History Book Introduuction
The classic gateway to the Lexington Cemetery opens into a significant community of the town's and state's past. Symbolically it was near this spot in 1775 that a small band of landhunters who had ventured out from Fort Harrod to spy out the countryside came to rest and were said to have given the place the name Lexington. That small band of backwoodsmen on a June day could not possibly have realized that the place where they camped would three quarters of a century later become one of perpetually extending historical importance. Alongside the bronze marker which commemorates the first viewing of the site of the future Lexington stands the classic gateway to the town's major cemetery, and in truth its garden of history.
Through the portals of the Lexington Cemetery has flowed the ever-extending historical saga of the personal life history of the community itself. The permanent tenants of this revered spot represent that part of Lexington's population caught and fixed in that moment of human mortality when time stands still. Spread out like a great open scroll on the land is the story of Lexington's human past. The multitude of tombstones and name inscriptions is a reminder of the physical inevitabilities of death, burial, and remembrance.
The history of the Lexington Cemetery reflects eloquently the cycles of social and economic changes which have taken place with the passage of a century and a half. Before the organization of the public corporation managed burying ground in Lexington burials followed a mixture of old world and American frontier customs. Some graveyards were clustered around churches; some were located on family estates; and countless graves no doubt, were opened at random on vacant grounds without thought or provision for future preservation and care. In both church and family burial sites were reflected emotional and sentimental desires to hold on to associational ties between the deceased members in somewhat the context which had prevailed in life.
As the text of this book indicates, Lexington once was dotted in its early years by an almost unknown number of private burying grounds. In the city, as all across the Bluegrass, are landmark small stone enclosures with occasional tombstones raising their draped heads above the walls. These mark human burial grounds and the condition of social organization of the time.
The idea of graveyards unrelated to churches was not unknown in Lexington prior to 1848.There prevailed, however, a lack of order or foresight in the location and the management of burying grounds.
Under earlier frontier-rural condition in Lexington and Kentucky no one could have visualized the rapid changes which would take place and have profound bearing on the burial sites of departed people of the town. In the same vein no one could have conceived of the possible desecration of graves which would occur in the path of future progress.
Burial customs, attitudes toward death, and cemetery monuments in national life underwent marked changes. At no time in American history is this fact more precisely documented than during those socially and politically fermentative years of the 1830's and 1840's. In this era the cemetery figured prominently in the growing complexities and changes in national social customs and philosophy of life and death. The new wave of nationalism along with provincial expansions inevitably necessitated the reassessment of ancient folkways and customs. This age made sharp demands for institutional reforms and for revision of almost every aspect of human services.
Inevitably, with the rather rapid increase of population in Fayette County and Lexington there arose a necessity for serious reconsideration of the role of cemeteries in the town's future simply as a matter of health protection. By 1830 compelling commercial and professional expansion in the central town area and along the extending residential streets demanded a more efficient and compact use of space. This coupled with epidemics of virulent diseases, forced a more modern and orderly system of burial of the dead in better planned burying grounds. Too, there prevailed an element of desire for perpetuity in a community burying ground well removed from the mundane activities of domestic and commercial expansion of the community.
Aside from the proper and dignified humane care of such heavy burden of death and the Christian burial of such an inordinate number of corpses, there was ever the matter of community sanitation. The large number of dead in the 1833 cholera epidemic in Lexington may have well been the catalyst which caused the town's leading citizens to plan new cemetery policies. For the mere physical comfort and safety of the population burial of rapidly decomposing bodies became a dire necessity. Without dependable knowledge of the source and cause of the disease there was no way of knowing when it might strike again. Instinctive protection of the living alone made hurried burials necessary to prevent desertion of the town and destruction of businesses.
Lexington was by no means isolated from the currents which stirred in other cities in the burial of the dead and in their attempts to bring under control the casual location of cemeteries. Every growing American city during the early decades of the nineteenth century confronted the same challenge in this area. Both in America and abroad growth of urban populations and commercial expansion threatened cities with wholesale calamities unless some active and humane care of burying grounds occurred. In New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston there were burial grounds in the hearts of the cities. The New England towns, Boston included, had burial sites even on the commons. In 1825 the one on the Boston Commons was being trampled by pedestrians and grazing milk cows. All of the cities suffered one form or another of calamities. There were outbreaks of virulent diseases, fires, storms, and other forms of disasters.
Besides the basic public health necessity there occurred a marked philosophical change in attitudes toward death. In this respect there may be a sharply discernible difference between the American, British, and European attitudes. Critics of cemetery management in London were sharp in their remarks about the rather ghoulish mode and places of human burials. In France the famous Pere la Chaise set not only a standard for that country, but an international one as well. This cemetery bordered more on being an outdoors display of funerary sculpture and monuments than a well-managed burying ground. In America a less-concentrated population density in large measure accounted for the differences in locations and upkeep of cemeteries. Too, the fact of a fast-moving frontier population in America accounted for the location and abandonment of literally hundreds of graveyards. There was no lack of land space in the United States, but there was a distinct difference in attitudes toward death from those prevailing on the European continent.
In America, the seminal decade 1830-1840 was one of rising nationalism and of cultural and social self-consciousness. Scarcely any phase of contemporary life went untouched by that age. The nation's population grew rapidly; and native inventors flooded the United States Patent Office with applications for machines and devices to lighten human labors, to better process raw natural resources, and to create new tastes. This was a dawning age for the American sciences, especially in the fields of medicine, botany, geology, and chemistry. Social reformers crusaded for scores of humane and social causes, and they raised compelling voices in achieving their objectives.
Out of this context in the early 1830s arose the concept of creating democratic nonsectarian public cemeteries. This meant the organization of burying grounds well removed from centers of increasing human traffic and commercial activities. Contemporary with the promotion of this idea was the auxiliary one of preserving natural wooded green parks in attractive environmental and topographical settings in which people could visit in semi sylvan retreats. In New Haven, Connecticut the first of these rural sanctuaries was partially created in the organization of the "New Burying Ground." The classic pioneer, however, was the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This park-like burying ground not only became the precedent for the combination of natural surroundings and cemetery, but quickly gained international fame. Often it was compared with Pere la Chaise in Paris.
Boston had its central city burying ground problems of several cemeteries being crowded into the very heart of the city. Some of them were centered at churches, and others were located at random. To solve the cemetery problems in both Boston and Cambridge, Joseph Bigelow in 1825 organized an interested group of townsmen and sought to locate a nearby site on which to establish a "garden cemetery." Such a spot was the seventy-two-acre Stone's Woods, which bordered the Charles River just east of Harvard College. This isolated wooded tract was known to college students as "Sweet Auburn," a name taken from Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village. This virginal slope was ideally suited for the development of a botanical garden-rural cemetery. Because of this pleasant setting Bigelow was able to entice the Massachusetts Horticultural Society to join in the enterprise.
When the horticultural society revised its charter in order to cooperate with the Bigelow group it inserted the term "rural cemetery," a descriptive title which gained national popularity. Founded in 1831, the grounds of the Mount Auburn Cemetery were dedicated on September 24 that year. The famous jurist Joseph Storey delivered an eloquent address in which he described the mission of the grounds in ringing philosophical terms.
Mount Auburn Cemetery quickly became a focal center of widespread national and international interest. Numerous foreign travelers visiting Boston on the northern leg of their "grand tours" of the United States were driven out to Mount Auburn to admire its sylvan beauty. In 1840 the highly observant Englishman James Silk Buckingham visited the cemetery and wrote an extensive description of it in his published journal: "The arrangement, or laying out of the grounds generally, is in good taste; uniting the simplicity of nature, with the order and preservation of art...though there is little too much of formality and sameness in the separation of the several allotments of ground, and the monuments enclosed in them, there is nothing offensive from either of the extremes of ostentation or meanness; while many of the tombs are beautiful, and would be regarded so anywhere." Buckingham, like every other foreigner who visited Mount Auburn, felt under compulsion to compare it with Pere la Chaise in Paris. He wrote, "In many respects then, I think Mount Aburn Superior to Pere la Chaise. Its natural scenery, of hill and dale, of river, lake and forest trees, with other surrounding objects, presents a combination which is not to be found in the cemetery in Paris: and which is far more in harmony with the repose of the dead, than the most sumptuous monuments, these combinations, can be." Buckingham might well have written this as a description of the future Lexington rural cemetery located in the heart of Boswell's Woods.
On the heels of James Silk Buckingham came the Scotch newspaperman Alex McKay, who visited Cambridge in 1847. He too was examining American institutions. He went to visit Mount Auburn and found that its "well kept walks and avenues are laid out through it in every direction, skirted in summer time with the richest foliage, the principal avenues taking their respective names from the trees which predominate on either side. Here and there, too, you come upon a small still pond, fringed with shrubbery, and reposing, as it were, in a state of funeral seclusion. If anything is calculated to deprive death of its terrors, it is thus preparing a sweet resting place for the dead. How different from our foul, fetid, and over-crowded burying places in the heart of London, which make the grave hideous to the imagination."
Through publicity, travel accounts, a guide published in 1839, and by word of mouth of visitors to Cambridge the concept of the "rural garden cemetery" was spread abroad and across the American continent. Following its precedent there were organized the Laurel Hill and Greenwood cemeteries in Philadelphia in 1836, Mount Hope in Rochester, and Greenmount in Baltimore. In the West, Spring Grove was organized in Cincinnati and Cave Hill in Louisville in 1848. The sylvan names of these cemeteries describe their natural settings rather than symbolical religious themes.
There seems not to exist in surviving documentary historical sources a clear statement of just who conceived the idea of organizing the "rural garden" Lexington Cemetery. There is, however, a fairly clear bit of documentary evidence that it might have been Robert W. Wickliffe, who possessed a copy of The Picturesque Pocket Companion and Visitor's Guide Through Mount Auburn, Illustrated with Upwards of Sixty Engravings on Wood (1839). This book was presented to Wickliffe by Justice Joseph Storey, and is in the Lexington Cemetery Company's library.
An interesting sidelight in Kentucky's social history is the fact that in the session of the Kentucky General Assembly in 1848 five cemetery charters were either granted or amended. The Paris Cemetery Company was empowered to become a stock company with broad administrative control of that town's woodland burying grounds. At the same time trustees of cemeteries in Richmond and Lancaster were authorized to purchase twelve-acre tracts, organize "rural cemeteries," sell lots, and otherwise maintain administrative oversight of their operations.
On February 5, 1848, the General Assembly granted charters to the trustees of the Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville and to those of the Lexington Cemetery Company. In all the cemetery legislation that year there ran through the individual laws a thread of encouragement that trustees would create gardens or green parks covered with mature trees and shrubbery, and that they would open roadways, control burial practices, and otherwise keep oversight for all future time of the grounds. In the latter admonition there was a distinct intent stated in the law that the companies would assure perpetuity and maintenance.
The law creating the Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville on a fifty-five acre farm used the specific term "Rural Cemetery," while the Lexington charter only implies the designation. The Lexington Cemetery legislation is more explicit, however. It contains instructions that, "The land and appurtenances, when conveyed to said corporation, shall be held solely and exclusively for a cemetery, and ornamental grounds connected therewith, and shall never be alienated, sold, or used by said corporation, for any than burial lots, as hereinafter prescribed. But the said corporation may permit their Superintendent, or other officers, to use their portion of their grounds and buildings not sold for burial lots, for horticultural purposes."
From 1849, and the opening of the Lexington Cemetery to burials, onward the landed area became physically and spiritually an extended part of the community. The Lexington Cemetery in fact became an ever-lengthening physical, historical artifact in which both the living and the dead were drawn into a common or special association. Family plots were laid off large enough to accommodate future generations, and, in some instances, were enclosed either within iron fences or stone curbings. Family tombstones generally have reflected the patriarchial influence which has prevailed so strongly in Kentucky's history, and which was so eloquently implied among the membership of the incorporators. Almost universally this fact of fatherhood has characterized the identification of family grave plots all across North America. Use of the surname of the father or husband has never been seriously challenged in death, even with the changes in political and social mores.
The Lexington Cemetery is a veritable panoply of the community's past human population. Its tombstone markers are clear assertions that individuals buried beneath them hold in death warranty deeds in perpetuity to tiny spots of earth on which they lived and functioned as distinct personalities. Inscriptions engraved on the face of the stone monuments insure virtual perpetual memory of names and data of individuals' spans of time among the living. Sometimes longer inscriptions reflect personal pride of families in the dead one's accomplishments or they express spiritual admonitions and hopes for the living.
In good measure the tombstone artistry in the Lexington Cemetery denotes the ages, changes in tastes, the state of the arts, the costs in human lives in wars, economic and professional status, and community and national regards for individuals. Towering over all the grave markers in the cemetery is the tall obelisk and statuary monument to Henry Clay, an incorporator of the cemetery. In life Henry Clay personified by his actions and statements many of the views of an emerging and changing nation. These signified the breeching of many of the barriers to harmonious unification of the sections of the nation, or, succinctly, the American spirit of nationalism.
The mausoleums of other tenants of the Lexington Cemetery reflect an innate desire to cling to mortality itself by denying mother earth her victory over physical man. There nevertheless prevails in the Lexington Cemetery a profound spirit of democracy in death. Unlike the much-praised ostentatious monumental display of material wealth in the Pere la Chaise Cemetery in Paris, there is only a modest display of such vanity in Lexington. There prevails generally a rich harmony with the natural sylvan setting.
Even a casual stroll through the cemetery is indeed a vicarious visit with families and individuals who once were inseparable human parts of life in Lexington. Lying at rest beneath the shade of ancient trees are Clays, Wickliffes, Todds, Breckinridges, Hunts, Morgans, Warfields, Winters, Dudleys, Gratzes, Sayres, and many others, all of an earlier age. There are seven Revolutionary War soldiers buried there who fixed their names firmly in Kentucky and western country history. Among them are Abraham Bowman, James Morrison, John Parker, John Coleman, James Masterson, and John Carty, Sr. All of these are names which survive in the community's memory in living individuals.
Among the memorable persons of the early era is Dr. Benjamin Dudley, an incorporator, a native son, and a graduate in medicine who gained a far-flung reputation as a surgeon treating gunshot wounds and as a lithotomist. Dr. Dudley may well be considered the dean of the early physicians who lie at rest with him in the cemetery. There are Frederick Ridgely, William Richardson, Samuel Brown, and others. Among those of more recent years are Dr. David Barrow, organizer of the famous Barrow medical unit in World War I; Dr. John Scott, revered member of the Fayette Medical Society; Dr. Frederick Rankin, distinguished surgeon and medical officer in World War II; and Dr. John Sharpe Chambers, head of the University of Kentucky student health services, whose dream of the creation of a medical school in the university was realized.
There lie in silent assembly a brilliant group of men and women whose literary voices are still heard in the land. Earliest among them Rosa Griffith Vertner Jefferies, poetess and novelist. With her is Dorothy McPherson Farnsworth, also a poetess. A true Kentucky literary pioneer of national stature, James Lane Allen captured the spirit of his land, the central Bluegrass region of Kentucky, at a time when it was shedding its ante bellum past. There is some irony in the compromises and reconciliations which are made in death. James Lane Allen and the Rev. John W. McGarvey, Disciples of Christ minister and former president of the College of the Bible, lie together in harmony. In life McGarvey was so bitterly critical of the evolutionary philosophy expressed in the Reign of Law that Allen went away to New York and never returned to Lexington in life.
George W. Ranck imprinted his name deeply upon Kentucky and Lexington in his books, which no doubt will endure as reference sources to the past state and town. No doubt he and his fellow historian Charles Richard Staples would now share their disbelief at the changes which their beloved market town of Lexington has experienced in the past half century. Their hearts and literary interests were in the era of the frontier western town growing into a cozy social and commercial center. In company with Ranck and Staples Judge Samuel Mackay Wilson, scholarly lawyer and historian, who exercised his literary talent in his insatiable search for facts pertaining to the lives of those Kentuckians who shaped the early destiny of the Commonwealth. In both his writings and book and documentary collections Judge Wilson created a rich legacy for the future. None of Judge Wilson's accomplishments, however, will endure in time so brilliantly as the magnificent collection of his books and manuscripts now in the Special Collections division of the University of Kentucky Library.
Kentucky has produced no sprightlier author than William Henry Townsend. In his facile writings he interpreted Lexington and its ante bellum past for his readers as though he lived as an intimate neighbor to the chief personages of the times. He breathed bright literary life into the men and women who gave this island of early western culture and commerce its color and stature. Both in his writings and in his extensive collection of Lincolniana, Townsend left a literary heritage to be savored by Kentuckians and Lincoln scholars.
Linked in death as in life with Judge Wilson and William H. Townsend, J. Winston Coleman, Holman Hamilton, and Albert D. Kirwan were authors of national stature. Early in life Winston Coleman registered a literary warranty deed to a large and varied segment of Kentucky's past. He produced a shelf full of books and pamphlets; but, like Wilson and Townsend, he assembled a monumental collection of books, pamphlets, manuscripts, and photographs relating to the commonwealth, a collection which will ever be a source of sounding the past. His contemporary Holman Hamilton had a bright career as biographer, historian, and teacher. Albert Dennis Kirwan had a distinguished career as teacher and author. His books were of seminal quality. So are those of his colleague William Clement Eaton and Shelby T. McCloy. Both were authors of major scholarly stature. John Wilson Townsend left a legacy of books about Kentucky writing and its writers. His multivolume analyses of Kentucky writing and biographical sketches of the state's authors in their comprehensiveness will live as an important literary landmark.
In many respects so far as Kentucky has ever been home to a renaissance man, Dr. Robert Peter was that man. Professor of chemistry and medicine in Transylvania University, Dr. Peter's interest ranged far beyond the classroom in the fields of physical geology, natural history, and the history of Fayette County and Lexington. His writings and research laid a substantial foundation for future scientific investigation in Kentucky. In a sense William Delbert Funkhouser was his successor. A biologist, Funkhouser wrote extensively in that field and in areas of archeology and anthropology.
Along with authors there are the architects Cincinnatus Shryock, John McMurtry, and Charles Wilkin Sort. Most intimately associated with the cemetery, John McMurtry designed its entry gate. Buildings of his designing which still stand in Lexington are the Old Lexington and Ohio Railroad Station, the Floral Hall at the Red Mile Trotting Track, St. Peter Catholic Church, the residence Botherum at Madison Place, and Loudoun in the city park off Loudon Avenue. Cincinnatus Shryock introduced the neo-Victorian type house to Lexington, and many of his private residential buildings lined North Broadway. He designed the First Presybterian Church, the Centenary Methodist Church, and the three-story Lexington Opera House which was destroyed by fire in 1886.
Among the artists buried in the cemetery are Joseph H. Bush, portrait painter who had among his subjects James Garrard, George Rogers Clark, Benjamin Winslow Dudley, and General Zachary Taylor. Oliver Frazier, portrait painter, studied under the tutelage of Matthew Harris Jouett. Among Farzer's portraits of central Kentuckians were Mrs. Henry Clay, William R. McKee, Richard Menifee, Thomas H. Shelby, and many others. Artists of a later period in Lexington history who are buried in the Lexington Cemetery are James Ben Ali Haggin, Thomas Scott, Catherine Helm, and William P. Welsh. All of these left behind paintings commemorative of their artistic talents.
The name of Captain John Postlethwaite conjures many warm memories. Host of Postlethwaite's Tavern at Main and Limestone streets, he entertained a continuous procession of distinguished guests. From 1781 till 1981 the Phoenix (Postlethwaites) Hotel was famous both at home and abroad. Presidents James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy slept beneath its roof. There was a long list of other famous guests ranging from Antonio de Lopez Santa Anna to Rosemary Clooney. Close by John Postlethwaite lie the two famous Lexington hotel men Len Shouse and John Cramer.
On every side monuments bear the names of lawyers, merchants, bankers, horsemen, farmers and other public persons, all whom contributed in some substantial way to the social, political, and commercial growth of the community. Benjamin Gratz, member of the famous Philadelphia-Lexington-St. Louis merchant-trading family, contributed materially to the welfare of early Lexington and Kentucky. He was a part of nearly every beginning enterprise; was one of the incorporators of the City of Lexington, the hard surfaced Maysville Road, the Northern Bank of Kentucky, the Louisville and Ohio Railroad; and contributed materially to the location of the University of Kentucky in Lexington. Besides these activities Benjamin Gratz was a successful hemp merchant. John Wesley Hunt was one of Lexington's most astute merchants, dealing in tobacco, hemp, and the breeding of horses. He was said to be Lexington's first millionaire. His home, Hopemont, stands a historic Lexington landmark. David F. Sayre was a pioneer central Kentucky banker who, like Gratz and Hunt, was active in the public affairs of the town. He left behind the thriving institutions Sayre School and the First Security Trust Company.
Scores of names appearing on tombstones in the cemetery are reminiscent of the days when Lexington's Main Street was a thriving commercial-mercantile artery with stores concentrated downtown. Among merchant names inscribed on monuments are baker, Embry, Purcell, Wile, Ades, Graves, Cox, McAdams, Morford, Van Deren, and many more. These names conjure up memories when Main Street was in good measure a Lexington Promenade when people went downtown to shop, to see and be seen, and to hear the local gossip.
At almost ever turn in the cemetery there appears the name of a member of the famous Fayette County Bar. Among the older ones, Henry Clay must be considered the dean. In company with him are Madison C. Johnson, Jeremiah Morton, John T. Shelby, John C. Breckinridge, Richard Stoll, Charles Kerr, Edward McDonald, George Hunt, and an extended list of their colleagues. Among the barristers lie judges, lawyers who won landmark cases, politicians holding a wide variety of offices ranging from constable to vice-president of the United States.
There is marked catholicity in the broad spectrum of humanity that has lived in this community and now lies buried beneath ancient trees of the Lexington Cemetery. Within its grounds lie individuals of many religious faiths, races, and widely varying social and economic status. Perhaps nowhere, or at any time, in Lexington and Kentucky history has there been a more complete lowering of the artificial barriers which separated living persons. Catholics lie besides Protestants, Jews with gentiles, blacks with whites, natives with those of foreign birth, laborers with university presidents; United States senators, congressmen, and judges lie with their constituents. Ministers of the gospel, and there are many, lie alongside colleagues of differing spiritual beliefs and doctrines. Lawyers lie beside clients and contending rivals, and doctors with patients. Drawn up in permanent review ranks are the plain white grave markers of soldiers who took to early graves no one knows what talents, ambitions, and frustrations.
Though two historical moments in America's past merged in the "rural cemetery" movement, that of the age of romanticism and that of the rise of the common man a century and half ago, their merger was mellowed by the passage of time. In this moment in the closing decade of the twentieth century these strands of a historical movement have remained firmly intertwined in the creation and maturing of a place of natural beauty in which the living and the dead come into intimate association within an area of beauty and warm remembrances.
Perhaps no better summary could be made of the physical and sentimental "rural cemetery" movement than that of Justice Joseph Storey, who summed up the inter-relationships of moral, aesthetic, and finer sentiments which needed more than didactic rationalization for their cultivation. On that September day in 1831 he told the Mount Auburn audience, "Here let us erect the memorials of our love, and our gratitude, and our glory. Here let the brave repose, who have died in the cause of their country. Here let the statesman rest, who has achieved the victories of peace, not less renown than war. Here let the genius find a home, that has sung immortal strains, or has instructed with still diviner eloquence. Here let the youth and beauty, blighted by premature decay, drop, like tender blossoms, into virgin earth; and here let age retire, ripened for the harvest. Above all, here let the benefactors of mankind, the good, the merciful, the meek, and the pure in heart, be congregated; for to them belongs undying praise." Thus within the gates of the Lexington Cemetery lie in peace the good, the merciful, the meek, and the pure in heart. Their congregation is but an extended part of the community which stirs about them.
Thomas D. Clark
