Early Gravestone Carvers and Acculturation in the Carolina Backcountry

Early Gravestone Carvers and Acculturation in the Carolina Backcountry PDF Author: Christine Dorothy Wilkie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
Cemetery art and iconography reveal much about the early customs, people, and culture in North and South Carolina. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, rural Carolina settlers relied on the culture and customs of their homeland to honor and mark the graves of their dead. However, as many different ethnicities became neighbors, acculturation ensued between the groups. Gravestone symbols, motifs, and epitaphs act as records of the past especially when little written records are left behind. As acculturation accelerated in the early 1800s, German gravestones began to exhibit influences from neighboring ethnic communities such as the Scots-Irish and they, in turn, utilized common German motifs. Slowly, through the different ethnicities represented in Carolina, a specific kind of culture, a southern culture emerged from the customs and symbols of these ethnic groups. Two specific families of stonecutters epitomize the cultural transference and sharing of customs in North and South Carolina: The Bighams and the Caveny-Crawfords. Both families were Scots-Irish and both workshops' gravestone imagery reflects a mixture of German and Scots-Irish symbolism. The evidence suggests that these two families are representative of a changing culture that embraced the ethnic traditions of the different nationalities, integrating them into a distinct Carolina culture.

Early Gravestone Carvers and Acculturation in the Carolina Backcountry

Early Gravestone Carvers and Acculturation in the Carolina Backcountry PDF Author: Christine Dorothy Wilkie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
Cemetery art and iconography reveal much about the early customs, people, and culture in North and South Carolina. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, rural Carolina settlers relied on the culture and customs of their homeland to honor and mark the graves of their dead. However, as many different ethnicities became neighbors, acculturation ensued between the groups. Gravestone symbols, motifs, and epitaphs act as records of the past especially when little written records are left behind. As acculturation accelerated in the early 1800s, German gravestones began to exhibit influences from neighboring ethnic communities such as the Scots-Irish and they, in turn, utilized common German motifs. Slowly, through the different ethnicities represented in Carolina, a specific kind of culture, a southern culture emerged from the customs and symbols of these ethnic groups. Two specific families of stonecutters epitomize the cultural transference and sharing of customs in North and South Carolina: The Bighams and the Caveny-Crawfords. Both families were Scots-Irish and both workshops' gravestone imagery reflects a mixture of German and Scots-Irish symbolism. The evidence suggests that these two families are representative of a changing culture that embraced the ethnic traditions of the different nationalities, integrating them into a distinct Carolina culture.

The True Image

The True Image PDF Author: Daniel W. Patterson
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 0807837539
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
A thousand unique gravestones cluster around old Presbyterian churches in the piedmont of the two Carolinas and in central Pennsylvania. Most are the vulnerable legacy of three generations of the Bigham family, Scotch Irish stonecutters whose workshop near Charlotte created the earliest surviving art of British settlers in the region. In The True Image, Daniel Patterson documents the craftsmanship of this group and the current appearance of the stones. In two hundred of his photographs, he records these stones for future generations and compares their iconography and inscriptions with those of other early monuments in the United States, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. Combining his reading of the stones with historical records, previous scholarship, and rich oral lore, Patterson throws new light on the complex culture and experience of the Scotch Irish in America. In so doing, he explores the bright and the dark sides of how they coped with challenges such as backwoods conditions, religious upheavals, war, political conflicts, slavery, and land speculation. He shows that headstones, resting quietly in old graveyards, can reveal fresh insights into the character and history of an influential immigrant group.

Early Gravestone Art in Georgia and South Carolina

Early Gravestone Art in Georgia and South Carolina PDF Author: Diana Williams Combs
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780820307886
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description


Newsletter of the Association for Gravestone Studies

Newsletter of the Association for Gravestone Studies PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Sepulchral monuments
Languages : en
Pages : 110

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Book Description


Albion's Seed

Albion's Seed PDF Author: David Hackett Fischer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019974369X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 981

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Book Description
This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.

Artisans in the North Carolina Backcountry

Artisans in the North Carolina Backcountry PDF Author: Johanna Miller Lewis
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813161614
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
During the quarter of a century before the thirteen colonies became a nation, the northwest quadrant of North Carolina had just begun to attract permanent settlers. This seemingly primitive area may not appear to be a likely source for attractive pottery and ornate silverware and furniture, much less for an audience to appreciate these refinements. Yet such crafts were not confined to urban centers, and artisans, like other colonists, were striving to create better lives for themselves as well as to practice their trades. As Johanna Miller Lewis shows in this pivotal study of colonial history and material culture, the growing population of Rowan County required not only blacksmiths, saddlers, and tanners but also a great variety of skilled craftsmen to help raise the standard of living. Rowan County's rapid expansion was in part the result of the planned settlements of the Moravian Church. Because the Moravians maintained careful records, historians have previously credited church artisans with greater skill and more economic awareness than non-church craftsmen. Through meticulous attention to court and private records, deeds, wills, and other sources, Lewis reveals the Moravian failure to keep up with the pace of development occurring elsewhere in the county. Challenging the traditional belief that southern backcountry life was primitive, Lewis shows that many artisans held public office and wielded power in the public sphere. She also examines women weavers and spinsters as an integral part of the population. All artisans -- Moravian and non-Moravian, male and female -- helped the local market economy expand to include coastal and trans-Atlantic trade. Lewis's book contributes meaningfully to the debate over self-sufficiency and capitalism in rural America.

The American Jewish Experience

The American Jewish Experience PDF Author: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Center for the Study of the American Jewish Experience
Publisher: Holmes & Meier Publishers
ISBN: 9780841909342
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description


The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution

The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution PDF Author: Charles Woodmason
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469600021
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
In what is probably the fullest and most vivid extant account of the American Colonial frontier, The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution gives shape to the daily life, thoughts, hopes, and fears of the frontier people. It is set forth by one of the most extraordinary men who ever sought out the wilderness--Charles Woodmason, an Anglican minister whose moral earnestness and savage indignation, combined with a vehement style, make him worthy of comparison with Swift. The book consists of his journal, selections from the sermons he preached to his Backcountry congregations, and the letters he wrote to influential people in Charleston and England describing life on the frontier and arguing the cause of the frontier people. Woodmason's pleas are fervent and moving; his narrative and descriptive style is colorful to a degree attained by few writers in Colonial America.

Sticks & Stones

Sticks & Stones PDF Author: Margaret Ruth Little
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
An old graveyard, writes Ruth Little, is a cultural encyclopedia--an invaluable source of insight and information about the families, traditions, and cultural connections that shape a community. But although graveyards and gravemarkers have long been recognized as vital elements of the material culture of New England, they have not received the same attention in the South. Sticks and Stones is the first book to consider the full spectrum of gravemarkers, both plain and fancy, in a southeastern state. From gravehouses to cedar boards to seashell mounds to tomb-tables to pierced soapstones to homemade concrete headstones, an incredibly rich collection of gravemarker types populates North Carolina's graveyards. Exploring the cultural, economic, and material differences that gave rise to such variation, Little traces three major parallel developments: a tradition of headstones crafted of native materials by country artisans; a series of marble monuments created by metropolitan stonecutters; and a largely twentieth-century legacy of wood and concrete markers made within the African American community. With more than 230 illustrations, including 120 stunning photographs by Tim Buchman, Sticks and Stones offers an illuminating look at an important facet of North Carolina's cultural heritage.

Arts in Earnest

Arts in Earnest PDF Author: Daniel W. Patterson
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822381613
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Arts in Earnest explores the unique folklife of North Carolina from ruddy ducks to pranks in the mill. Traversing from Murphy to Manteo, these fifteen essays demonstrate the importance of North Carolina’s continually changing folklife. From decoy carving along the coast, to the music of tobacco chants and the blues of the Piedmont, to the Jack tales of the mountains, Arts in Earnest reflects the story of a people negotiating their rapidly changing social and economic environment. Personal interviews are an important element in the book. Laura Lee, an elderly black woman from Chatham County, describes the quilts she made from funeral flower ribbons; witnesses and friends each remember varying details of the Duke University football player who single-handedly vanquished a gang of would-be muggers; Clyde Jones leads a safari through his backyard, which is filled with animals made of wood and cement that represent nontraditional folk art; the songs and sermon of a Primitive Baptist service flow together as one—“it tills you up all over”; Durham bluesman Willie Trice, one of a handful of Durham musicians who recorded in the 1930s and early 1940s, remembers when the active tobacco warehouses offered ready audiences—“They’d tip us a heap of change to play some music”; and Goldsboro tobacco auctioneer H. L. “Speed” Riggs chants 460 words per minute, five to six times faster than a normal conversational rate.