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The Chesapeake Book of the Dead: Tombstones, Epitaphs, Histories, Reflections, and Oddments of the Region
From the author of The Oysterback Tales , a unique and haunting look at the region's past and its tales of love and tragedy, loss and remembrance. For the many people who enjoy walking through old cemeteries, exploring forgotten and overgrown graveyards, and reading the names, dates, and epitaphs of the dead, the Chesapeake Bay region offers a rich assortment of final resting places, many dating back to the early 1600s. From Williamsburg to Havre de Grace, it is not uncommon to see a number of the living wandering among the markers of the dead. Some are genealogists and historians, others come in search of quietude and a tangible connection to the past. In The Chesapeake Book of the Dead , Helen Chappell and photographer Starke Jett survey this rich legacy, from the vast and imposing Arlington National Cemetery to lone graves so modest as to have been lost almost as soon as they were dug. Chappell and Jett visit graveyards of the famous and the obscure, wander through cemeteries dotted with both elaborate funerary and simple, weather-beaten headstones, and discover epitaphs that range from the literary to the amusing to the poignant. As old grave sites disappear under developers' bulldozers, through neglect, and at the hands of unscrupulous headstone collectors, this remarkable book offers a unique and elegiac look at our past and its tales of love and tragedy. Among the cemeteries explored are Southeast Washington's Congressional Cemetery (posthumous home to composer John Philip Sousa, FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, pioneering feminist and muckraking journalist Anne Royall, and Choctaw chief and notable military tactician Pushmataha); Baltimore's Green Mount Cemetery (built in the 1830s as Baltimore's first sylvan graveyard); and Westminster Burying Ground in downtown Baltimore. At Westminster lies the grave of Edgar Allan Poe, which a mysterious figure visits each year on Poe's birthday to leave roses and a bottle of brandy. The book also describes the final resting places for such celebrities as Dorothy Parker (Chappell located her ashes at the NAACP headquarters in Baltimore), F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (buried in Rockville at Scott's wish, because, he insisted, "I belong here," in Maryland, "where everything is civilized and gay and rotted and polite"), and cosmopolitan actress Tallulah Bankhead (interred in a plot her sister provided near Chestertown). Included throughout this fascinating book are essays on mourning fashion and deathbed performances, graveyard ghost stories, discussions of efforts to save historic cemeteries, and notes from the diary of a nineteenth-century doctor who today is buried in Rising Sun Cemetery alongside many of his patients. Chappell's lively prose, accompanied by Jett's haunting black-and-white photographs, will delight all those drawn to the seclusion, peacefulness, and melancholy of old graveyards. Jacket Lower Hooper's Island, Maryland "There is a romantic, nostalgic, pleasantly melancholy feeling to old cemeteries that is hard to define but easy to experience. Perhaps it is because we can feel the direct link to our past that no history book, no movie, no historical fantasy can ever convey. These stones and these unkempt grounds are the hard evidence of lives that came before us. Once, these people lived and breathed, loved, worked, fought, hoped and despaired, and experienced their triumphs and failures just as we do today. And, although we seldom care to acknowledge it, we will inevitably go where they have gone."―from the Preface
- GenresNonfiction
152 pages, Hardcover
First published March 8, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 13, 2013
This is a very strange book, more a collection of ghost stories than essays about cemeteries. The author was inspired by the legendary Wisconsin Death Trip, but instead of collecting news stories, historical photos, and real-world evidence of how things were, she collects urban legends and tales of hauntings, reproducing some in dialect that mimics oral accounts without actually being quoted. Woven around those stories are her memories of growing up in an abandoned graveyard near her father's farm and her visits to graveyards as an adult. Obviously, I like those parts of the book better than the folklore.
And it's not that I don't like folklore. It's just that I wish it acted more like nonfiction here, without real people telling the stories or at least the author really responding to hearing or reading them. Instead, it feels like chunks of fiction are dropped in amongst the thoughtful essays. In fact, I'm deeply interested in her justifications of visiting cemeteries as she tangentially faces the oncoming reality of death, and her delicious, good-natured morbid curiosity. I wish there was lots more of that.
The photos by Starke Jett V don't often rise to the level of the cover photo, with its plundered grave and jauntily tilted skull. Still, they do become art from time to time: the crow captured as it alights on a weathered stone, the naked toddler on the Clover Addams monument in Rock Creek Cemetery. They don't detract from the text.
I wish there was an index, to make the book more useful as of a research text, but I realize my uses probably differ from most people's.
And it's not that I don't like folklore. It's just that I wish it acted more like nonfiction here, without real people telling the stories or at least the author really responding to hearing or reading them. Instead, it feels like chunks of fiction are dropped in amongst the thoughtful essays. In fact, I'm deeply interested in her justifications of visiting cemeteries as she tangentially faces the oncoming reality of death, and her delicious, good-natured morbid curiosity. I wish there was lots more of that.
The photos by Starke Jett V don't often rise to the level of the cover photo, with its plundered grave and jauntily tilted skull. Still, they do become art from time to time: the crow captured as it alights on a weathered stone, the naked toddler on the Clover Addams monument in Rock Creek Cemetery. They don't detract from the text.
I wish there was an index, to make the book more useful as of a research text, but I realize my uses probably differ from most people's.
May 2, 2012
Consider, if you will, the paradox inherent in Helen Chappell's The Chesapeake Book of the Dead. One would think that a book that examines burial customs in the Chesapeake region, that looks at how death and dying have been commemorated in those parts of Maryland and Virginia that are among the oldest areas of European settlement in what is now the United States, would be somehow morbid. And yet Chappell makes clear why the subject matter of this book should matter to all of us:
Once, these people lived and breathed, loved, worked, fought, hoped and despaired, and experienced their triumphs and failures just as we do today. And, although we seldom care to acknowledge it, we will inevitably go where they have gone.
In that spirit, Chappell captures how the gravestones and cemeteries of the Chesapeake region, from the colonial era through the present day, tell us something about the people whose stories are told on those gravestones, and who are buried in those cemeteries.
The title no doubt draws upon Ancient Egypt's Book of the Dead. Chappell, an Eastern Shore native whose tales of the fictional Delmarva community of Oysterback were once a staple of The Baltimore Sun, brings to this study her considerable knowledge of Eastern Shore life. The photographs by Starke Jett V have a melancholy beauty to them. And in the stories and vignettes that Chappell relates, we see the famous whose lives and deaths are part of the story of the region -- William Byrd, Harriet Tubman, Edgar Allan Poe, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Just as important, we hear of the lives and deaths of ordinary people whose stories we would not know if Chappell did not tell us those stories. Additionally, we visit some of the most famous cemeteries of the region -- Greenmount and Old St. Paul's in Baltimore; Congressional and Oak Hill in Washington, D.C.; and Arlington National Cemetery in Northern Virginia.
There are additions that I might have suggested. For example, an excellent chapter on overlooked African-American cemeteries of the Eastern Shore could have been complemented by some treatment of whatever is known of Native American burial practices from pre-contact times. And yet, in the final analysis, this book about death and dying does much to make one appreciate the gift of being alive.
Once, these people lived and breathed, loved, worked, fought, hoped and despaired, and experienced their triumphs and failures just as we do today. And, although we seldom care to acknowledge it, we will inevitably go where they have gone.
In that spirit, Chappell captures how the gravestones and cemeteries of the Chesapeake region, from the colonial era through the present day, tell us something about the people whose stories are told on those gravestones, and who are buried in those cemeteries.
The title no doubt draws upon Ancient Egypt's Book of the Dead. Chappell, an Eastern Shore native whose tales of the fictional Delmarva community of Oysterback were once a staple of The Baltimore Sun, brings to this study her considerable knowledge of Eastern Shore life. The photographs by Starke Jett V have a melancholy beauty to them. And in the stories and vignettes that Chappell relates, we see the famous whose lives and deaths are part of the story of the region -- William Byrd, Harriet Tubman, Edgar Allan Poe, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Just as important, we hear of the lives and deaths of ordinary people whose stories we would not know if Chappell did not tell us those stories. Additionally, we visit some of the most famous cemeteries of the region -- Greenmount and Old St. Paul's in Baltimore; Congressional and Oak Hill in Washington, D.C.; and Arlington National Cemetery in Northern Virginia.
There are additions that I might have suggested. For example, an excellent chapter on overlooked African-American cemeteries of the Eastern Shore could have been complemented by some treatment of whatever is known of Native American burial practices from pre-contact times. And yet, in the final analysis, this book about death and dying does much to make one appreciate the gift of being alive.
January 25, 2014
Interesting approach to finding & appreciating old cemeteries. I have been fascinated with epitaphs since I was quite young. New England has some of the best & then I went to Boot Hill in Tombstone, Arizona. WOW! " Hanged by mistake" was amazing to see & even more unbelievable to realize that it had taken place & I was standing not too far from where it had taken place. This book 'takes' the reader to various old cemeteries around the Chesapeake area, explains how they are connected to the area, & how certain individuals attempt to save these fabulous old cemeteries. These people are not forgotten & that is how it should be!!
August 31, 2019
I picked this up in a thrift store. I am a Maryland boy now living in Virginia. I grew up in Rockville Maryland not too far from where St. Mary’s Church stands. It is the sight where F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda are buried. I learned their story early on as well as Edgar Allen Poe. If you want to learn the folklore of a town... look to the stones. I enjoyed this jaunt into the darker corners of Maryland history. Maybe even more so because I feel connected to it.
October 26, 2024
Very entertaining little book with bits and pieces of local information. My only complaint is it should have had more... More anecdotes, more interesting gravestones, more funerary oddities. There is so much content that could have fit into the purpose of this book. I expected more. Having said that, Chappell is a really entertaining and gifted writer and I enjoyed her book thoroughly.
October 8, 2017
Excellent to read after a day tromping around St. Peter’s Cemetery on Bentalou Street - the abandoned and forgotten and lost cemeteries of Maryland. Excellent stories and evocative pictures
July 23, 2023
I wish it was longer! More pictures, more details. Only complaint.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews