Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (Concord, Massachusetts) Explained

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
Established:1855
Country:United States
Location:34A Bedford St., Concord, Massachusetts
Type:Public
Size:31.6acres
Website:https://concordma.gov/1956/Sleepy-Hollow-Cemetery
Findagraveid:91709
Embedded:
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
Embed:yes
Nrhp Type:hd
Nocat:yes
Coordinates:42.4639°N -71.3439°W
Built:1823
Architect:Cleveland, Horace W.S.; et al.
Added:August 19, 1998
Refnum:98000991

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is a rural cemetery located on Bedford Street near the center of Concord, Massachusetts. The cemetery is the burial site of a number of famous Concordians, including some of the United States' greatest authors and thinkers, especially on a hill known as "Author's Ridge."

History

Sleepy Hollow was designed in 1855 by noted landscape architects Cleveland and Copeland, and has been in use ever since. It was dedicated on September 29, 1855; Ralph Waldo Emerson gave a dedication speech and would be buried there decades later.[1] Both designers of the cemetery had decades-long friendships with many leaders of the Transcendentalism movement and is reflected in their design.

"Sleepy Hollow was an early natural garden designed in keeping with Emerson's aesthetic principles," writes Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn in his Nature and Ideology. In 1855, landscape designer Robert Morris Copeland delivered an address he entitled The Usefull [sic] and The Beautiful, tying his principles of naturalistic, organic garden design to Emerson's Transcendentalist principles. Shortly afterward, Copeland and his partner were retained by the Concord Cemetery Committee, of which Emerson was an active member, to design a cemetery for the growing community.

On September 29, 1855, Emerson delivered the opening address of the cemetery's consecration.[2] In it he lauded the designers' work. "The garden of the living," said Emerson, was as much for the benefit for the living, to communicate their relationship to the natural world, as it was to honor the dead. By situating the monuments to the dead within a natural landscape, the architects conveyed their message, said Emerson. A cemetery could not "jealously guard a few atoms under immense marbles, selfishly and impossibly sequestering [them] from the vast circulations of nature [which] recompenses for new life [each decomposing] particle."[3]

Known as Sleepy Hollow for some 20 years prior to its use as a cemetery, Emerson told his audience at the consecration ceremony that September day in Concord, "When these acorns, that are falling at our feet, are oaks overshadowing our children in a remote century, this mute green bank will be full of history: the good, the wise, and the great will have left their names and virtues on the trees... will have made the air tuneable and articulate."

To realize their vision, Emerson noted that the cemetery's designers had fitted the walks and drives into the site's natural amphitheater. They also left much of the original natural vegetation in place, instead of removing it and replanting with ornamental shrubs, as was often the case. Several years after Emerson's address, a visitor to the new cemetery noted the abundance of wild plants such as woodbine, raspberry, and goldenrod, as well as the natural moss and roots of pine trees which were left in situ by the designers.[4]

The Melvin Memorial, also known as Mourning Victory, sculpted by Daniel Chester French marks the grave of three brothers killed in the Civil War.

Several notable literary figures are buried on "Author's Ridge".[5]

People are still being buried in Sleepy Hollow. The back of the newer portion of the cemetery leads to a path system which connects to the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge.

Notable burials

See also

External links

Notes and References

  1. McAleer, John. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Days of Encounter. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984: 664. .
  2. Book: Places of Commemoration: Search for Identity and Landscape Design Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture (18th : 1995). Oct 25, 2001. Dumbarton Oaks. 9780884022602 . Oct 25, 2022. Google Books.
  3. Book: Architecture (18th : 1995), Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape. Nature and Ideology: Natural Garden Design in the Twentieth Century. Oct 25, 1997. Dumbarton Oaks. 9780884022466 . Oct 25, 2022. Google Books.
  4. Book: Architecture (18th : 1995), Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape. Nature and Ideology: Natural Garden Design in the Twentieth Century. Oct 25, 1997. Dumbarton Oaks. 9780884022466 . Oct 25, 2022. Google Books.
  5. Web site: Sleepy Hollow Cemetery Tour . The Town of Concord Massachusetts . 27 November 2022.
  6. Book: Glenn, Sharlee Mullins. Library on wheels : Mary Lemist Titcomb and America's first bookmobile. Abrams Books for Young Readers. 2018. 9781683352921. New York. 42. 1030992512.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (Concord, Massachusetts)".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.