The Cemetery as Cultural Institution: The Establishment of Mount Auburn and the "Rural Cemetery" Movement

IN HER ACCOUNT OF HER TOUR OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE LATE 1840s Lady Emmeline Wortley wrote that the first time she went to Cambridge, Massachusetts, she visited the family of President Edward Everett of Harvard College, and that for her first sight-seeing excursion in the area the Everetts took her on a carriage ride through nearby Mount Auburn Cemetery. After an enthusiastic description of the cemetery she mentioned that next we went to see a little of the colleges. 1 For most Americans today this ordering of events is a curious inversion of priorities, if they would consider conducting a visitor through the local cemetery at all. Yet the statement reflects the prominence given to Mount Auburn at the time. From its beginnings in 1831 Mount Auburn ranked as one of the major points of interest in the Boston area. It was proudly displayed to foreign and native visitors in the decades before the Civil War when Americans were still self-consciously trying to disprove Sydney Smith's famous taunt in the Edinburgh Review that America was a cultural wasteland.2