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News & Events, June 2011
Dear Friend,
The Friends of Mount Auburn is pleased to present the June 2011 edition of our electronic
newsletter. We invite you to join our email list to receive this mailing on a monthly basis. To
address book today.
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June Concert at Mount Auburn
Saturday, June 11th at 2 PM
During the 19th century Boston's musicians and authors were part of an extended intellectual circle that often times sparked artistic collaboration.
Composers like George Chadwick and Mabel Wheeler Daniels set to music the prose of poets like Julia Ward Howe and Thomas Bailey Aldrich. This same collaborative spirit can be seen in more recent times with the poems of David McCord also put to music.
Join us in Bigelow Chapel for this late spring concert featuring soprano Jean Danton and pianist Thomas Stumpf, who will perform some the beautiful results of collaborations between the musicians and poets now buried at Mount Auburn. Fee: $10 members; $15 non-members.
Seating is limited. Preregistration is required.
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 Additional Friends Programs in June
Join us in June for one of our other Friends walks or lectures:
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 Wildlife at Mount Auburn
A world-renowned arboretum, Mount Auburn's diversity of plantings contribute to its attractiveness for birds and other animals. Trees and shrubs flower throughout the year - yielding fruits, berries, nuts, seeds and insects that offer a variety of foods to migrant and resident birds and to populations of animals including squirrel, rabbit, woodchuck, skunk, opossum, and raccoon (pictured).
Learn more about Mount Auburn wildlife at our interactive kiosk, in the east alcove of the Egyptian Revival Gateway! Our kiosk is designed to introduce visitors to Mount Auburn's many interesting facets - through text, images, sound clips, and even video. Try the Wildlife section of the kiosk to learn more about the year-round residents that call Mount Auburn home and the locations within the Cemetery where they are most likely to be seen. Then, test your knowledge with the wildlife quiz to see if you can identify which animals leave behind certain clues in the landscape.
With generous support from the Anthony J. and Mildred D. Ruggiero Memorial Trust we are now able to share an amazing wealth of information - not only the stories of those buried and commemorated here, but also about the horticulture, art, architecture, and wildlife that make the Cemetery so unique. Perhaps the most practical application of the kiosk is the ability for visitors to look up the locations of friends and loved ones buried here and then print out a map highlighting the exact location within the Cemetery. Please stop by and try the kiosk for yourself.
Photo by Alberto Parker, Mount Auburn Security Guard
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 Archives & Historical Collections Highlight:
Photographic View of Bigelow Chapel from Harvard College Class Album
by Melissa Banta, Historical Collections Consultant
Among the many images in Mount Auburn's photograph collections is a stunning 19th-century view of Bigelow Chapel taken by George Kendall Warren (1824-1884).
Warren was well known for his scenes of campus architecture and some of the earliest photographic portraits of graduating classes from northeastern colleges including Brown, Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, and Harvard. Several photographs Warren made of Bigelow Chapel appeared in an album he created for the Harvard College class of 1861.
On a recent visit to the Harvard College Archives, we learned that Warren provided students with order forms, which listed other subjects taken by the photographer that could be added to each custom-made yearbook of class portraits. Categories included portraits of faculty, views of Harvard buildings, as well as scenes of Mount Auburn Cemetery, the place Harvard students lovingly referred to as "Sweet Auburn."
Ralph Waldo Emerson remembered the affection Harvard classmates held for the Cemetery, "The students will go in band over a flat sandy road and in summer evening into the woods. . . They are so happy they do not know what to do." For their class albums, students could choose various Cemetery views taken by Warren of Forest Pond, Fountain House, Laurel Avenue, the bridge on Meadow Pond, and Bigelow Chapel.
Warren created photographs for the 1861 album using an early method known as a salt print, the first negative-to-positive process from which most 19th- and 20th-century photographic formats were derived. The resulting prints were characterized by a matted surface, which gave them a soft, subtle quality. In this view of Bigelow Chapel, the granular texture and nuanced range of tones achieved by the salt print process reveal the multiple dimensions of the structure's architectural features-the textures of the roof, the rose pattern of the stained glass windows, the ornamentation of the pinnacles, and the detailed band of Egyptian lotus leaves around the perimeter of the building.
The bare trees in the print indicate the scene may have been shot in winter. Warren had a preference for photographing in early morning or late afternoon in the winter, when the air would have been clear and crisp and the low-angle light would highlight architectural details. His view of the Chapel, taken from the east side, fills the frame of the print, accentuating the structure's height and majestic, Gothic form.
The building's Gothic design was selected by the Chapel's designer and Cemetery founder Jacob Bigelow who, historian Blanche-Linden notes, saw it as "a symbolic and poetic form suggestive of the passing of time." The critic Henry Russell Cleveland concurred that the style was reminiscent "of the joys of life beyond the grave."* Warren's use of the salt print technique coupled with his striking composition captures the ethereal qualities of the Chapel and beloved site of Harvard students. His camera exposure was unable to halt the movement of the men walking in the lower left of the image-their shadowy, ghost-like figures also evocative of life's ephemeral nature.
*Blanche-Linden Ward, Silent City on a Hill: Landscapes of Memory and Boston's Mount Auburn Cemetery. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, p. 270, 272.
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Are you interested in photographs or photographers connected to Mount Auburn? Or perhaps exploring your own views of the Cemetery through the lens of a camera?  Join us for Mount Auburn: A Photographer's Paradise! Walk with photographer and Mount Auburn Docent Helen Abrams and explore beautiful locations for taking photographs. Learn about the history and enjoy some of the photographs taken at Mt. Auburn over the years, including 19th century daguerreotypes and 20th century aerial shots. Whether you use a "point and shoot" or a digital SLR, Helen will share some of her favorite places for capturing long views, close up shots and finding everything from a red fox to a wide variety of birdlife. Don't forget your camera! Sunday, June 5th at 3:30 PM. Register for A Photographer's Paradise online.
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 Horticultural Highlight
If all musical sounds were to be forever silenced - orchestras, bands,
human voices, birds & insects - and I were allowed to retain one sound
to cheer me, I would ask that the wind might play in the tree-tops....
-Charles Burchfield
The tuliptree, Liriodendron tulipifera, is one of those kinds of trees with leaves that seem to flutter joyously in the slightest breeze. In addition to their aural attraction, these leaves have the distinction of not really resembling any other leaf in appearance. The 3 to 8" long leaves, to some extent, recall the shape of an outline of a tulip. Frequently, almost square on top, the two halves of the leaves, connected by the midvein, look like mirror images with 2-3 small lobes per side. This leaf shape once identified is near impossible to forget. Their autumn color is a clear, bright, golden-yellow.
This deciduous tree, native to our eastern forests, is a member of the Magnoliaceae, the magnolia family. It often reaches heights of 60 to 90 feet, and this "king of the magnolias" has had individuals recorded at top heights of 190', becoming the tallest species of hardwood in eastern North America. Walt Whitman (1819-1892) called the tuliptree, "the Apollo of trees." Mount Auburn's visionary founder, and notable botanist, Jacob Bigelow (1787-1879) described it as, "One of the noblest trees, both in size and beauty, of the American forest."
Liriodendron tulipifera, the tuliptree, one of only two species found worldwide within the genus,has also been known colloquially by a variety of other common names; yellow poplar, tulip poplar, (although it is not a poplar), popple, whitewood and canoewood. This latter name was cited by Peter Kalm (1716-1779), the great, Swedish-Finnish, explorer/botanist in his Peter Kalm's Travels into North America, a standard text regarding life in colonial North America, "...call it 'canoe tree' for both the Indians and the Europeans often make their canoes from its trunk." Another reference to this name is of Daniel Boone (1734-1820) transporting his family and belongings within a large, long, single, log of canoewood, down the Ohio River, when moving from Kentucky for Missouri.
Now, let us mention the flowers, which give this tree its tuliptree name. Deferring again to Peter Kalm's Travels... "The flowers have a resemblance to tulips, look pretty, and though they have no smell to delight the nose, yet the eye is pleased to see trees as tall as full grown oaks covered with tulip-like flowers." The two-to-three-inch, deep, chalice-shaped, flowers are formed by six, chartreuse-colored petals, each displaying an irregular crescent of bright, orange near the base. This polychromatic floral effect is enhanced, upon closer view, by the multitude of stiff, yellow stamens within this magnolia-shaped flower.
The beauty of these June-occurring flowers often goes unnoticed, as they grow high overhead amongst the large leaves. Look for whole flowers dropped to the ground, by squirrels biting off the tips of branch stems to drink sap flowing in the tree's vascular system. Many insects, including native bees, gather nectar and pollen from these flowers. The leaves are eaten by caterpillars of the eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly. The seeds eventually produced from the flowers are eaten by red-winged blackbirds, cardinals, evening grosbeaks, American goldfinches, as well as by squirrels, rabbits, mice and other Cemetery fauna.
There are more than twenty tuliptrees many which are now in flower throughout Mount Auburn's landscape for you to seek out to admire. On your next visit you may look for some of our larger specimens on Elm Avenue, Walnut Avenue, Lime Avenue, Almy Road, Halesia Path, Sweetbrier Path, Bluebell Path, Heath Path, Oak Knoll Path, Robin Path, and Gentian Path among other locations.
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Join us for horticulture-related programming this month at the Cemetery:
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 History Highlight: 180th Anniversary
of Mount Auburn Cemetery - a 4-part series
The vision of Mount Auburn's founders was to create an attractive and consoling garden for interment of the dead. Several locations were considered - including sites in Brookline and Boston - when a group of men led by Jacob Bigelow set out to find a suitable tract of land for the enterprise 180 years ago.
Quite serendipitously, George W. Brimmer, a college friend of Bigelow, purchased a piece of land between Cambridge and Watertown known as "Stone's Woods," or "Sweet Auburn," by the local college students - with the aim of preserving it around this same time.
The "Sweet Auburn" property seemed like an ideal setting for the creation of a rural cemetery, as it incorporated rolling hills and forest, in a tranquil setting on the outskirts of town, and perhaps not least notably, Brimmer himself was willing to part with the land for the creation of such an endeavor.
Just a few years earlier, in 1829, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society was incorporated and Bigelow hoped that the backing of this young and respected organization might make the idea of creating such a landscape more popular to the community. A committee was formed and Bigelow writes,
"On the eighth of June, 1831...it was voted expedient to purchase the estate offered by Mr. Brimmer, containing about seventy-two acres, - at six thousand dollars, in behalf of the Horticultural Society, as soon as one hundred subscribers for cemetery lots, at sixty dollars each, should be obtained." (History of Mount Auburn Cemetery, 7). ____________________________________________________________
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 Family Programming at Mount Auburn
Mount Auburn is a wonderful place to learn and explore for visitors of all ages. We invite children and their parents, grandparents, or any other favorite adults to join us on Saturday, June 18th at 10 AM for Circles & Spirals - a program about the circles and spirals that exist all around us.
Storyteller and musician Michael Punzak will share music and the most elementary mathematics to illustrate the cycles of the seasons, the comings and goings of the animals, and the words of those buried here. Suitable for all ages. Fee (per family): $10 members; $15 non-members.
*Photo: Monument of Geologist Jules Marcou (1824-1898), Lot 2359 Chestnut Avenue, Mount Auburn.
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Notable Birthdays:
Frances "Fanny" Osgood and Fanny Fern
"I'm passing through the eternal gates,
Ere June's sweet roses blow." - Fanny Osgood
When newspaper columnist Fanny Fern visited Mount Auburn Cemetery, she was horrified to learn that poet Fanny Osgood was buried without a headstone.
"The flush of indignant feeling mounted to my temples;
the warm tears started from my eyes," Fern wrote.
"She was forgotten!
Sweet, gifted Fanny! in her own family burial place she was forgotten!"
This month neither Osgood nor Fern are forgotten! On Saturday, June 25th at 1 PM independent historian and creator of the American Literary Blog, Rob Velella will lead Fanny & Fanny: Through the Eternal Gates - a multi-site walking tour to celebrate the bicentennial of two of the most popular women writers of the 19th century: Fanny Osgood and Fanny Fern.
One was a popular sentimental poet; the other was a groundbreaking writer of prose. Both incited scandal throughout their lives, and each used their writings to present a unique picture of 19th-century domesticity. Their lives, their associations, and their works will be highlighted.
In the 1830s Fanny Osgood contributed poems and prose to various literary periodicals, as well as editing the Ladies Companion magazine. In 1845 she met Edgar Allan Poe. The two exchanged poems and influenced each other's writings - many of Osgood's poems were accepted by the Broadway Journal while Poe was one of its editors. A selection of Osgood's work, Poems, was issued in 1846 and a larger compilation with illustrations in 1850 - the year of her death from tuberculosis. After her death, Osgood was remembered fondly in a compilation of poetry and articles written by fellow authors published as The Memorial - reissued as Laurel Leaves in 1854.
Around the same time, with sales of her work - a collection entitled Fern Leaves from Fanny's Port-Folio - numbering in the hundreds of thousands, Fanny Fern was offered $100 a week to contribute to the New York Ledger - making her one of the country's first female - and best paid - newspaper columnists. In addition to writing for the Ledger, Fern published the novels, Ruth Hall (1855) and Rose Clark (1856).
Author and newspaper columnist Fanny Fern (7/9/1811 - 10/10/1872) is buried in Lot 994 on Eglantine Path and Poet Frances Sargent Locke Osgood (6/18/1811 - 5/12/1850) is buried in Lot 280 on Orange Path at Mount Auburn.
Fanny & Fanny: Through the Eternal Gates
$5 members; $10 non-members.
*Historic Photo of Mount Auburn's Egyptian-Revival Gateway.
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Think green. Do not print this email and you will help to conserve valuable
resources. Thank you!
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You can now join or renew your membership in the Friends of Mount Auburn
quickly, securely and easily online!
The Friends of Mount Auburn Cemetery was established in 1986 as a non-profit educational
Mount Auburn Cemetery is still a unique choice for burial and commemoration. It offers
a wide variety of innovative interment and memorialization options for all. Learn about
Mount Auburn's many burial and memorialization options. |
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Friends of Mount Auburn Cemetery
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email: friends@mountauburn.org
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