" In Memory Of ", And We Still Remember

JPK Huson 1863

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Joined
Feb 14, 2012
Location
Central Pennsylvania
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By buying a silk painting of females drooping over George Washington's tomb you, too, could participate in mourning this King among common men. Perhaps it's been erroneous of us picking on Victorians as our dark ancestors, seemingly obsessed by death and all that lay beyond those chilly portals. A kind of import from across the Pond, this indicator one's life had been visited by death ( and you better like it ) had been around before Victoria's parents were twinkles in her grandparents' eyes.

LoC has quite a few confusing images Id been ignoring. Their section containing wares one could order straight from the printer shows us a genesis in death merchandise. Once the province of those who could afford the trappings of woe via laboriously painted silk memorials of willows, tombstones, mourners and the ominous churchyard in the backyard, now lithographs made pre-ordering generic, fill in the blank memorials possible.
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Fill-In-The-Blank seems so ruthless but in a time of war, well, it was just, plain business.

I'd like to point out. as dreary as our ancestors could be on the topic of death these memorials really are quite lovely. Seems a poignant way of reminding us who it is we've lost and whose presence is missing from our home in these days of having made death an antiseptic process. And prospect.

Read somewhere this practice had died out by the time of the Civil War- and untrue statement. If ever a market would flourish, between Victorian sentimentalism and mass death, it would be this.
Mo 14 john 18th ovi.jpg

Memorial for John, a soldier killed while fighting in the 18th OVI, Pinterest

Next post........
 
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Pinterest

By buying a silk painting of females drooping over George Washington's tomb you, too, could participate in mourning this King among common men. Perhaps it's been erroneous of us picking on Victorians as our dark ancestors, seemingly obsessed by death and all that lay beyond those chilly portals. A kind of import from across the Pond, this indicator one's life had been visited by death ( and you better like it ) had been around before Victoria's parents were twinkles in her grandparents' eyes.

LoC has quite a few confusing images Id been ignoring. Their section containing wares one could order straight from the printer shows us a genesis in death merchandise. Once the province of those who could afford the trappings of woe via laboriously painted silk memorials of willows, tombstones, mourners and the ominous churchyard in the backyard, now lithographs made pre-ordering generic, fill in the blank memorials possible.
View attachment 121283
Fill-In-The-Blank seems so ruthless but in a time of war, well, it was just, plain business.

I'd like to point out. as dreary as our ancestors could be on the topic of death these memorials really are quite lovely. Seems a poignant way of reminding us who it is we've lost and whose presence is missing from our home in these days of having made death an antiseptic process. And prospect.

Read somewhere this practice had died out by the time of the Civil War- and untrue statement. If ever a market would flourish, between Victorian sentimentalism and mass death, it would be this.
View attachment 121278
Memorial for John, a soldier killed while fighting in the 18th OVI, Pinterest

Next post........
Thanks for posting these revealing glimpses of another time....
 
Mark Twain wrote about this genre of mourning image in "Huckleberry Finn" (1884):

'They had pictures hung on the walls - mainly Washingtons and Lafayettes, and battles, and Highland Marys, and one called "Signing the Declaration." There was some that they called crayons, which one of the daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only fifteen years old. They was different from any pictures I ever see before - blacker, mostly, than is common. One was a woman in a slim black dress, belted small under the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle of the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on her right elbow, under a weeping willow, and her other hand hanging down her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule, and underneath the picture it said "Shall I Never See Thee More Alas." Another one was a young lady with her hair all combed up straight to the top of her head, and knotted there in front of a comb like a chair-back, and she was crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird laying on its back in her other hand with its heels up, and underneath the picture it said "I Shall Never Hear Thy Sweet Chirrup More Alas." There was one where a young lady was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running down her cheeks; and she had an open letter in one hand with black sealing wax showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a chain to it against her mouth, and underneath the picture it said "And Art Thou Gone Yes Thou Art Gone Alas." These was all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever I was down a little they always give me the fan-tods [a state or attack of uneasiness or unreasonableness]. Everybody was sorry she died, because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body could see by what she had done what they had lost. But I reckoned that with her disposition she was having a better time in the graveyard. She was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took sick, and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it done, but she never got the chance. It was a picture of a young woman in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to jump off, with her hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon, with the tears running down her face, and she had two arms folded across her breast, and two arms stretched out in front, and two more reaching up towards the moon - and the idea was to see which pair would look best, and then scratch out all the other arms; but, as I was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and now they kept this picture over the head of the bed in her room, and every time her birthday come they hung flowers on it. Other times it was hid with a little curtain. The young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice sweet face, but there was so many arms it made her look too spidery, seemed to me. . . .'

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Mark Twain wrote about this genre of mourning image in "Huckleberry Finn" (1884):

These was all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever I was down a little they always give me the fan-tods. Everybody was sorry she died, because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body could see by what she had done what they had lost. But I reckoned that with her disposition she was having a better time in the graveyard.
I guess I better reread Huck Finn! It's been ages! :bounce:

Anybody know what the fan-tods are/is?
 
I guess I better reread Huck Finn! It's been ages! :bounce:

Anybody know what the fan-tods are/is?
Same here!
I wanted to post that I had never seen them nor even heard of these pictures, but then, I also read Huck Finn. Maybe it was an abridged version and that paragraph was missing, because it was sold as a children's book and I guess the above paragraph sure would have been regarded as inappropriate for kids (here).
Thanks for posting @JPK Huson 1863
Sweet and sad.
 
@JPK Huson 1863 were these items produced at the printers as a one off image with the name inserted, to be framed and for a family to keep as a memorial of the dead, or were they printed as cards with the name inserted to be given to other mourners, family and friends? Or both?


Pretty certain they were hot-off-the press, anonymous images you could choose? Heck, printers could provide any combination of mourners and yep, there's 3 daughters left orphaned by war, typhoid, a runaway team or the awesome hazards out ancestors navigated daily. Goodness. Mark Twain's brother died in one of the infamous steam boat disasters. Trust Twain- do not look it up unless you have a day to spare being depressed. He had no need of one of these.

There are a fair amount here, LoC's collection ' Popular prints '. Pretty awesome. I'm sure these are collected and displayed en mass elsewhere but really, how many could you manage? http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?st=grid&co=pga
 
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Mark Twain wrote about this genre of mourning image in "Huckleberry Finn" (1884):

'They had pictures hung on the walls - mainly Washingtons and Lafayettes, and battles, and Highland Marys, and one called "Signing the Declaration." There was some that they called crayons, which one of the daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only fifteen years old. They was different from any pictures I ever see before - blacker, mostly, than is common. One was a woman in a slim black dress, belted small under the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle of the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on her right elbow, under a weeping willow, and her other hand hanging down her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule, and underneath the picture it said "Shall I Never See Thee More Alas." Another one was a young lady with her hair all combed up straight to the top of her head, and knotted there in front of a comb like a chair-back, and she was crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird laying on its back in her other hand with its heels up, and underneath the picture it said "I Shall Never Hear Thy Sweet Chirrup More Alas." There was one where a young lady was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running down her cheeks; and she had an open letter in one hand with black sealing wax showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a chain to it against her mouth, and underneath the picture it said "And Art Thou Gone Yes Thou Art Gone Alas." These was all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever I was down a little they always give me the fan-tods. Everybody was sorry she died, because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body could see by what she had done what they had lost. But I reckoned that with her disposition she was having a better time in the graveyard. She was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took sick, and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it done, but she never got the chance. It was a picture of a young woman in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to jump off, with her hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon, with the tears running down her face, and she had two arms folded across her breast, and two arms stretched out in front, and two more reaching up towards the moon - and the idea was to see which pair would look best, and then scratch out all the other arms; but, as I was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and now they kept this picture over the head of the bed in her room, and every time her birthday come they hung flowers on it. Other times it was hid with a little curtain. The young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice sweet face, but there was so many arms it made her look too spidery, seemed to me. . . .'

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Forgot this- and at the time we all read Huck Finn as children had no clue what was on those walls. So funny tying pieces together as an, er adult. ( When do you become a post-adult, anyway? 30 years ago, one was securely inside this category, ' adult ', post-childhood. Seems to wane a little with the decades. Sorry- got distracted. )
 
Just posted this on another thread, on the topic of how these memorials were still- sorry- alive and kicking during the Civil War.

Our family had five men buried states away from home, New York and PA. Five. Three on battlefields- two at Gettysburg, one at Shiloh, one at Goosecreek, of disease, one at Hollywood, in Richmond, unmarked, in Elizabeth's Van ,Lew's family plot ( changing that, with a marker, soon ). We see officers bodies brought home for burial and maybe assume it was the same for enlisted. Some families did travel to battlefields, pay for special packing to transport loved one's remains. Some did not- could not afford it or they were not found.

These memorials served as all they had. The Union army files into some misty distance as a widow mourns.

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What interesting forefathers we had... thank you for sharing these, JPK Huson.


I think, through all the surface squabbling over History, one of the most neglected topics is what families suffered. Of these it is possible to view Southern women through a window entitled " The Gettysburg Dead ". It is not off topic. I'd give a lot to know ( and see one ) how many of these hung in homes through the South- or some form of them.

Despite our National cemetery's completion in 1863, soldier remains reinterred, locations of a large number of burials charted by Samuel Weaver, S.G. Elliott, Dr. Theodore Dimon, and Dr. J.W.C. O’Neill, ( famously, resulting in the Elliot Map and Weaver's commission in exhuming Union soldiers ) and Gettysburg battlefield becoming an overnight tourist attraction- Confederate dead lay untouched. As tourists ' Oooohed ' and ' Ahhhhed ' walking over Confederate men buried beneath, Southern women had no one to bury.

1870. Gee whiz. Women- of course. A massive effort spearheaded by mothers, widows, sisters and an awful lot of angry females tired of looking at these pictures contacted Weaver's son Rufus. It's a long story- did a thread on it somewhere. These wall memorials always make me think of this, don't ask me why. Between 1870 and 1872 3,000 ( I think, do not quote me? ) men were brought home. Finally. To rest.
 
View attachment 121284 View attachment 121285 View attachment 121286 View attachment 121287 View attachment 121288 View attachment 121289 View attachment 121290 View attachment 121291 View attachment 121292 View attachment 121293 View attachment 121294 One of these may be a silk painting- all are from LoC's Prints and Photographs section. Some are prewar although there is no way of ascertaining how many were used during the war. 1840's saw an introduction of ' generic ' memorials, very hard to know what templates were around when.

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These were great. Thanks for sharing them.
 
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