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Writer Finds Soul of North Carolina in Graveyards
Sticks & Stones
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Although North Carolina's old graveyards seem mysterious, the gravemarkers
they contain have much to tell about the state's families, traditions, and
culture. M. Ruth Little of Raleigh, author of Sticks and Stones:
Three Centuries of North Carolina Gravemarkers, calls the
study of gravestones the best way to understand the soul of North Carolina.
While graveyards and gravemarkers have long been recognized as vital
elements of the material culture in New England, Sticks and Stones
is the first book to consider the full spectrum of gravemarkers in a
southeastern state. Little argues that gravestones are not only
artifacts of material culture, but are also useful genealogical tools
and keys to understanding ethnicity. Sticks and Stones covers the rich collection of gravemarkers, plain and fancy, from the coast to the moutains. In researching the state's gravemarkers, Little explored 550 graveyards in 34 North Carolina counties. Sticks and Stones is beautifully illustrated with more than 230 duotone photographs of these works of art, including 120 stunning shots by Charlotte's Tim Buchman, whose work also appeared in the award-winning North Carolina Architecture (UNC Press, 1990).
Gravemarkers can be found in North Carolina that date back to the days
of settlers who came from England, Scotland, Germany, and Africa.
Sticks and Stones documents markers from the early 1700s,
when imported stones marked the graves of wealthy coastal settlers, to the mid-twentieth
century, when mass-produced granite monuments began to coexist with homemade
markers. Little shows that within these three centuries of settlement and change, the form
of the gravemarker has varied based upon the culture, economic conditions, and raw
materials available. North Carolinians have used everything from cedar boards to seashell
mounds to homemade concrete headstones to mark their graves. Little presents gravemarkers from each of three geographic regions of North Carolina: the coastal plain, piedmont, and mountains. Markers found in the coastal plain range from the fashionable, imported stones of affluent families to the humble pine and cypress headboards used by subsistence farmers. In the piedmont and mountains, most people were buried beneath head- and footstones cut of native stone through the late nineteenth century. Little traces the traditions of three groups of gravemarker artisans: the backcountry carvers who crafted headstones of native materials, the metropolitan stonecutters who created a series of marble monuments; and the African American community's largely twentieth-century legacy of wood and concrete markers.
Exploring the cultural, economic, and material differences that give
rise to such trends was a labor of love for Ruth Little. She felt drawn
to attempt to record the history of gravemarkers in North Carolina
after an incident in October 1974:
I was surveying an antebellum house near the Cape Fear River in
Harnett County, one of the counties where thousands of Highland Scots
had settled in the eighteenth century. In the family graveyard nearby
stood a tiny headstone, crudely cut out of thick reddish-brown
sandstone in the abstract shape of a human figure, with a large nose
and lips, small eyes, and a large heart. The inscription was illegible,
but the lettering indicated that the stone was very old, perhaps
eighteenth or early nineteenth century. There were other jobs to do
that day, and I didn't even take a photograph of the stone. But it
would not let me go. After several weeks of being haunted by the
memory, I returned one weekend to photograph the stone and found that
it was gone. In that brief time, someone had removed it from the
graveyard, whether to save it or to destroy it I never learned. Little writes that the Scottish face on the headstone gave her two gifts: an understanding of the perishability of old gravestones, and a hint of their significance as artifacts of material culture. While old houses speak of the mainstream economy, Little writes, "the graveyards speak with the accents of the homeland." Sticks and Stones: Three Centuries of North Carolina Gravemarkers is an attempt to protect and preserve those voices. During twenty-five years documenting architectural history for the State Historic Preservation Office and as a private consultant, M. Ruth Little, an art historian, has worked to record, understand, and preserve the material culture of North Carolina. Tim Buchman is an architectural photographer whose work also appeared in the award-winning North Carolina Architecture.
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