Ministers’ Gravestones in the Princeton Cemetery

My Images

In the Princeton Cemetery are dozens of graves of ministers, ministers’ family members, and theologians. As it is adjacent to, and the primary cemetery for, what are now Nassau Presbyterian Church, Princeton University, and Princeton Theological Seminary, ministry is in the air—or, more accurately, in the ground. The cemetery thus offers excellent material for a study of ministry’s remembrance and representation on gravestones. Over the course of the nineteenth century (1818-1905), ministers’ families and congregations chose to present the evangelistic and/or service-oriented aspects of their deceased’s office as performed in their respective religious communities in a manner commensurate with the survivors’ economic status.

Initially, I expected significant chronological variation in the representation of ministry on gravestones. As rationalist theology and socially-active religion gained prominence over more salvation-centric faith, I hypothesized that gravestone inscriptions would shift from emphasizing the Gospel to the minister’s role in the church community. This did not prove true. In the lengthiest descriptors of the ministerial office found on Princeton Cemetery gravestones, the key tenets are the same, despite being inscribed a half-century apart. The tablestone of Ashbel Green, a Presbyterian minister who died in 1848, describes how “he diligently and with God’s favor, happily performed the heavy duties of the ministry of the Gospel” early in his life, and then, in retirement, “devoted the remainder of his life to the cultivation of sacred studies, the preaching of the gospel, and the administration of the business of the church of God.” Nearly fifty years later, in 1894, Presbyterian minister James McCosh’s tombstone stressed his service to the church “both in pastoral care and pulpit teaching.” The two inscriptions, as can be seen, are practically equivalent.

Despite their lack of chronological usefulness, Green’s and McCosh’s stones do point to key themes that recur across those examined for this study. “[P]astoral care and pulpit teaching,” combined on Green’s stone as “the heavy duties of the ministry of the Gospel,” are the aspects of the ministerial office survivors most often chose to remember when they presented an account of a deceased’s work on his gravestone. Presbyterian minister Archibald Alexander’s tablestone (1851), for example, declares in capital letters that he was “LICENSED TO PREACH THE GOSPEL.” On the back of Presbyterian minister Archibald Alexander Hodge’s monument (1886) is his parting message to his “theological class,” addressing confidence in the resurrection. Lest one believe this theme died out, all four early 1900s stones examined for this study mention evangelism, the Gospel, or preaching. On the point of pastoral service, chronologically between Green and McCosh is Presbyterian minister James MacDonald (1876), whose monument declares that he was “useful” to his church. Also mentioned in this respect on other stones is service on various administrative bodies, such as the Presbyterian Board of Publication (William Edward Schenck, 1903).

Ministerial service was not remembered in the abstract. In almost every case when something other than a simple “Rev.” was included on the gravestone, the specific communities he served were listed. This is true, of course, of pastors of Princeton’s own Presbyterian congregation, but also pastors of congregations as distant as South Carolina. Further, some stones mention that the church played a role in paying for it, or, more sentimentally, that the minister’s loss “was greatly mourned by his… many friends” (Samuel Davies Alexander, 1894). Ministers were remembered as parts of their communities.

But the ministers whose graves are studied here were often not only involved in the church. Green’s stone, for example, does not just mention Gospel-preaching and congregation-leading; it also references “the cultivation of sacred studies.” The Princeton Cemetery is full of academics’ graves, and many of the ordained ministers buried in it were also, or even primarily, university and seminary professors and administrators. Among those headstones that do mention academic work alongside ministry, the two vocations are treated precisely the same; it is relatively common to find resumé-type inscriptions that follow, for example (Lyman Hotchkiss Atwater, 1883), “Pastor First Congregational Church” immediately with “Professor in the College of New Jersey” with no change in format, ordered only by chronology. This basic equality of roles is confirmed in practice by the regular transitions between ministry and academia that appear in these ministers’ postmortem CVs.

Not all of the stones examined are so elaborate as to include an extensive list of offices and occupations. Class played a role in ministerial memory. As one might expect in a town full of Presbyterian institutions, those stones clearly identifiable as Presbyterian are consistently elaborate, as are those affiliated with Princeton University or Seminary and those of the prominent Alexander and Hodge families. Given the overlap between these three categories, it is hard to say which affiliation played the most significant role in paying for a grave marker. Smaller and more distant denominational communities generally had less prominent stones, such as Baptist minister William E. Cornwell (1859) and South Carolina minister Robert Gibson (1829). For the least elaborate stones, which all come from the last quarter of the century, affiliations are difficult to determine and so conclusions are hard to draw.

In conclusion, ministers’ survivors, when they had the economic resources to do so, chose to remember their deceased’s faithful preaching and service to his various religious communities, along with his academic pursuits, if any. This choice stayed consistent across the nineteenth century, despite significant evolution in gravestone style and broader religious and cultural trends. Ministry, at least in nineteenth-century Princeton, was not separated from the Gospel or from the institution in which it occurred.

Comparison

In my project, I focused on one particular type of prominent community leader: the minister. I wanted to know how ministry, specifically, was portrayed on gravestones. Gabe, on the other hand, focused on prominence as such, whether that of a minister, an academic, or a politician. He asked whether the gravestones of prominent figures were intended for the public or for the deceased’s immediate family, and how one might be able to tell the difference.

Ministry might be special, when it comes to gravestones, because of minister’s special connection with the spiritual world and the afterlife. However, similarities between my ministers’ stones and Gabe’s prominent figures’ stones suggests an alternative explanation: that ministers were prominent in the same way other community leaders were prominent. Naturally, his stones in the Princeton presidents’ plot look quite similar to mine, with extensive resumés detailing service to the church and the academy. But even nominally secular academics’ stones, like that of Samuel Ross Winans (1910), look strikingly akin to my ministers’ monuments. Winans’s marker stresses the twin roles of the academic, teaching and administration, as well as his particular academic community affiliations and the role his community played in mourning and remembering him—all traits seen on ministers’ stones, with their references to preaching and service, congregational memberships, and communal remembrance.

My stones which do not feature significant details of ministry also do not reflect any other signs of prominence. They are simple, family-focused, and personal, generally highlighting the deceased’s ministry only through the title “Rev.” before his name. Perhaps the distinction between these stones and others I studied has less to do with class and more to do with the community prominence, or lack thereof, of the respective ministers. Perhaps prominence, rather than the office of minister, has more explanatory power for grave marker styles and content.

This comparison leaves me with one broader question for gravestone studies: are headstones with extensive text always intended for the public? Presumably the immediate family would recall the institutional affiliations and offices of the deceased, and they could affirm their ties to him or her with appellations such as “father,” “grandmother,” “sister.” Communities, on the other hand, could only tie themselves to the deceased via display of his or her public roles, and they seem, at least to me, more likely to desire to memorialize prominent leaders with monuments for future generations’ reflection.