ISP 2002

The Rosemary Cemetery is located near downtown Sarasota. The original cemetery for the Ormiston Colony, its first burial dates to 1887. A decade ago, the cemetery was overrun with weeds and bushes. The Sarasota Historical Society, through its Rosemary Cemetery Committee, has been renovating and keeping up the cemetery. For January 2002, a survey of the gravestones will aid in their preservation efforts.

The "doing" part of this course: a survey of the gravestones in Rosemary Cemetery. Each gravestone needs to be described, its inscription recorded, and its condition assessed. Forms and guidelines will be provided and explained in order to gather information on inscriptions, birthyear of the decreased, date of death, gender and families, shape and design of stone, size and raw materials used for the gravestone and its decorations, and other important information from the graves.

The academic component of the course has two parts:

1. The Historical Archaeology of Cemeteries – readings on the analysis and interpretation of cemeteries in the USA

2. Theories and Approaches to Historical Preservation – focused on public presentation of the past.

Satisfactory completion of the course requires recording of a certain number of gravestones (to be determined), a collective presentation of the results of the survey, and an individually generated research project on either the Historical Archaeology of Cemeteries or on recommendations for public presentation.

Students will need their own transportation to the Rosemary Cemetery, located on Central Avenue between 8^th and 10^th Streets near Downtown Sarasota. The endeavor is a partnership is sponsored with the Historical Society of Sarasota – certain expectations regarding working with the Historical Society will be required. Similar to the Venice Train Depot excavations in Venice, participants will be required to represent the research to the general public.

January 7, Monday: what should be preserved? How to preserve it?

History and nature of Historical Preservation

Examples from Sarasota: Ringling Towers, Venice Train Depot, Rosemary Cemetery

What is the significance of the details? What do we learn from public places, historic houses, and monuments? Introduction to the resources at Historical Resources and the Selby Library.

January 8, Tuesday: The cemetery

Preserving a cemetery: recording its details

January 9 onward: recording the cemetery

(Please note: Baram will be at the annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology from the 9^th through the 12^th)

January 12: Public comes to the cemetery

Last few days of ISP: presentations on your projects

Though this might be obvious, there are moral and ethical obligations toward research in cemeteries that require explicit presentation:

Be generally respectful and unobtrusive, for instance wear shoes and appropriate clothing

Avoid loud talk, raucous laughter, or horsing around

Do not eat or drink on the cemetery grounds

Do not walk on tombs or over graves

Do not remove any offerings from graves: offerings could include stones on the grave

Do not bring pets with you

If questioned, direct the answer toward the goal of preservation of the cemetery

1. course readings

2. recording gravestones

3. and thirdly, and this is the "I" of the ISP, you need to design a research project based on the cemetery. Can be individual or in conjunction with other students but needs the professor’s approval. The details, length and characteristics of the project, needs to be individually negotiated. Some suggestions:

1. biography of one of more of the deceased
2. interpretation of a gravestone or set of gravestones (hint: the shells)
3. comparison to another early twentieth century cemeteries in Florida (e.g., Oakdale in Tampa, Tallahassee’s cemetery)
4. recommendations for presenting the cemetery to the public (e.g., a walking tour or kiosk)
5. evaluation of Historical Archaeology of gravestones (i.e., Deetz 1997, Garman 1994, and McGuire 1988) against the evidence from the Rosemary Cemetery
6. a history of the Rosemary District: from Ormiston Colony to Overtown to historic district, focused on the changes in role of the cemetery.
7. artistic presentation of the cemetery, its history, or people
8. web page with the gravestones, history, and a guide for visitors

Clark, Lynn 1987 Gravestones: Reflectors of Ethnicity or Class? Consumer Choice in Historical Archaeology, edited by S. Spencer-Wood, pp. 383-396. Plenum, New York.

Deetz, James 1997 Chapter 4 of In Small Things Forgotten. Anchor, New York.

Garman, James C. 1994 Viewing the Color Line Through the Material Culture of Death. Historical Archaeology 28(3):74-93.

Jamieson, Ross W. 1995 Material Culture and Social Death: African-American Burial Practices. Historical Archaeology 29(4):39-58 (but focus on 51-55).

LaRoche, Cheryl and Michael Blakey 1997 Seizing Intellectual Power: The Dialogue at the New York African Burial Ground Historical Archaeology 31(3):84-106.

Little, Barbara, Kim M. Lanphear, and Douglas W. Owsley 1992 Mortuary Display and Status in a Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Cemetery in Manassas, Virginia. American Antiquity 57(3):397-418

McGuire, Randhall 1988 Dialogues with the Dead: Ideology and the Cemetery. Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States, edited by M. Leone and P. Potter. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.

Spencer-Wood, Suzanne 1996 Feminist Historical Archaeology and the Transformation of American Culture by Domestic Reform Movements, 1840-1925. Historical Archaeology and the Study of American Culture.

Wurst, LouAnn 1991 Employees Must Be of Moral and Temperate Habits: Rural and Urban Elite Ideologies. The Archaeology of Inequality, edited by R. McGuire and R. Paynter, pp. 125-149. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

Murtagh, William J.

1993 Keeping Time: The History and Theory of Preservation in America. Sterling Publishing, New York.

Potter, Elisabeth W. and Beth M. Boland

1992 Guidelines for Evaluating and Registering Cemeteries and Burial Places. U.S Department of Interior, National Park Service. On-line URL: www.cr.nps.gov/nr/publications/bulletins/cem.htm

Strangstad, Lynnette

1995 A Graveyard Primer. Altamira Press, Walnut Creek.

Florida Mortgage and Investment (a syndicate organized by John Hamilton Gillespie for the Ormiston Colony) included the cemetery in the town plan of 1886

First burial - 1887

Gillespie transferred the cemetery to Sarasota in 1903

Sarasota's Women Club planted eucalyptus trees and C.W. Chapman donated cabbage palms for the cemetery in 1913

Frank Higel donated the iron gate in 1910

Fencing to keep out cows was erected in 1911

The shell path was curbed with cement in 1913

Bertha Palmer donated the central pergola

Manatee Memorial Park in Oneco opened in 1925, providing families with another option for burials. Some exhumed family members from Rosemary due to its distressed conditions. Burials at Manatee Memorial Park included such famous Sarasotians as Charles Ringling (1864-1926), Karl Bickel (1882-1972), and Arthur B. Edwards, the City of Sarasota's first mayor.

Pergola rebuilt and cemetery cleaned up starting in 1990

Tom Booth - buried in March 1887, the first burial

John Hamilton Gillespie (1852-1923)

Blanche (1873-1957), Gillespie's second wife

Owen Burns (1869-1937)

John Browning (1844-1913) and Jane Browing (1848-1915) of the original Ormiston Colony

Rev. Lewis Colson (1844-1922), noted as a prominent African American

Henry Lee Higel (1867-1921), mayor of Sarasota in the 1910s

Carrie Spencer Abbe (1856-1940), postmistress of Sarasota