Why are obelisks in cemeteries

After the body is buried, the carved draperies serve as a lasting sign of mourning and grief, similar to the physical draperies left to embellish the parlor room after the body was taken out. Often associated with the covering of obelisks and urns, draperies serve as a lasting reminder of those who past.

Their beauty and intricacies serve to characterize the beauty of life, while their lasting presence and usage as a veil serve to symbolize both mourning and mortality. IAGenWeb Project, Everlife Memorials, The Funeral Source, For centuries, bereaved loved ones have used flowers to decorate the graves of the deceased.

While many people today choose flowers for their natural aesthetic, traditional practices often attributed with a much deeper symbolic significance to use of floral imagery, and many felt compelled to immortalized these natural symbols in stone, preserving them for generations to come.

Variations of floral symbolism are abundant in Oconee Hill Cemetery, and headstones often include intricate sculptural work depicting plants such as ivy, lilies, and palm fronds.

Prominently displayed on numerous headstones throughout the cemetery, each of these examples is heavily laden with nineteenth century symbolic associations.

Carved as though it is growing around and clinging to the headstone, images of ivy suggest an eternal embrace, immortalized in stone. Also found frequently throughout rural cemeteries, engravings of palm fronds were used to signify victory and immortality, also providing a sense of comfort for the bereaved. Accessed April 14, Characterized by wandering pathways and the utilization of natural topographical features, the physical structure of the Rural Cemetery Movement was very much concerned with the incorporation of natural imagery.

Accordingly, the gravestones designed for rural cemeteries reflect this trend, incorporating a wide variety of animals and natural features. Among the more common examples are engravings and sculptural replications of doves and lambs, often used to adorn the graves of children.

Other examples of natural imagery include the use of carved tree trunks and raw, emerging stones, which both serve to communicate the importance of natural imagery in the rural cemetery movement. While tree trunks are often used to indicate a life cut short, emerging gravestones speak to the eternal quality of the stone itself, used to suggest a resistance to the forces of time and the infinite nature of the monument. Gravestones and Symbolism A Brief History of American Gravestone Design The grave markers in Oconee Hill Cemetery demonstrate a number of important historical trends that helped to shape American culture and popular conceptions of death and the afterlife.

The Great Awakening Following the Great Awakening that began in the early eighteenth century, popular American religious sentiment underwent a dramatic shift in popular conceptions and rituals surrounding the afterlife.

Victorian Culture, Romanticism, and European Precedents Contributing to the gradual transition of American cemeteries, the influence of Victorian culture was especially important to the development of the Rural Cemetery Movement. The Masonic Square and Compass on a graver marker would be far better proof of Masonic membership. There is hardly a cemetery founded in the s and 50s without some form of Egyptian influence in the public buildings, gates, tomb art, etc.

Obelisks were considered to be tasteful, with pure uplifting lines, associated with ancient greatness, patriotic, able to be used in relatively small spaces, and, perhaps most importantly, obelisks were less costly than large and elaborate sculpted monuments.

There were many cultural reasons for the revival styles of the nineteenth century. Click here to read Unexpected Texas.

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