The Mattapoisett Museum hosted a virtual presentation by the Gravestone Girls, experts in the field of deciphering not only the craved imagery of early gravestones but also burial practices of the past. And while this is the time of the year when cemeteries play to dark themes in a run-up to the Halloween celebration, cemeteries through history have largely been places to cherish and even to enjoy.

            Founding member Brenda Sullivan gave the October 8 presentation with an amazing command of the subject matter that was both entertaining and informative. In a word, brilliant.

            Calling the Pyramids of Egypt “giant gravestones,” Sullivan briefly talked about early belief systems, most of which included an intact resurrection requiring burial goods such as food, drink, clothing, and, oh yeah, and possibly a few servants to accompany the deceased as they ascended. As for the Egyptian rulers who were entombed in the Pyramids, they deemed themselves gods so it was only right that, in death, thought to be a transient state of being, they were worthy of heaps of gold, too. If you’ve ever seen Tut’s golden mask, you’d know of which I speak.

            Moving on, the primary focus of Sullivan’s presentation centered on burial practices and associated religious beliefs during the Colonial and Victorian eras and modern centuries. She toured Mattapoisett and used photographs from local graves to illustrate various points in her talk, making sure to say as a cautionary note that the viewer might recognize an ancestor’s gravestone so, “… please don’t be shocked.”

            Over the course of an hour, Sullivan brought local cemeteries to life, so to speak. She explained that in the 1600s strict religious themes ruled how burials were carried out, including the type of imagery that was carved into gravestones.

            “The head and feet of the deceased were arranged in an east-west orientation,” Sullivan explained. She said today when we look at old burial grounds, we are not seeing them as they would have been. “Headstone and footstones have been moved over the years to accommodate maintenance.” Inscriptions on stones would have been facing west and the body facing east. “Gabriel would be coming from the east,” she said of the early believers, “… so they had to be facing east when they sat up in their graves to fly away with him and go meet their maker.”

            Speaking to the gravestones from the early 1600s that still bear the image of a skull with wings, Sullivan said that the skull represented the immortal soul and the mortality of humans. “It depicted the idea that we are all mortal,” and therefore, “it was the humans’ job to behave well while alive.” Most people were unable to read, she pointed out, thus the cravings helped to drive home the doctrines taught by religious leaders. “Death was omnipresent.”

            By the 1700s, the winged-skull motifs were evolving into faces with flesh, but there were also images of the sun representing its setting caused by death, stars as guiding lights to heaven, and crowns for those considered righteous. There were also hourglasses marking the ebbing away of life on earth.

            Sullivan said that some of the gravestones from this period also showed a “wagging finger” that spoke to the need of being prepared for the end by doing the rights things while living. On a happier note, she said that the early settlers also believed that the grave was not the end, that death was not permanent, and that, “the grave was God’s hiding place while they waited for Gabriel – it was the promise of something more.”

            During the 1800s there was a revival of Greek and Roman decorative themes, Sullivan shared. “We’d had a revolution, people fought to govern themselves, there was a great deal of archeology taking place; neo-classical themes seeped into everything including 19th-century stones.” Urns and weeping willow trees replaced darker themes. These updated symbols became common gravestone images, and there was the rise of the garden cemetery where families could meet neighbors, have picnics, and remember their dearly departed.

            “People were moving into the cities from rural areas, they were working in factories, they were becoming the nouveau riche,” Sullivan said. These economic and societal shifts were part of the reason that cemeteries became gardens, not just simple burial grounds but “sleeping places.” These were the first green spaces Sullivan stated complete with flowering bushes and ponds. “When the Mt. Auburn Cemetery opened people flooded to it, it was a sensation,” she said.

            About this same time, family plots became popular with borders that were like foundations to rooms. These were social spaces. Softer symbols started to appear such as floral cravings. Marble was introduced for gravestones newly available with the advent of transportation systems. Marble, however, would prove a less-than-ideal material due to its porous structure. Today marble gravestones are stained black. “Use your mind’s eye as to how they would have looked when first placed at a grave,” Sullivan advised. Other favorite symbols of the Victorian era were shaking hands. “They are saying hello and goodbye …” anchors, birds and, for children, lambs.

            With money came the hill vaults and tombs. Sullivan said that the famous stained-glass maker Tiffany made windows for tombs, tombs that might even contain furniture for the visitors to use. But the Victorian period would also fade in time.

            “The modern period is different from other periods,” Sullivan began. She said there was a backlash against all things overdone. “We wanted to simplify.” Also during this time, the Arts and Crafts movement with its clean lines and uncluttered appearance came into vogue. But also changing was the way cemeteries were designed. Sullivan said that lawn cutting required straight rows of a given width and that people no longer went to gravesites to picnic and visit the deceased.

            Granite became the preferred material for gravestones. But today’s stones also provide a deeper look into the life of the deceased. Sullivan said that early gravestone gave little detail except for a person’s name, age and whether or not they were a wife, husband, or child. Today the gravestone tells so much more. Photography can now be etched into the stone’s surface and many stones also speak to the deceased interests such as golf, fishing, or dancing.

            Before Sullivan closed out her comments, she pointed out that in local cemeteries there are rather-unique gravestones made from zinc. These “stones” were called “white bronze” but were, in fact, made of zinc. They were a less expense headstone option between 1870 and the advent of World War I. Only one manufacturer in the entire country offered these cemetery markers that could be ordered from catalogs. The Monumental Bronze Company was located in Connecticut and did a thriving business until the US economy shifted to manufacturing military supplies for WWI. The company’s history also noted that the color of the metal, a cool blue-gray tone, was thought to be cold.

            Today there are examples of the zinc cemetery monuments in both Marion and Mattapoisett. They are very noticeable in older cemeteries because they are antimicrobial; lichen and moss will not grow on their surfaces. They gleam much as they did when first installed.

            Speaking of the aging and appearance of gravestones, Sullivan cautioned not to clean gravestone yourself. But if you do try, you should use soft brushes and lots of clean water. She also said that the organization Friends of the Middleborough Cemeteries understands the cleaning process and can be very helpful to those wishing to learn more.

            Sullivan said that some cities and towns have returned to using cemeteries as places for people to gather. She noted that yoga classes, beekeeping, dog parks, and road races raise money, in some cases monies that are used to maintain the cemetery. If you missed the Gravestone Girls presentation, you can watch it on YouTube (search for Mattapoisett Museum Gravestone Girls).

            A quick count of the number of cemeteries in the Tri-Town area came out to 17, but I am sure there are others hidden deep in pine forests or along the edge of sub-divisions that I missed. Why not take a cemetery tour and see how many you can find?

By Marilou Newell

            The COVID-19 pandemic presents complications to an aging core of community volunteers in Marion, Mattapoisett, and Rochester, and each of the Tri-Town communities has a distinct model of its own in mind to maximize success in times of crisis.

            Mattapoisett is affiliated with Middleborough-area Medical Reserve Corps (MRC), a national collaboration of medical and non-medical volunteers who are organized locally.

            “In Mattapoisett at least, the system we have in place is our MRC volunteers know they would be contacted if needed. If our existing resources were exhausted, we maintain a database,” explained Amanda Stone, the part-time Mattapoisett health nurse.

            Some of Mattapoisett’s MRC volunteers transitioned for ease of management to the statewide Mass Responds management system, but Mattapoisett is not a member per se. “In Mattapoisett, we decided that’s run by the state, but we would keep our MRC locally. The bottom line is that … we all work together ultimately,” said Stone.

            People join Mattapoisett’s MRC by completing application forms including whatever licenses and skills that they may have, including non-medical volunteers like computer skills that could be useful. “We certainly don’t turn anybody away,” said Stone.

            For an emergency dispensing site – those must be approved by the Massachusetts Department of Health – the town needs 69 volunteers available on a 24-hour shift. In reality, people wear many hats because there are so fewer than 69 available at one time.

            The MRC conducts drills and walk-throughs. Old Rochester Regional High School is the state-designated emergency dispensing site for Mattapoisett’s MRC so plans are already in place should an emergency occur. “You may need two EDS’s up and running, you just don’t know. It’s a live program in Mattapoisett,” said Stone. “We have a nice balance in Mattapoisett in medical versus non-medical volunteers and a variety of ages.

            “In many communities, CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) and MRC work together if they need to. The goal for both organizations is to dispense emergency-response capabilities. We just have a very active MRC in Mattapoisett.”

            Stone is retiring from 16 years as the public health nurse at the end of February, but added eight months on a part-time basis. Emily Field is the new public-health nurse in Mattapoisett. “We’re sharing the workload,” said Stone.

            Stone saw the community through the H1N1 flu in 2009 and is now book-ending her tenure with COVID-19. “Every community is different,” she said, noting that Massachusetts is the only state in the union in which health is part of town government. “Massachusetts has 351 boards of health.”

            But even in the Tri-Town, there are distinct approaches meant to fit the profile of the individual community and address the needs of the residents. Marion is transitioning from what it considers an unsuccessful MRC affiliation to a CERT affiliation.

            “One of the primary roles for the MRC was the staffing and management of emergency shelters. The number of volunteers has declined in the last few years. There is a concern that the name ‘Medical Reserve Corp’ may be attributing to the reluctance of people to volunteer for the group if they don’t have some type of medical background,” stated Marion Chief of Police John B. Garcia in an email to The Wanderer. “A Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) has the potential to have a broader role in community emergency response. The main focus will still be on staffing and management of the shelters, but once the team is fully established, we may be able to expand the role and training to other areas such as search and rescue. We are hoping that we will have most of the current MRC volunteers transition to the CERT so that we don’t lose the expertise and experience they have accumulated over the years.”

            Dr. John Howard, who serves on the Marion Board of Health and is an active physician, traces the roots of CERT and MRC to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US. “Gradually, the funding has kind of drifted down so it’s pretty much voluntary now,” he said.

            The structure of each organization is regionally based now, so the Marion unit will be part of the Lakeville-area CERT chapter, and Mattapoisett’s team is affiliated with the Middleborough MRC.

            Howard remembers as many as 10 volunteers who participated in events like flu clinics, “but they never really got into an active training program or been mobilized. A lot of folks are older, retired, and older.”

            Some, said Howard, had some medical training. He wonders now if people with military experience or possibly Tabor Academy faculty could work with students. He would like to see students offered opportunities to connect to their community in a meaningful way. Through monthly training sessions, he suggests men and women alike can learn chain of command, the proper use of radios, and other aspects of emergency management.

            “CERT is clearly where we’re headed now and because of the relatively weak response to the MRC … people heard MRC and they heard ‘medical’ and they got nervous,” he said. “I’m not a nurse, I’m not an EMT … I probably can’t help out very much there. It’s a perception thing.”

            Garcia became a part-time police officer in 1983 at age 20. On January 3, 2021, he will hand over his title to Lieutenant Richard Nighelli and, along with it, the lead role in Marion’s emergency response. Before he does, he is looking to build some momentum for a CERT program.

            “We are hoping that the ‘rebranding’ will appeal to a wider range of people. It will be a challenge to draw in new volunteers. Reports indicate that volunteerism across the nation is down,” Garcia stated in the email.

            In an independent approach that neither asks for, nor genuflects to, the trend toward regionalization of assistance and services, Rochester Board of Selectmen Chairman Paul Ciaburri oversees a town-centered, town-supplied emergency response plan – for the town by the town. It’s as old-school as can be, but the results speak for themselves.

            “We’ve got a list of people, some young, some older, plus everybody on the Fire Department helps out. We’ve been very fortunate because our shelter is the Senior Center, which has worked out very well so far. We take it one storm at a time, we do the best we can. Sometimes we get a lot of volunteers, sometimes we get just enough,” said Ciaburri. “I’ve always looked at it as my first job is to take care of the people in Rochester. We’d take people from Marion and Mattapoisett if need be. The regional shelter stuff, it’s never worked very well.”

            Pragmatism rules in Rochester, where affiliation is counterproductive. Ciaburri said he didn’t get Rochester involved in CERT because of the many requirements, including potential deployment of volunteers to other locations.

            “We’ve done some shelter training when Mass Emergency Management has some classes so they have some ideas and rules. I did not want to put them in some position where they were going to be taken to the Plymouth shelter or the Mattapoisett shelter. I go to some of those meetings … but we’re not affiliated,” he said.

            Ciaburri said that on one occasion, Wareham closed its shelter and Rochester kept the person to the end of the week, then told its neighbor it’s their responsibility. “At that point, you have to put them in a hotel or motel … it can be a budget buster. If we didn’t have the people we have, it would be very expensive,” he said.

            Between comfortable beds against the height of cots in a school building or the simplest things like a nice meal or snack and a place to charge a cell phone when the power is out at home, Ciaburri says the Senior Center on Dexter Lane has been an excellent resource for the town. And it avoids the expenses that come with police detail and janitorial and cafeteria staff.

            “The seniors are very comfortable there. The last time we had a shelter, everything went well,” he said. Rochester served 290 meals over five days. “The one lucky thing we have here is people genuinely don’t like to leave their house unless it’s really bad, and that’s kind of worked in our favor.”

            Tree damage, downed wires, those things will send residents to the Senior Center, but it’s rare they need to stay over.

            At 67, Ciaburri figures it’s time the town started figuring out how to replace or evolve the role, which for him has been a volunteer position since he began as Rochester’s emergency manager in 1980. “I’ve enjoyed doing it. I always got the support from the Police, Fire, Board of Selectmen, office staff. I’ll be here a few more years yet,” he said.

By Mick Colageo