Hope Cemetery and Rock of Ages Corporation: a match made in heaven
An enduring alliance involves a common interest shared between parties. In the case of Hope Cemetery and Rock of Ages Corporation that would be death. The business of death is predicated upon the fact that although it's likely the last thing we want to do, it is, with certainty, the last thing we will do.
While touring Rock of Ages (ROA) it is evident throughout that great care, effort, and respect are given to capturing one's final statement about the life they lived. Be it in typical or grand fashion, the quality of the memorials produced here have set the industry standard.
Video created by Rock of Ages Corporation.
Many of the monuments and mausoleums in Hope Cemetery feature Barre Gray granite, an igneous rock recognized for its fine grain and weather-resistant durability. One of ROA's main quarries, the E. L. Smith Quarry, contains Barry Gray, and is almost 600' deep, making it the largest deep-hole granite quarry in the world!
Image: by Z22
The quarry's reputation for excellence in all aspects of its manufacturing dates back to an earlier incarnation in 1895, when it was then known as the James R. Langdon Granite Company. That year the company was purchased by its general manger, James Boutwell (1855-1929), who recognized with the arrival of rail service in Barre there existed immense opportunity for growth in the granite industry.
Image: Quarry Scene, circa 1890, courtesy of ROA Corp. archives.
Simultaneously, great numbers of stone workers from all over Europe (particularly Italy and Scotland) immigrated to Barre to work in the prospering quarry industry in three capacities: stone cutters (cut and remove stone from the quarries), masons (lay the stone) and carvers (carve the stone into sculptures) . With jobs to fill requiring particular talents and skill sets not possessed within the general population, the quarry welcomed these immigrants with open arms; in fact, many of them were recuited. To put the scope of this boom into perspective, it's been estimated that a third of all granite cemetery stones across the United States came from Barre, VT.
Image: Quarry Scene, circa 1898, courtesy of ROA Corp. archives. Quarriers pose for a group portrait.
Hope Cemetery, also located in Barre, was established in 1895, and naturally features Barre Gray granite in many of its memorials, along with the work of the stone workers. In particular, the Italian craftsmen were unparalleled in their field. They brought with them not only their unique talents but also their cultural and political views from their homeland, a place they had fled due to the loss of their livelihood at the hands of the Fascist movement beginning in the late 19th century.
Image: detail of "Hope" at the entrance to Hope Cemetery, designed by Carlo Abate, and carved in granite by Gino Tosi and Enrico Mori.
Coming from a tradition of political radicalism, many in the Italian immigrant community organized both anarchist and socialist efforts that focused on workers' rights, demanding better conditions and shorter hours at the quarries where many of them toiled. Between the two factions, however, existed vastly different approaches to achieving those ends, leading to intrigues with violent and sometimes deadly outcomes.
Image: Stone Cutters Memorial, dedicated to Carlo Abate, who was emblematic of the Italian-American workers and their contributions to the "social, cultural, and civic vitality of the city, state and region". Located in the north end of Barre (where much of the Italian population resided), it was designed by Elmo Peduzzi, sculpted by Philip Paini from a clay model crafted by Giuliano Cecchinelli, and erected in 1985. Abate was a revered sculptor who arrived from Italy in 1896, and was a founding instructor at the Barre Evening Drawing School, an art school that offered courses in drafting and design—skills germane to the local granite industry.
Elia Corti (1869-1903) was also one of those craftsmen who emigrated as a young man to Barre in search of opportunity. His talent was so great that he was able to quickly rise up out of his lowly immigrant status and eventually open his own studio (along with other partners), establishing the firm of Novelli and Corti. Although he had once been a radical anarchist, as his family and standing in the greater community grew, he tempered his leanings and became aligned with the more moderate socialists.
On the evening of Oct. 5, 1903, as a contentious political event was breaking up at the Labor Hall, a fellow socialist, Alessandro Garetto, became panicked in the fracas and pulled a pistol from his jacket firing indiscriminately three times. Two of the bullets innocuously ricocheted, but the third penetrated Corti's abdomen, mortally wounding him.
The murder stunned the community and outraged Corti's fellow socialists, causing great upheaval and unrest in the streets. Garetto was eventually tried, convicted and served several years in prison where upon his release it is believed he departed for Italy. Hundreds of mourners attended the burial of this esteemed citizen. Later, both his brother, William, and brother in law, John Comi, both outstanding carvers, created Elia's memorial from a single block of Barre Gray. Elia's stone-cold gaze holds the tragic history, keeping it forever present in the collective conscience of all who visit his grave.
The Brusa memorial details the hazards of working in the production end of the granite business.
Silicosis is an occupational lung disease that greatly accelerated when in 1897 the pneumatic hammer drill was introduced along with sandblasting in 1904. As a result, stone workers suffered an increased occurrence of silicosis due to inhaling greater concentrations of crystalline silica dust. The disease can take years to develop and causes severe fatigue from respiratory insufficiency, leading, ultimately, to death. To this day there is no cure, only prevention. Long before the quarry industry became regulated, ROA initiated efforts aimed at safeguarding its employees against this devastating and deadly affliction.
Luigi Giovanni “Louis” Brusa (1886—1937) was a native of Italy, who became a partner in Brusa Brothers where he worked as a master stone carver in Barre. He plied his talents utilizing the new air compressed tools of the day, and eventually contracted silicosis. Brusa commissioned his friend and fellow carver, Donato Coletti, to create "Dying Man" as a cautionary tale to those working in the granite industry.
Local legend has it that when the monument was installed it caused quite a stir amongst the locals: the female figure didn't resemble Busa's wife, Mary, but rather his mistress! Whether true or not, what is a fact is that the woman's shapely backside proved to be more than some starchy New Englanders could handle, as evidenced by one in particular who relocated his future grave site to avoid facing that “blatantly pornographic statue” in perpetuity.
As you tour the cemetery you can't help but notice the inordinate amount of death dates that fall between 1917-19. Although many of these deaths are attributed to silicosis, they are also consequences of World War I, and the Spanish Flu pandemic that swept the world between the fall of 1918 and the summer of 1919. All told, Vermont lost more than 3400 citizens (roughly 1700 for each of these two events). So devastating was this flu that more US soldiers died from it than were killed in battle.
Angelo Dalla Bernardina was born in San Ambrogio, Italy on August 23, 1876, and entered the US in 1897 to work as a granite cutter in Barre. In addition, Angelo, was involved with the Barre Union Cooperative Store, which holds historical significance as the first successful cooperative enterprise in New England. He died in Barre on October 7, 1918, at the age of 42, from complications caused by the Spanish Flu, leaving behind his wife, Luigia (Richelli) and their two children. His bust was carved by his friend, a sculptor named Pelligrini, who lived in Quincy, Massachusetts. The likeness was created from both a photograph and memory, and rendered in Westerly Red granite that was extracted from a Rhode Island quarry.
Guiseppe Donati (1919-1984) portrayed in formal attire popular in Italy during the 1940s, sits in a reflective pose, enjoying a cigarette while the drifting smoke from it evolves into a portrait of
his wife, Orestina (1921-2015). Donati was born in Florence, Italy, and worked in Barre as a stone carver. His close friend and fellow "ornatista", Guiliano Checchinelli, crafted this unique memorial, which features the couple around the time they met.
Checcinelli, who was born in Carrara, Italy in 1943, migrated to Vermont in 1961, following his father, Alberto, who had arrived two years earlier to work on the columns of the US Capitol Building. Later, Alberto settled in Proctor, Vermont, where he worked for a marble company. Guiliano knew many of the areas stone carvers; at the time he was the youngest among them, and today, at 75, he is the very last. Having already designed and carved his own tombstone, it too will, likewise, be the last of those created by Barre's old world-trained masters of funerary art. But, alas, as the previous video asserts: "Everybody has a story, and that has to continue."
Image: courtesy of Jack Rowell.
With over 10,000 monuments, and 65 acres to crisscross, our brief three hour excursion to Hope Cemetery was paltry (the weather was not "permitting" during the days we were in the area). Undeterred, we fanned out, and found a multifarious assortment of monuments, from the hallowed to the humorous. The galleries below are by no means an exhaustive collection of the notable monuments located within Hope Cemetery. They represent, rather, a wide and varied sampling of the many captivating monuments we encountered.
(click on the designated galleries below to view by category)
Sacred
Portraits
Love and Marriage
Delicate Carvings
Messages
Whimsical
Unique
Miscellany
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