File:Coast watch (1979) (20471862030).jpg

Title: Coast watch
Identifier: coastwatch00uncs_10 (find matches)
Year: 1979 (1970s)
Authors: UNC Sea Grant College Program
Subjects: Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology
Publisher: (Raleigh, N. C. : UNC Sea Grant College Program)
Contributing Library: State Library of North Carolina
Digitizing Sponsor: North Carolina Digital Heritage Center

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politicians and plenty of children. Some remains were moved from the Christ Church cemetery, explaining the presence of tombstones from the 1790s. The cemetery mirrors almost two centuries of history of the city and Craven County. And it is recognized as one of the state's finest collections of 18th- and 19th-century gravestones, markers and monuments — most erected when New Bern was the state's largest town soldiers. The largest gravesite in the cemetery, it commemorates the dead from one of five wars that sent New Bernians to the grave. "It's really the most amazing thing in here," Green says. Standing 18 feet high on a pedestal, the likeness of a Confederate soldier keeps watch over the remains. Fifteen feet underground, extending the breadth of the monument's circular base, lie the mm
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and an impor- tant seat of commerce and maritime trade. Cedar Grove boasts monuments in the form of draped urns on pedestals, classical columns, obelisks and three-dimen- sional figure sculptures. Aged tombs covered with large slabs contain quaint inscriptions, and moss- grown vaults are intermingled with modern and expensive monuments of polished granite and spotless marble. Many of the monuments and tombstones stand in plots surrounded by low brick or marl walls. Cast-iron fences, popular in the mid- to late- 1800s, contain family plots. The most common tombstone designs are the vertical slabs of white marble shaped and carved at the top, but they also include the early horizontal slabs supported by low walls. Several more sophisticated versions of this design support the slabs on six urn-shaped marble balusters. These monuments are traditional for the era, but Cedar Grove also has a couple of features that distinguish it from other cemeteries. One is the Confederate veterans monument that marks a mass burial of about 60 A housclikc mausoleum in C cdar Qrove soldiers' skeletons in a vaulted grave. Their coffins long ago rotted, the bodies face east. Another unusual feature are three houselike tombs, the likes of which you won't see anywhere else in North Carolina, Green says. These unusual graves adopted the building conventions of the early and mid-19th century in their bricks, brickwork and gabled roofs. Three of the original five survive. Two are family tombs with subterranean graves 3 to 4 feet down and shelves where the coffins were stacked. Green says they appear to have started out as normal ground burials that were taken up when room became scarce. A structure was built, the old tombstones stacked against the wall and the coffins stored on shelves. In the 1850s, when these tombs were being built, the cemetery had a much different appearance than it does today, Green says. A romanticism was attached to graveyards in the mid-19th century, when the gate was built around Cedar Grove and trees and flowers were planted generously throughout the grounds. Cemeteries that were laid out at this time — well after Cedar Grove was established — had winding paths, knolls, vistas, valleys, dips, streams and lakes. In an effort to romanticize the rectangular, gridlike cemetery, a goldfish pond was added in the Victorian era. "This was a very romantic period. People liked gardenlike cemeteries," Green says. "But they were stuck with this rectangular plan they'd created (in Cedar Grove). So they built this romantic wall around it, brought in cedar trees and more exotic plantings." At the time, people would come to the cemeteries to picnic or to stroll. And this pastime lived on into the 1900s, particularly in New Bern, which didn't really have any parks. "The cemetery was the prettiest place in town," Green says. "There were 10 times as many trees, flowering shrubs and exotic plantings." In fact, during the Depression, Green says his father earned his Boy Scout merit badges studying nature at the cemetery. That was the place to find squirrels, birds and raccoons. But the tradition of visiting the cemetery and its dead has waned, lament Green and Goodwin. People just don't do it anymore. Perhaps if they did, however, they'd learn that in their beautiful solitude and time-worn monuments, cemeteries offer a unique version of local history and heritage. □ 6 MARCH/APRIL 1997

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