Cemetery/Burying ground/Burial ground
History
In the late eighteenth century, three primary types of burial places existed: land adjoining a church (often termed the “churchyard,” but also called a cemetery or burial ground) [Fig. 1], the family plot at one’s home (the burying ground), and public space that was unaffiliated with any specific denomination.1 This latter type was also denoted as a “burying ground” but most commonly was labeled as a cemetery.2 Initially located in central urban areas such as commons, by the nineteenth century public burial grounds were increasingly located in suburban precincts. As late as 1724 (and perhaps long after) New Englanders “valued graveyards more as meadows than as sacred spaces,” and, in the public’s mind, graveyards were regarded as “common, if not hallowed ground,” according to historian David Charles Sloane.3 The word “cemetery,” which “derived from the Greek word for ‘dormitory’ and implied that death was but a tranquil sleep,” reflected the increasing sentimentalization of death and the Protestant theological shift from punitive to redemptive interpretations of death.4 Notably, the terms “burying ground” and “churchyard” were not completely phased out with the introduction of rural cemeteries and continued to be used interchangeably.5 Although the term “cemetery” was often associated with rural park-like spaces, it also referred to enclosed burial grounds, such as the one described in 1796 by Timothy Dwight in New Haven, Conn.
The New Haven Burying Ground, as it was originally named, was one of the earliest burial places to be located out side the main commercial district of a town [Fi g. 2]. Concerns about public health stemming from overcrowded urban burial places, the development of romantic discourse on the emotional impact of natural scenery, and anxieties about appropriate veneration of the dead resulted in a movement to relocate burial grounds from congested urban sites to more rural settings .6 Observers of the New Haven Burying Ground, including Dwight , praised the proprietors for their orderly and well laid out grounds based upon a geometric plan, with each fenced lot fashioned in the
