St Agnes Cemetery:
Hope in Sorrow
Once on the outskirts of the City of Syracuse, later incorporated into the city,
St Agnes Cemetery is a beautiful example of a Catholic Cemetery in the style
of the Rural Cemetery Movement.
Laneways wrap around the cemetery,
curving around the beautiful monuments,
giving different views as you visit this beautifully situated cemetery.
In the 1850s, this area was still farmland.
A saw mill was located outside in what would later
become the Valley Dr. entrance.
As Syracuse to the north of this farming and mill community,
situated south of the city limits,
grew, the need for a place outside the city limits for
Catholic burials grew as well.
Catholics saw (and still see) cemeteries as more than just a place to bury the dead,
but as sacred ground...a place of hope.
In the Old World, they would be buried with rites in sacred ground.
(Atlas Obscura)
In the New World, they wanted the same.
By 1875, along South Ave
(originally South Onondaga Ave),
St Agnes Cemetery was created on former farmland.
From this hilltop cemetery, you could see the valley below and the farms that once
filled the Southside and Valley Sections.
Note the the fence that was once its border.
Looking across today.
But as many people within the Diocese wanted
to bury their loved ones in such a beautiful
setting...
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...the cemetery purchased the land the land
linking it to Valley Dr
and the cemetery basically had the footprint as we see it today.
But as it was farmland, it lacked the trees that we see there today.
Here is a photo from
"Syracuse and its Surroundings"
which highlighted that Syracuse,
the up-and-coming city
had a Catholic Cemetery that was noteworthy.
Little trees were planted.
Hope from a barren landscape.
The Joy family chose to have a family plot with a fancy monument,
But the view has been obscured by trees over the years
Also of note, the family chose to have different, uniform headstones
at some point and replaced the older ones.
But this is one of the few cemeteries where we know
who many of the early monuments were made:
Francis And Duffy
of Syracuse Marble and Granite Works
Located on West Onondaga St,
(at 59 on this 1874 birds-eye map)
They are credited with some of the beautiful monument work you see here.
They took their skills and made beauty from rock.
They, like other sculptors and carvers,
saw the potential within a rock,
and made it beautiful...
A note about a symbol you see around the cemetery:
While it might look like a dollar sign at quick glance,
While it might look like a dollar sign at quick glance,
It is really the interweaving monogram of the letters:
I H S
I H S
for "Iesus Hominum Salvator"
Meaning "Jesus Savior of Mankind"
But not everyone chose to be buried,
Many of the wealthier families chose to be interred above ground in
sarcophaguses and mausoleums.
A little explanation interlude:
If no one is buried, but a death is commemorated,
it is called a centotaph.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenotaph?fbclid=IwAR0WXSMwA8wGDY7vOy5n39l8MIO-yrRzX4IBIabvqd8KeU_kPAy6oQlLLSc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenotaph?fbclid=IwAR0WXSMwA8wGDY7vOy5n39l8MIO-yrRzX4IBIabvqd8KeU_kPAy6oQlLLSc
The Soldiers and Sailors monument serves as cenotaph
commemorating those who served pre-WW1.
No one is interred inside.
A sarcophagus is an above ground burial, usually encased in stone.
Usually there is a casket as part of the burial
this is the Sarcophagus of Andrew and Mary Younger.
This style of burial is the main type of burial in New Orleans.
As the water table is too close to the surface in NOLA,
early settlers adopted burying above ground.
But around here, it was popular in people who remembered burials like this
in their hometowns in Europe.
The most expensive form of burial was the mausoleum.
Basically a house of stone,
Many extended family members could be interred within.
and around!
But back then, rich did not necessarily mean miserly.
Those who were buried here had a deep faith.
Many saw their wealth as from God
and as a way to help others.
This is the Dissel Mausoleum.
Inside this Gothic masterpiece,
There was space for at least 8 coffins/caskets to be buried within
It even has a place to sit and reflect
The glass is almost all gone after over 120 years,
the stone work is exquisite!
Who was Dissel?
read below to find out...his wife was a generous individual as well!
This man was also an active, generous soul:
John Thomas Funda
Headstones in the old section often tell of the place
a person was from including:
London, England
Co. Longford , Ireland
Co. Meath, Ireland
And this monument is in inscribed in French!
One other story that deserves to be remembered is that of loss in war...
While doing a training mission, Lt Willard Wilder was killed
when his plane went down in Penn Yan
and is buried in Rochester.
Young lives are the price we pay for freedom.
His wife Orpha was left behind
with a young son Willard, Jr...
and grief.
She found a way to move through her sorrow...
her faith and hope.
This was not the end of her story.
She remarried John D Grosvenor.
He adopted his new wife's son as his own
(who went on to serve his country like his birth father).
Beauty for ashes
Joy for sorrow
Why sculpt beautiful headstones?
Why make beautiful houses for our loved ones after they are gone?
Why make cemeteries beautiful?
They will never see it.
It seems frivolous
.
Isn't death ugly?
No, it doesn't have to be.
In the end,
we want
the longed-for commonality
among us all:
HOPE.
We want to see the hope...
...that death is not an end
for dead...
or for the living left behind to pick up the pieces,...
...looking for a reason
to continue on in sorrow and
find hope.
Orpha found hope.
And in the end,
her story reminds us we can too 💗
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