Crossing the Dark River: Shaker Funerals and Cemeteries

THERE ARE TWO LONG-LASTING RELIGIONS in the United States famous for being founded by women.One is Christian Science founded by Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910), and the other is the religion of the Shakers, established by Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784).A comparison of the graves of these two women emphasizes one of the admirable and most widely-known traits of the Shakers-their adherence to simplicity.The grave of Mary Baker Eddy is covered by an elegant Greek temple designed by architect Egerton Swartwout.Beautifully landscaped, it stands on the edge of a reflecting pond in Mount Auburn Cemetery.Across the pond the church authorities purchased a small park area and placed benches in it where people can sit to admire the beauty of the scene.Mount Auburn, founded by leading citizens of Boston in 1831, is the earliest and one of the finest of the so-called rural cemeteries that offered mourners a picturesque landscape to soothe and inspire, but that later in the century grew cluttered with man-made memorials as sentimentality about death and public display of mourning increased in American society. 1 In June 1872 Elder Otis Sawyer had this to say about Mount Auburn in The Shaker: "Such 'cities of the dead' as Mount Auburn and Greenwood [Brooklyn, New York] are fashionable institutions of idol worshippers.Money is lavishly, wickedly spent thus, while the living poor have not where to lay their heads, or wherewith to appease their hunger." 2