, I’m caught up in the romance of piracy—not the illegal music downloading type, but piracy on the high seas. The Jolly Roger, shiver-me-timbers, and all that. Forget those ridiculous Somali pirates who hijack oil tankers, the real pirates were the eighteenth century swashbucklers, terrors of the Spanish Main! Given that the Victorian Era was the Golden Age of Piracy, these contemporary guys have no cachet—I mean seriously,  based solely on fashion sense, I think we can all agree who the best pirates were. Just compare the two!

Somali Pirate

So when I was in Tampa in 2010, and heard that a pirate was buried downtown in quaint little Oaklawn Cemetery, I made it a point to stop by. The photo below was not taken by me, as I spent an hour and a half looking for the grave marker, but never found it. But then, pirates, as a rule, are not easy to find. 

Photo care of Wikipedia

Initially disappointed, I was kind of surprised when I returned home to Philadelphia only to learn there was an honest-to-god pirate buried in a cemetery less than a mile from my house! And not only that, but his grave is about fifty feet away from the bench on which my future wife and I used to make out!

Lying amidst the American founding fathers and patriots in St. Peter’s Churchyard Cemetery (3rd and Pine streets, est. 1761), is the grave and monument of privateer Gustavus Conyngham. Privateers were essentially pirates who received a “letter of marquee” from a sovereign or government which allowed them to attack and loot ships of enemy nations. Conyngham had originally been an officer in the American Continental Army, but became a pirate as a way to make his fortune (a la ‘The Dread Pirate Roberts’ in The Princess Bride). He found the pirate life to be much more lucrative and as a result of his escapades on the high seas, became a hero and patriot in the American Revolutionary War. Above is a photo of his wolf table monument, with its odd inscription (sort of an acronym in reverse). Unusually efficient, the wolf table—typically made of marble, but often taken for granite (good one, eh?), there was a certain utility in their design. Used in areas of thin soil and/or rocky terrain, they prevented the digging up of graves (either by wolves, people, or, um bears, as you can see in the link at the end of this blog).

In his book Philadelphia Area Cemeteries, author Allan Heller states that “privateers had a severe impact on British shipping, capturing or destroying three times as many English ships as the Continental Navy.” In 1777, privateer Gustavus Conyngham “embarked on an eighteen-month voyage of pillage and plunder, capturing sixty British ships with his fourteen-gun cutter, the Revenge.” (The 'Revenge', by the way, is also the name of the Dread Pirate Roberts’ ship—hey, I don't make this stuff up!). The U.S. Navy named three destroyers after Captain Conyngham during three separate periods of the country’s naval history.

In times of need, it wasn’t above the commanding U.S. military officers to solicit help from the dark side. You never read about such things in whitewashed history books, but when I was shooting cemeteries in New Orleans in 2002, I learned about the notorious pirate Jean Lafitte. During the War of 1812 (America’s ‘second war of independence’ against Britain), Lafitte offered his services to General Andrew Jackson in what came to be known as the Battle of New Orleans, the final battle of the war. Heavily outnumbered by the British, Jackson accepted the assistance of Lafitte and his 1000-man pirate crew in exchange for a federal pardon (Lafitte and his men had been banished to the island of Barataria, off Louisiana’s coast-- essentially imprisoned by the U.S. Government for acts of piracy). In return for the pardon, Lafitte helped Jackson defend New Orleans against the British in 1815. If not for pirates, we might very well be taking tea at three!

Between 1803 and 1812, Lafitte the buccaneer owned and controlled a vast kingdom in the Gulf of Mexico, a pirate kingdom that dominated commerce in and around the mouth of the Mississippi—New Orleans.

According to Joseph Geringer in Jean Lafitte: Gentleman Pirate of New Orleans,“The British vowed to burn New Orleans and take back the United States. In December of 1814, fifty British warships and twelve thousand British troops were on the way.” Jackson had hastily recruited 3,800 men and boys armed with nothing but squirrel guns to defend the city. Lafitte had what General Jackson needed—knowledge of the bayou, storehouses full of munitions and armaments of all kinds hidden throughout the swamps. But he also wanted amnesty for himself and his crew in exchange for aiding the United States in its war against the British. Geringer writes:

“To the general he was frank, the way he knew the general wanted to hear it. "You want flints? I have 7,500 flints available at a snap of my fingers. You want powder? I have kegs-full. You want rifles, axes, men? They're yours. I have a thousand fighting men, eighty of which are now rotting in the Cabildo, Jackson," he raised that commanding finger, "I and my followers want to fight for America, but as free men, not as indentured servants. For a pardon for me and my Baratarians, we will help you send the enemy to hell. That is my promise."

And so it happened. Jackson discovered the Baratarians to be excellent fighters and afraid of nothing. The battle culminated in what became known as the Battle New Orleans, when the main body of British General Pakenham's army appeared on the Plains of Chalmette the evening of January 7, 1815. By morning, they were 7,000 strong. After an hour of hell, these Englishmen who had charged so gallantly against Napoleon's forces at Waterloo, surrendered. British casualties were enormous — 2,600 corpses lay on the narrow field. Jackson had lost only thirteen men.

For his heroism, Jackson fulfilled his promise to see that Lafitte and his brigands were exonerated of all criminal charges. Due to Jackson's support, President Madison soon issued a proclamation granting a full pardon to Lafitte and his Baratarians, restoring to them the full rights of citizenship. After some time, however, Lafitte grew bored with the honorable life, left Louisiana and was ultimately driven off by the U.S. Government, whose tolerance of pirates was greatly diminished when there was no obvious benefit to be had. Certainly different treatment than that bestowed upon Gustavus Conyngham. Oh, and Lafitte’s grave? Possibly a watery one, but unknown.

So as not to leave you with too much technical serious stuff, please click on the link below to go to Gideon Defoe’s “Pirates!” books—easily the funniest piratical humor novels in the known galaxy. British humor, i.e., in the style of Monty Python. I've also listed some factual references to fill in any knowledge gaps that historians may find within my narrative. As to my own writing, I'll just quote filmaker/author John Waters and suggest that "Technique is just failed style."


References and Links of Interest

*Wolf table - Device used in areas of thin soil and/or rocky terrain to prevent digging up graves (either by wolves, people, or, um bears, as you can see in this link: Russian bears treat graveyards as 'giant refrigerators').


St. Peter’s Church, Philadelphia. PA
Jean Lafitte: Gentleman Pirate Of New Orleans
Gideon Defoe’s “Pirates!” books 


1958 movie The Buccaneer with Yul Brynner (see left) as Jean Lafitte

The Art of Sensual Statues in Cemeteries

Ah, Valentine’s Day, when people’s fancy turns to love and, let’s face it, sex. On walking through just about any Victorian cemetery established after 1850, one is likely to see sensual female figures, carved from a variety of material – granite, marble, bronze. This is especially true in France and England, the birthplaces of the “garden cemetery.” For the uninitiated, garden cemeteries are essentially outdoor sculpture gardens, conceived in Europe in the Victorian era (1837 – 1901) to try and dispel some of the fear and bleakness associated with death and dying. Pere Lachaise in Paris and Highgate in London are examples.

The practice carried across the Pond in 1831 with the founding of Mount Auburn Cemetery (Cambridge, MA) and then Laurel Hill in 1836 (Philadelphia, PA). Statues in these and other Victorian cemeteries hearken back to a time when these unique memorial gardens served the public as an idyllic getaway from the noisy city. Now forgotten by the public and worn by the elements, this rare artwork was enjoyed by our ancestors long before museums, galleries, and parks came into being.

Now, you’d think statues of semi-nude women would have clashed with staunch Victorian sensibilities, wouldn’t you? Especially in a cemetery – a reverent and respectful place frequented by the public! What role do these women play in the grieving process? They are symbolic, of course, but of what (besides affluence)? These typically life-sized sensual figures do give memorial parks a feeling of life, which really was the intent of the architects of early garden cemeteries.

In his book, Death: The Trip of a Lifetime, Greg Palmer offers that in many cultures, “women are the designated grievers.” Ok, but why physically attractive females? David Robinson says in his book Saving Graces, “Their gowns are revealing and they are often topless and sometimes nude.” He goes on to say that these statues were usually individually commissioned and sculpted, often by famous sculptors. In Western artistic tradition, the ability to accurately depict the female figure is what most defines artistic talent. So again, why physically attractive females? While her countenance may effectively express true sorrow and loss, even anguish, there are no ugly angels.

Besides the fact that most professional sculptors were male (we’ll assume at least some of them, like Rodin, were heterosexual) and these commissions afforded them a regular income, sensual statues provided an opportunity for them to bring their artistic fantasies to life for a noble purpose. A female friend of mine once referred to such sensual mourning statuary as “Mourn Porn.”

Whose is Bigger?

So that covers females, but what about the male nude? Why do we see no copies of Michaelangelo’s (anatomically correct) David in cemeteries? Maybe because the results would generate such public outcry, that the penises would be broken off, as was done to the Oscar Wilde monument in Paris’ Pere Lachaise Cemetery! (Afterwards, the cemetery’s director supposedly used it as a paperweight.)

While its true that we see a male angel once in a great while, most male statues in cemeteries depict the actual deceased man, often in a formal or noble pose. The allusion to male sexuality in mourning art is a bit more subtle, usually. Maybe you have to view it from a female perspective, but don’t all those obelisks below seem a bit phallocentric? In fact the tallest funeral monument in the United States was erected (pun intended) in Philadelphia’s Woodlands Cemetery in 1897, an obelisk that stands 150 feet high (below, left)!

Woodlands Cemetery, Philadelphia

Gee, it seems that when male sexuality is involved, the results get pretty dramatic. There was an incident in a Philadelphia suburb in 2003 that blatantly brought to light the competitive nature between two men. Rival businessmen Goodin (1836-1890) and Gallagher (1834-1915) were both buried in the St. Denis Church Cemetery in Havertown, PA. Goodin died at age 54, leaving orders to erect an imposing 20-foot-tall monolith atop a 10-foot-tall granite base. Church history offers this analysis: "He had to call attention to himself even at his own demise." Missing his friend and favorite adversary, Gallagher slyly bought the neighboring grave plot. He would wait 25 years before death let him claim final victory: an even more magnificent monolith of paler granite set atop an ornate base, the whole structure soaring to a pyramidal point about three feet higher than Goodin's highest point. In 2003, a storm toppled both monoliths.

So let's try to put all this Mourn Porn in perspective. If death is portrayed as beautiful, perhaps it will lose its sting. For Romeo and Juliet, as with the Romantic era in general (1825 – 1900), death was the focus of extreme emotion and the ultimate expression of love (Robinson, 1995). This period of time coincides with Victorian era, in which the idea of death in art and popular culture became less associated with horror and fright and more with love and desire. No other era in Western culture has ever exhibited to such an extent the artistic emphasis on death as a visible part of the consciousness of an entire population.

In her book Mourning Art and Jewelry, Maureen DeLorme tells us that the pressures of continually facing death as an intrusion (French Revolution, Napoleanic Wars, high mortality from plagues and disease, etc.) made the need to keep both the presence of the departed near at hand while at the same time bidding farewell. So the idea of sculpted sensual beings in cemeteries became a tangible realization of a new Western psychology. Their purpose? To comfort the living and soften the finality of death. While angels may epitomize the tension between freedom and confinement, the sensuals walk the tightrope between spiritual purity and earthly desire. Undeniably conflicting, yet totally human forces of nature.

Links of Interest:

Death: The Trip of a Lifetime by Greg Palmer
Read about the Woodlands Cemetery, and America's tallest cemetery monument!
Read about the competitive businessmen and their toppled obelisks!

Gardens of Memories

Waking up to much more than just the “wintry mix” predicted by the teflon-coated weather monkeys, I figured it was a good time to write this blog. Beside not wanting to go outside, I have a sick headache from too much alcohol and not enough sleep yesterday—I attended both Wing Bowl 19 and the Philadelphia Tattoo Arts Convention. Talk about photo ops....

Something I saw at the Tattoo Convention gave me the idea to write this blog. Ever hear of “suspensions?” (If you don’t know what suspensions are, think Texas Chainsaw Massacre. If that doesn’t click for you, then feel free to hit the informative link at the bottom of this page—but don’t say I didn’t warn you.) The suspensions reminded me of my friend’s arm being pinned together after being shot by a sniper.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This posting is really about cemetery memories. And not good ones either. When you think about it, the real purpose of cemeteries is to act as "memory gardens," places to help us NOT forget. But I’m sure you would agree, there are some things best left forgotten (if only we could). As I haven’t had many close friends or relatives die, I don’t spend much time visiting people I once knew in cemeteries, but I do spend a lot of time photographing in these places. One particular cemetery I’ve visited in Chester, PA, holds strange memories for me. Not so much for my experience in the place itself, as at the hospital next to it.

Back in 2001, a friend of mine was shot while delivering mail. She was hit twice by a maniac firing an automatic assault rifle out his bedroom window. The Chinese-made MAC-90 (copy of the better-known Kalashnikov AK-47) was just one of the many guns in his legal collection of firearms. I went to see her in the hospital after reading about the incident in the paper. She was in a coma.

"The Turning Away"

I went back about a week later, then visited a few more times over the course of a month. Each time, I stopped at the cemetery across the street afterward, to kind of bring me back to reality, or perhaps to distract. I took photographs, the rather grim ones you see here. Disturbingly, the only time I ever had someone cry after looking at my work was when I put this one (at left) in a show years later. The woman who broke down after seeing the photograph told me that it was a combination of the title and the image that evoked her emotional response. Great—my work makes women cry.

I‘d returned to Chester Rural Cemetery a number of times over the years, for the same reasons I return to any cemetery. Seasons change, the statues age—things look different and you get fresh photographic ideas. I generally make photographs of individual statues, attempting to bring out the character of the piece. Not so much to give voice to what the sculptor may have originally tried to say (which may be lost to erosion or vandalism), but to communicate to the viewer new information that this maturing statue may need to express.

Chester Rural Cemetery has never led me to any such fruitfully recurrent photographic experiences. I have mixed feelings about it, which prevent me from even writing objectively about the statuary, the grounds, or the photographic opportunities. It’s a sad place whenever I visit—I’ve only been back a few times--a garden of memories that may as well be filled with deadly nightshade and hemlock, rather than lilies and pine.

As my headache worsens and feels like a freight train dragging Richard Simmons through my skull, I make the bizarre parallel between the “suspensions” I witnessed at the Tattoo Convention and my injured friend’s arm all pinned together in the hospital. This was after she came out of the coma, which she had been in for a week. I asked her what that week was like, and she told me she had recurring dreams that the walls of her room were sweating ants, thousands of them coming out of the wall and crawling up.

She spent the next several months in rehab trying to regain partial use of her arm and to allow her internal injuries to heal. Bones, skin, and tissue recuperate relatively quickly, but psychological trauma lasts a lot longer. Suspension artists may performer night after night, but they still bleed. Even an onlooker can be scarred for life.

Related Links:

Here’s a link to a “Suspension” video on You Tube. It’s fairly tame, but it’ll give you an idea what I’m talking about. If you MUST know more, feel free to search You Tube for “Suspension Performers.” They’re not easy to watch.

Tattoo Arts Links

Cemetery Photo Day

A Day in the Life

In October of 2010, I took an after-work ride up to Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, to do some shooting (photographs, that is, not groundhogs). Best to get as much of this sort of thing in before Daylight Savings Time ends and such endeavors become impossible during the winter months. I didn’t expect anyone to be there (after all, it is a cemetery!), but to my surprise, there were couples, families, and individuals walking around—with cameras! Weird. Even at Laurel Hill, this is unusual. I drove and walked around for an hour or so, taking some fall foliage photos, when I noticed one of the maintenance vehicles parked near a monument. There was an air compressor running in the back of the truck—maybe someone I know is working—“Hey! Frank!”

It’s interesting knowing someone in the cemetery biz—Frank fills in the gaps of my cemetery knowledge. I’ve learned a lot more about how cemeteries operate, how monuments and statues are maintained and repaired, how and why bodies get disinterred, and so on. Also, these people say the darnest things. Once we were hanging out and I asked him how his week was. To the surprise of some strangers around us, he said, “Great! We got all six bodies out of the ground!”

I pulled my car over to the side of the road and got out. Frank turned off the compressor and said, “Come on up here, I want to show you something.” Frank and I share a common passion for cemeteries and photography, plus he knows that I like weird stuff. His invitation was quite innocent, and I followed him up the granite steps to the base of a giant monument. There was a rectangular hole in the ground, with a ladder sticking up out of it. As far as I could see, Frank and I were the only ones there.

I, of course, walk over to the hole and am about to look down when a man’s head and shoulders pop up out of the hole! Scared the living hell out of me! One of Frank’s coworkers was working down in the crypt and was climbing out. Frank sees this sort of thing every day—people climbing in and out of crypts is a routine occurrence for him. He hadn’t intended to shock me, but he did get quite a kick out of my reaction.

What he actually wanted me to see was the inside of the large burial crypt which was made of brick and had an arched ceiling. To place a casket in one of the many spaces in the crypt wall, one had to dig about six feet down to the vaulted brick ceiling, pull up the four-inch-thick slate covers, place the ladder, and … man, that’s a lot of work! How do they get the coffin down the ladder? Well, for this burial, they were just placing an urn of cremains in one of the crypts, so the hole only had to be large enough for a person to get down there with power tools (to grind the sealing mortar from around the proper crypt cover) and the urn. If a casket was being buried, the hole would’ve had to be larger so as to lower the casket into the underground mausoleum (see below for how they do this). As I got there, the worker who was grinding off the crypt cover was coming up the ladder (don't you love the phrase, "grinding off the crypt cover?" I know I do.).

People see these big cemetery monuments and they don’t realize the monument may be perched atop a huge underground mausoleum! One of the reasons the ceiling of the underground structure is arched is to provide the strength needed to support the gigantic, ten-ton granite monument!

The next day, I came across this email announcement:

"The Philadelphia Photo Arts Center (PPAC) is launching Philly Photo Day to celebrate their one-year anniversary. PPAC is designating October 28, 2010 as Philly Photo Day. They are asking anyone to take a picture in Philadelphia on this day, and submit it electronically to PPAC. They hope to receive hundreds if not thousands of images that will constitute a broad portrait of Philadelphia on that day. Then on November 9, 2010 PPAC will open an exhibition of the submitted images in the Crane Arts Building.

http://www.philaphotoarts.org/"

Interesting. Do I have anything worth submitting? The only photographs I shot that day were at Laurel Hill. I assumed the photo must have people in it. Maybe one of the images I made while I was with Frank—ah, THAT’S why there were so many people at the cemetery with cameras! Maybe I got scooped and all those other people will be submitting great photos! Ah, well, I submitted the image you see at top of this blog and it was accepted. Hey, a day in the life—and death—of Philadelphians.

It's unusual for me to have live people in any of my photographs—let alone one I took in a cemetery. I typically only photograph stone people, rather than live ones! Strangely, at the reception (which was fabulous--thank you Sarah Stolfa and PPAC), there was only one other cemetery photograph, and it was one of a solitary stone angel. Stranger still, many of the hundreds of images in the exhibit lacked people.

I wonder what that says about us as photographers? As people? Would you have assumed such a photo should include people? Was my assumption caused by some flaw in my personality? Have a look at a small sampling of the hundreds of entries on PPAC’s Facebook site.


Further Reading:

I was curious how a coffin could actually be lowered fifteen feet down into a crypt, so I looked it up. Oddly enough, such devices don't actually have a fancy professional-sounding name--they're just called "Casket Lowering Devices." Mechanical lowering devices, usually sitting on straps and perhaps attached to a portable winch system, are typically used. You can see such a device here.

No mean feat, lowering a heavy casket, or concrete crypt, into the ground. Since this is typically done relying mainly on the brute force of man and muscle, its no surprise that it costs so much to bury someone. You pay for the labor and hopefully, they do it right. You don’t want accidents to happen, such as the incident at an Arizona cemetery when a coffin slipped, fell, and broke open to the horror of onlookers!

Links of Interest:

Sarah Stolfa runs The Philadelphia Photo Arts Center (PPAC).
Check out her engaging book, "The Regulars," portraits she made of patrons, while she was tending bar:

Oakwood and the Confederate Cemetery

Obviously, the Snow Demons have not been appeased. They’ve unleashed their fury a second day in a row here in Philadelphia. As feet of snow drift down past my window, the lyrics of Randy Newman’s song “Sail Away” take me back to a warmer clime—June in Raleigh, North Carolina, to be exact.

Back in 2007 I was photographing in Raleigh’s beautiful Oakwood Cemetery, which is situated in the Historic Oakwood district of North Carolina’s state capitol. You can tell by all the Victorian homes here that this perfectly manicured cemetery had its origin in the same era. Though this National Historic District contains one of the largest collections of Victorian-era homes in the country, I was surprised that Raleigh seemed to be such a modern city—very little antebellum architecture (though there is some in the cemetery itself, as you see here). I guess I expected “Old South” plantation homes and “Gone With the Wind” mansions—sort of like how my Dad expected to see Royal Canadian Mounted Police (on horseback) as we crossed the border into Canada when I was a child.

Oakwood Cemetery  is wonderfully picturesque, with its flowering catalpa trees and magnolias, its massive shady oaks. Just up the road a piece is the coolest Krispy Kreme I ever saw, with a magnificent retro neon sign about the size of Rhode Island. So, equipped with a bag of warm glazed ones and large coffee (breakfast of champions), I entered Oakwood Cemetery. In one of my past lives, I’m sure I was born Southern—I’m inexplicably drawn to Krispy Kremes, crawdads, and smoked BBQ, as well as Southern music ranging from Robert Johnson to Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Headstone of the Controversial Jesse Helms

Boasting a mix of the old and the new, Oakwood captivates the taphophile. Gone with the Wind author Margaret Mitchell is buried here, along with her first husband, Berrien K. Upshaw. Upshaw, a Raleigh native, is believed to be the inspiration for the Rhett Butler character in her book. Political characters abound in Oakwood--North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms is now a resident. Helms, who died in 2008 (after my visit) conservatively had his pre-need planning done, as you can see from my 2007 photo. In December 2010, Elizabeth Edwards (ex-wife of presidential hopeful and North Carolina Senator John Edwards) was buried nearby after her long bout with breast cancer.

The statuary and other memorial sculpture at Oakwood range from the simple to the sublime. One of the most amazing monuments here rests at the grave of Wade Edwards (son of John and Elizabeth), who died in an automobile accident in 1996. The 10-foot high, 10-ton white marble sculpture “Wade’s Angel” shown below (sculpted by Robert Mihaly), is one of the most stunning contemporary memorials I’ve ever seen.

Wade Edwards' Angel, Oakwood Cemetery, Raleigh

Within Oakwood is the “Confederate Cemetery” (seen here mapped out on granite), with about 1500 graves marked with uniformly sized “CSA” (Confederate States of America) headstones. The stones are rather oddly peaked at the top, not flat or rounded, as you typically see in a military cemetery. Gazing out on this expanse of CSA graves for the first time gave me the same feeling I got in New Orleans when I saw slave shackles and “receipts” in a collectible store. History meets reality when it smacks you in the face. You think, damn, this “war between the states” stuff really happened…

For anyone who was as poor a history student as I was, here's the Civil War in a nutshell: The Confederate States of America was an unrecognized group of eleven southern slave states of the USA (North Carolina was one of them) that had declared their secession from the United States. The U.S. government rejected secession as illegal, and after four years of fighting in the American Civil War (1861 to 1865), the Confederate armies surrendered, its government collapsed, and its slaves were emancipated. The sanitized, history book version usually doesn’t account for the magnitude of lives lost—618,000 Americans died before the Rebel Yell was finally silenced (compared to 404,000 who died in WW II).

"Deo Vindice" - "With God our Vindicator" (in other words, God will justify our actions)

It was interesting to me that such a significant number of Confederate soldiers were buried there, given that the cemetery was not established until 1869—four full years after the Civil War ended. I thought maybe these were not graves of casualties, but of veterans who died after the war. I noticed a cemetery employee near the office building so I thought I would go ask. As I was packing up my camera gear, and about to walk down the hill toward my rental car, I noticed another car driving up the narrow roadway toward it. Though I didn’t see it happen, I heard the unmistakable sound of two vehicles scraping each other...!

I grabbed my cameras and ran down the hill, in time to see the moving car parked in front of mine, and an older gentleman (its driver) outside looking at the side of my car. I asked what was the problem, and an old woman in the passenger seat yells out to me, “Oh nothin’ … we just heard a noise and was wonderin’ what it was!” Um, yeah. Before they sped off, I photographed their license plate—just in case. Of course they hit my rental car, on which I had waived the insurance rider. Oh well, a little mud and dirt splattered on the scratches and maybe the agency won’t notice it was side-swiped. Here’s a photo of my Guardian Auto-Angel asleep on the job…

Afterward, I did manage to track down the cemetery employee and speak with him about the origin of the Confederate Cemetery within Oakwood. It wasn't as obvious as one might think. To summarize his words, I'll quote the author and historian Michael Hardy, from his article  "North Carolina and the Civil War:"

"Cemeteries exclusively for Confederates were a product of post-war bitterness..."

Hardy explains:

"Oakwood Cemetery had its origin during the occupation of Raleigh by General Sherman’s Union troops. Prior to that, Confederate soldiers were buried at Raleigh’s Rock Quarry Cemetery [later renamed Raleigh National Cemetery] alongside Union casualties. After General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Raleigh started to become flooded with wounded Union troops. [As more and more of them died, larger burial facilities were needed.] The Federal Army wanted Rock Quarry Cemetery all to themselves, for a National Cemetery for Union dead.

In 1867, when the Ladies Memorial Association of Wake County was formed, their mission was to "protect and care for the graves of our Confederate soldiers." The reason that it was the "Ladies Memorial Association" was that men were banned by the Federal government from meeting in large groups. The ladies acquired a piece of property from Henry Mordecai and began to clean and level the property. Their goal was to move the Confederates interred at the Rock Quarry Cemetery, and others buried in the surrounding area, to the new Confederate cemetery. There were an estimated 500 Confederates interred at the Rock Quarry Cemetery.

On February 22, 1867, the group received a letter from the Federal commander in Raleigh. All Confederates had to be moved from Rock Quarry Cemetery immediately to make room for a National Cemetery. The Ladies Memorial Association set about work. Volunteers disinterred the [nearly 500] Confederate graves and began moving them to the new cemetery. Their progress was too slow for the Federal government, and in March 1867, the Federal commandant issued a letter, stating that if the Confederate dead were not moved by the given date [three days later], "their remains would be placed in the public road." [Can you BELIEVE that?!] By the end of March, the ladies and their volunteers had finished the work."

“So," Chardy says, "If the Federal government came and told you that the remains of your loved ones would be dug up and dumped in the road, well, I guess that could cause a little bitterness.” As they say on the Sopranos, “To the victor, belongs the spoils." Christ—no wonder the old folks whacked my car. “Damn Yankee...,” they were probably thinking. Legend has it that the tops of Oakwood's CSA grave markers were cut to a point so that no Yankee could sit on a Confederate tombstone.

The nonprofit Raleigh Cemetery Association, established in 1869, continued to add land to the original Confederate Cemetery site, chartering it as "Oakwood Cemetery." Its present size (102 acres) is attributable to the city itself and private donors in acquiring adjoining land for expansion. As CSA veterans died over the next several decades, many were buried here, bringing up the total to the present 1500 graves.

As a parting thought, if you're tempted to take sides, have a look at this wonderfully touching film of a 1913 meeting of Civil War veterans in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. 

Links to Further Reading:

For the politically correct, history book version of Oakwood’s origin, see video here.

Northern Industry in the Civil War
Oakwood Cemetery Website
Raleigh's Confederate Cemetery 
Elizabeth Edwards' 2010 Burial at Oakwood Cemetery
Rhett Butler in Oakwood Cemetery 
Raleigh’s Serene And Scenic Oakwood Cemetery


Hear Randy Newman’s song “Sail Away”