Rufus Morgan, New Bern photographer

 

The recent acquisition of three early stereographs of New Bern provides an opportunity to remember an artist whose career was tragically cut short.

Stereograph of Christ Episcopal Church, New Bern, by Rufus Morgan, c.1869-1870.

by John B. Green III

Of all the photographers who have called  New Bern home since the 1850s, one of the more interesting and unusual, was a young Virginian named Rufus Morgan.  Just twenty-three years old when he opened his gallery in New Bern, he soon came to specialize in stereographs of local scenery.  Stereographs were made by a camera with two lenses  which simultaneously took two photographs of the subject from slightly different angles.  The resulting double image, when observed through a special viewer called a stereoscope, caused the observer's left and right eyes to resolve the double image into a single image which appeared to be three-dimensional.  Stereographs were extremely popular from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, with many homes having sets of stereo cards depicting world events, exotic locales, and natural wonders.

Rufus Morgan produced a set of thirteen views of New Bern and traveled about the state producing sets for Raleigh, Wilmington, Goldsboro, and western North Carolina. He also photographed in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, and California.

Rufus Morgan advertisement, The Republic and Courier, New Bern, NC, 8 November 1873.

Morgan married Mary D. Clarke, daughter of Mary Devereux Clarke and W.J. Clarke of New Bern, in 1873.  With a daughter born in 1875 and a son in 1879, Morgan apparently came to the conclusion that his photography did not provide sufficient income for his growing family.  He determined to go west to California and operate an apiary, a long time interest of his and a business in which he had previously engaged.  Morgan planned to send for his wife and children once he was established in California.  Unfortunately, on April 3, 1880, he prepared a meal of wild mushrooms, some of which were thought to have been poisonous, became very ill, and died two days later.

Rufus Morgan's five-year old daughter, Mary Bayard Morgan, would grow up to pursue her own career in photography.  As Bayard Wootten, she would become one of North Carolina's most talented photographers of the 20th century.

The largest collection of Rufus Morgan's photographs survives at the North Carolina Collection of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  We at the Kellenberger Room are pleased to add three of his New Bern views to our collection.

Stereograph of entrance gate to Cedar Grove Cemetery, New Bern, by Rufus Morgan, c. 1869-1870.

Stereograph of the main avenue, Cedar Grove Cemetery, New Bern, by Rufus Morgan, c.1869-1870.

Reverse of stereograph listing New Bern views available, c.1869-1870.

Before the flowers fade

Treasures from the Kellenberger Room

Featuring books, pamphlets, photographs, documents, and the occasional object from the collections of the New Bern-Craven County Public Library

by John B. Green III

Grave of William Thomas McCarthy, March 1898,
Cedar Grove Cemetery, photographer unknown

When we revived the Kellenberger Room blog six weeks ago we promised that the new series of posts would highlight some of the "interesting, rare, and in some cases, just plain odd" items in our collection.  This week we discuss one of our oddities - perhaps the oddest item in our extensive photograph collection - an 1898 image of a freshly-made grave in Cedar Grove Cemetery.

The grave is that of William Thomas McCarthy, popular New Bern attorney and state senator, who died young and much lamented on March 25, 1898.  While his funeral was attended by a large crowd of mourners and his family was surely grief-stricken by his untimely death, why would they have commissioned a photograph of his grave and then had it elaborately framed for display?  The answer may lie in the 19th century's romanticizing of death and mourning.

In a time before modern medical care, many parents could expect to lose at least one of their children and many adults died before the age of sixty.  With sudden, often unexplained, death ever-present,  survivors who could afford to do so expressed their grief through ever-more elaborate funerals, monuments, floral displays, and a variety of  mourning clothing, jewelry, and memorial objects.  Among the more unusual memorials were photographs today known as posthumous or post-mortem.  In these images the deceased were posed as if asleep in their beds, or in the case of deceased infants, in the arms of their parents. Other photographs show the deceased prepared for burial and placed in the open coffin or casket.

The photograph of the elaborately decorated grave of William Thomas McCarthy can be loosely grouped with posthumous or post-mortem images.  While it doesn't show the actual remains of McCarthy, the numerous floral tributes do include a photograph of McCarthy taken during his lifetime. [see enlarged detail below]  The McCarthy family was thus able to preserve, through the medium of photography, memories of their loved one and the tributes paid to him by family and friends.

Detail of above image showing photograph believed
to be of William Thomas McCarthy

The 10th of May

Confederate Monument, Cedar Grove Cemetery, New Bern, N.C.

By John B. Green III

In October 1866 a number of New Bern women came together to form the Ladies Memorial Association.  They were the near relatives of deceased Confederate soldiers and their aim was to see to the proper burial of their husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers.  These men lay in hastily dug graves scattered across the city and the countryside.  Some lay abandoned in distant fields and woods hundreds of miles from where they had been born and raised.  By November the ladies had secured a large lot in Cedar Grove Cemetery on which to construct a tomb.  The cornerstone of the structure was laid May 2, 1867.  When completed at the cost of $3,000 this remarkable subterranean brick vault measured approximately sixty feet in length by ten feet in width with the floor of the tomb being approximately twelve feet beneath the surface.  The remains of seventy-one Confederate soldiers were then placed in the tomb.  In subsequent years the Ladies Memorial Association sought to erect a suitable marker above the tomb.  Constructed in stages over ten years the large marble monument topped by a life-sized Confederate soldier was dedicated on May 11, 1885.

Poem composed by Mary Bayard Clarke for Confederate Memorial Day, 1878.

Through the years the Ladies Memorial Association (later the New Bern Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy) made annual pilgrimages to decorate the monument and the graves of Confederate veterans buried in private plots across the cemetery.  The commemorations usually fell on or about May 10th, the anniversary of the death in 1863 of Confederate General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and the date chosen by North Carolina and South Carolina as Confederate Memorial Day.  These events consisted of speeches and floral presentations and the reading and singing of poems and songs extolling the "Lost Cause" of the late Confederacy and the bravery and sacrifice of the Southern soldiers and those they left behind.  Attendance sometimes numbered in the hundreds and included veterans, school children, ministers, and public officials.

Confederate Memorial Day remained popular in New Bern and throughout the South well into the 20th century although attendance declined as the veterans and those closest to them passed away.  The last addition to the memorial in Cedar Grove Cemetery occurred on  May 10, 1955 when a large granite and bronze marker was dedicated.  Supplied by the Department of the Army, through the auspices of Congressman Graham A. Barden, the marker listed the Confederate soldiers interred in the tomb beneath the monument.

Dedication of bronze memorial tablet, Cedar Grove Cemetery, 10 May 1955.

Today the public celebration of Confederate Memorial Day is a fading memory in New Bern and elsewhere.  The New Bern Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy ceased to exist more than thirty years ago.  Yet the 10th of May in Cedar Grove Cemetery usually finds a small flag or flower or card placed by some person or persons unknown.  Someone still remembers.

Anonymous tribute left May 10, 1994 following the vandalism of the Confederate tomb.

The Weeping Arch

By John B. Green III

The Weeping Arch, from Die Berner Woche, November 11, 1939.

The large triple-arched gateway to Cedar Grove Cemetery has long accumulated rain water in its soft mortar joints which eventually seeps through to fall as drops of water from the arches.  This seepage has been regular enough over the years to allow calcium deposits much like tiny stalactites to accumulate on the undersides of the arches.  The seepage has also allowed legends to attach to the gateway as tenaciously as the calcium deposits.

The Weeping Arch, from Emma H. Powell, New Bern, North Carolina, 1905.

The essential legend, which dates from the second half of the 19th century, is that the "Weeping Arch" cries tears of mourning for the dead interred within the cemetery.  This legend was later modified to include the cautionary element that any person struck by one of the Weeping Arch's tears would be the next person carried through the gateway in a hearse.

Cemetery wall and Weeping Arch, photo c. 1895.

Cedar Grove Cemetery had its beginning in 1799 in the cemetery established by Christ Episcopal Church as an extension of their overcrowded churchyard.  This cemetery was deeded to the City of New Bern in 1853.  The city began a program of improvements which included enlarging the burial ground and giving it the romantic name "Cedar Grove."  Chief among the improvements was the building of a "shell rock" wall around the graveyard between 1854 and 1856.  The centerpiece of this wall was the monumental arched gateway which would become known as the Weeping Arch.

The gateway may always have wept "tears."  In 1862, six years after the arch's completion,  occupying Union soldier Hiram Alonso Worden noted in his diary "drops of water continually dropping" from the arch.  For the rest of the 19th Century nearly every article or publication which mentioned Cedar Grove Cemetery described the Weeping Arch and its tears for the dead.  Sometime in the 20th Century the legend took its more sinister turn with the tears dealing out death to whomever they struck.  Generations of daredevils raced between the falling drops or pushed others beneath them.  Occasionally, especially during dry spells, a little stagecraft might be employed.  It is said that on the day before a large tour group was due to visit the cemetery, the fire department would be called out to thoroughly soak the triple arches, thus ensuring an ample supply of tears.

All this lachrymose activity may have come to a halt, though.  Recent repairs to the Weeping Arch included capping the top of the arch and repointing some of the mortar joints.  This has resulted in a distinct drying of the arch's tears.  Whatever shall we do?  Wait!  What's that siren I hear approaching from the distance?