Resting in Peace

Sociologist Émile Durkheim taught us that the study of human mourning raises a window on human values and lifeways. Returning after a brief hiatus, Stratford Mail ponders elite deathways in the Northern Neck, with close attention to the opinions of Robert Carter III, as recorded by Philip Vickers Fithian, the tutor at Carter's Nomini Hall. And we clear up confusion about the final resting place of Stratford's own Thomas and Hannah Lee, who chose not to be buried on the grounds of the home they established together.   

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Transcript

SM 2:4 Resting in Peace

intro

After a brief hiatus, we return to you with tales of dead Virginians and the bodies they left behind. 

The fact of death is so at odds with values we cherish that one might almost call death un-American. Progress, productivity, and persistence are some of those countervailing values. Science continues to work on solving the ‘problem’ of death even as commercial industries profit from goods and services that promise to put the brakes on the processes that cause us to stop moving. Our antagonism to death is such that we insist that you die ‘offstage’ (as it were), in the arid embrace of health care systems and facilities ready to relinquish your mortal remains into the care of mortuary professionals who offer the bereaved a palette of options for the disposition of those remains, from a traditional coffin burial to having a bespoke vinyl recording pressed from the ashes. 

Death and dying in colonial Virginia weren’t the contained, medicalized, and institutionalized phenomena they’ve become in our 21st century. Here in the Northern Neck of Virginia, death happened in plain view, typically at home, and the care, custody and final disposition of the corpse fell to the family, without the services of a death care industry. In consequence of the visibility and proximity of death, discussion of death and dead bodies was far more normal than exceptional among elite white Virginians of the colonial period. In January 1774 Philip Vickers Fithian, a Presbyterian clergyman and tutor to the family of Robert Carter III at Nomini Hall in the Northern Neck, wrote in his journal: 

“After supper … Mr Carter observed that he much dislikes the common method of making Burying yards around Churches, & having them almost open to every Beast–He would have them at some small distance from the Church, neatly and strongly inclosed, and the Graves kept up decent, & plain … He told us he proposes to make his own Coffin & use it for a Chest til its proper use shall be required–That no Stone, nor Inscription to be put over him–And that he would choose to be laid under a shady Tree where he might be undisturbed, & sleep in peace & obscurity–He told us, that with his own hands he planted, & is with great diligence raising a Catalpa-Tree at the head of his Father who lies in his Garden–Mrs. Carter beg’d that She might have a Stone, with only this for a Monument, “Here likes Ann Tasker Carter.” With these things for my consideration, I left them about ten … & was hurried soon to Bed; Not however without reflecting on the importance of our preparation for this great Change.” [Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian: A Plantation Tutor of the Old Dominion, 1773-1774 (Charlottesville: UVA Press, 1993), p. 61]   

Just over a month before Fithian’s conversation with the Carters, a fellow tutor named John Lowe at nearby Bushfield plantation, home of George Washington’s younger brother Jack, complained to Fithian over the exposure of the church cemetery to ‘animals’: 

“At the Church today I heard an impious Expression from a young Scotch-man, Tutor in Mr. Washington’s Family, he meant it for a Satire upon the neglect of the people in suffering their Grave Yard to lie common–He saw some Cattle & Hogs feeding & rooting in the yard; “Why, says he, if I was buried here it would grieve me to look up and see Swine feeding over me”!--But I understand only the lower sort of People are buried at the Church; for the Gentlemen have private burying-Yards.”[Ibid., 41]   

What’s crystal clear from these entries is, first, that Virginians had real and abiding concerns about the repose and integrity of dead bodies, and those concerns had their roots in the insecurities of the 17th century, when the colony was new and unstable and corpses were sometimes subject to various forms of desecration, whether non-burial or inadequate burial, and thus exposure to carrion eaters and omnivores like possums and hogs. Robert Carter contrasted the Church graveyard, which is “open to every Beast,” to the burial ground away from the church, “neatly and strongly inclosed.” And second, John Lowe’s comment to Fithian is satirical because although it invokes the real insecurity of a graveyard open to rooting animals, swine here is in fact a reference to non-elites, which Fithian’s remark, “the Gentlemen have private burying-Yards,” makes clear. While the practice of home burial responded to early traumas around the improper care of corpses, it also allowed elites to express their status and assert their difference in death as well as life from non-elites and non-whites. Deep inequalities around death and dying reinforced lived inequalities. Robert Carter III achieved in death his wish while living to rest “in peace & obscurity,” for while he is likely buried somewhere on the grounds of old Nomini, perhaps not terribly far from his father, precisely where is unknown. 

Stratford founder and acting Governor of Virginia colony Thomas Lee died of apoplexy (or hemorrhagic stroke) on November 14, 1750. As news of Thomas’ death crept across the colony, the Stratford household prepared to mourn him, foremost by attending to his body. Members of the household sat up with the corpse overnight. The practice of sitting up with the dead had roots in old anxieties, about not being present should the deceased awake (surprise sound effect) and about the bad things that happen to unattended corpses (animal sounds). Stratford women had authority over Thomas’ corpse, and washed, groomed, and dressed his body before laying it out. Thomas’ eldest daughter Hannah was married and lived 20 miles away at Peckatone, his youngest daughter Alice was only just 14, and his wife Hannah Harrison Ludwell had preceded him in death by around 9 months. Thomas’ body was likely seen to by some combination of family, friends, neighbors, and paid workers. Without wallowing in detail, this set of tasks included, for example, closing the deceased’s eyes (weighting them with a coin if necessary) and closing their mouths (by tying a string around the top of the head and jaw). The body was then reposed as if merely asleep in a coffin crafted locally by a ‘cabinet maker’ of black walnut, mahogany or elm and lined with materials as diverse as lead, velvet, Welsh cotton, and silk. Family and friends arrived to offer condolences to the bereaved and to bid farewell to Thomas, whose coffin, attended uninterruptedly by sitters, likely stood in the Stratford parlor or Great Hall. Indentured and enslaved household staff offered refreshment to mourners, many of whom had traveled far–the refreshment was posh but not extravagant in keeping with Thomas’ preference: 

“Having observed much indecent mirth at Funerals, I desire that Last Piece of Human Vanity be Omitted and that attended only by some of those friends and Relations that are near, my body may be silently interred with only the Church Ceremony and that a funeral sermon for Instruction to the living be Preached at the Parish Church near Stratford on any other Day.”

The “indecent mirth” Thomas had in mind was associated with funeral feasting and the vast amounts of alcohol sometimes consumed. Funerals were opportunities for social interaction. The strong emotions stirred by death and the renewing of relationships around it meant that funeral feasting sometimes got rowdy. Expenses for a 1774 funeral in the Shenandoah Valley included 3 gallons of wine and more than 19 gallons of liquor. Thomas wanted neither feasting nor funeral procession, but only for local family and friends to stand in silent witness, tossing some earth upon his coffin, as the local parson read from the Anglican Order for the Burial of the Dead:  

“FORASMUCH as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother Thomas here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust …”

His funeral sermon delivered at Pope’s Creek Church perhaps several weeks after his burial focused more on Christian moral instruction than the specific comings and goings of Thomas Lee (except to the extent that he could be lauded as a model Christian). In his will, Thomas left his sons and daughters mourning rings to remember their father, and handed down mourning rings he’d received on the death of his friends. By the time of Thomas’ death these gold rings were often enameled in black with gold lettering naming the deceased, his age, and the death date. None have survived. 

As to the body, 3 days between death and interment were traditional for early modern Anglicans. It may have stood slightly longer in temperate November so as to allow for more far flung relations to arrive (sadly his three eldest sons, Philip, Thomas, and Richard Henry were abroad in England for study). On the 3rd day, traditionally, the body would have been removed from Stratford and transported by some sort of wheeled conveyance to the burial site, and there interred according to the wishes of the deceased: 

“As to my Body, I desire if it Pleases God that I dye anywhere in Virginia if it be Possible I desire that I may be buried between my Late Dearest wife and my honoured Mother and that the Bricks on the side next my wife, may be moved, and my Coffin Placed as near hers as is Possible, without moving it or disturbing the remains of my Mother.” 

His executors would have known precisely where he meant. He did not mean at Stratford. A mid-19th century source, Bishop William Meade, wrongly inferred that Thomas was buried at Pope’s Creek Church, newly built in 1744 and only about 5 miles from Stratford. Why did he think so? Meade read Lee’s grave ledger, a 5 or 6 inch thick slab of stone (often marble) measuring about 30 by 72 inches and incised in English with genealogical and memorial information. Grave ledgers were laid atop the grave of the deceased, but, when Meade read Thomas’ ledger, it was lying unlaid at Stratford. The ledger, cut and incised in England soon after Thomas’ death (perhaps in 1751), shipped across the Atlantic at an expense at least equal to the ledger itself, was landed at Stratford where it languished unlaid for around 170 years. A single line from the ledger’s epitaph led Meade astray: Referring to Thomas and his wife Hannah, that line was: their monument is erected in the lower church of Washington parish, in this county; five miles above their Country Seat, Stratford Hall.     

Though the lower church (Pope’s Creek) and the monument placed there have long since vanished, Revolution VIP and Stratford-reared Richard Henry Lee recorded the text of the monument placed in Pope’s Creek Church in honor of his parents. After hailing Thomas and Hannah as “excellent” parents and “Patterns of Conjugal Virtue,” the monument read: They are buried eighteen miles from this in the family burying place, called the old … and the manuscript is torn here. And now we leap across centuries to November 8, 1922, when 8 members of the newly formed Society of the Lees of Virginia transported Thomas’ 600 lb ledger to its current site, about 18 miles as the crow flies from Pope’s Creek to a then overgrown, ruined cemetery near lower Machodoc creek. This was the site of Machodoc, the plantation of Thomas Lee’s father Richard, and home to Thomas and Hannah until local miscreants looted it and burned it to the ground in January 1729. The Machodoc fire prompted Thomas to redevelop property he had acquired in 1716 as ‘Stratford,’ and forever lent the name old Burnt House Fields to the site of the 1729 arson. By 1922 only a single black marble grave ledger remained among the ruined brick walls and overgrowth of the cemetery there: it was the ledger of Thomas’ father Richard and mother Laetitia (or Lettice). Here then is where Thomas wished to lie in eternal repose, between his mother and wife; just beneath the surface sat a brick crypt modified in accordance with Thomas’ wish for his coffin to lie as close as possible to Hannah. Placed atop the vault his ledger has greeted visitors to that remote place for more than 100 years; better late than never.     

Virginia gentry rarely used memento mori imagery on their tombs or monuments. Memento mori is a Latin expression translated remember death and associated artistically with skulls, wilting flowers, coffins, and hourglasses. An exception to the rule is Robert ‘King’ Carter’s imposing tomb on the grounds of historic Christ Church in Weems, Virginia, which boasts a prominent skull and crossbones. Virginia gentry tended more often to “quote” (if you will) architectural elements of their plantation houses in their tombs–the subterranean brick vault of Thomas and Hannah at Burnt House Fields draws a conceptual line back to Stratford, the site of Lee power and influence, and cements dynastic lines with the Lees who built Machodoc, Dividing Creek, and other great houses of the Tidewater. Though it sits at Burnt House Fields, Thomas’ grave ledger points elsewhere, its last two words stating precisely where: STRATFORD HALL, in capitals and italics. 

It’s been argued that home burial in tombs that refer to the homes in which the deceased lived, and where their descendants dwelt still, asserted continuity even in the face of death and its ruptures. Elite family cemeteries became rooms of the big house, as it were, outbuildings that reiterated the uninterrupted power of the family, and stood in brutal contrast to the burying grounds of the enslaved. Mourning jewelry, like the rings Thomas handed down, his own and others, weren’t material mementoes of human mortality, but rather expressions of continuity of control with the deceased and his social networks. Expressions of dynastic permanence rather than individual ephemerality best suited the precarious situation of Virginia gentry. The burial vault at Stratford, completed under the management of Henry ‘Light-horse Harry’ Lee III, nephew to Thomas Lee, is empty, but it hasn’t always been–a story for another day.  

outro

Sound effects courtesy of Pixabay
Music is William Ross Chernoff's "In Shadows"
AI voices courtesy of Play.ht (except Dr. Steffey)

© Dr. Gordon Blaine Steffey, 2024 

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