Mount Hope Cemetery was established in 1834 by the Bangor Horticultural Society to accommodate the growing needs of a booming lumber town. Shortly after it was created, its founders reincorporated as the Mount Hope Cemetery Corporation and proceeded to establish a nonsectarian, horticultural-based cemetery. The corporation began to beautify its grounds, creating walkways, gardens, bridges and ponds--making it the second garden cemetery in the United States and earning it a spot on the National Register of Historic Places. From Bangor mayors, Civil War heroes and a United States vice president to lumber barons and gangsters, the cemetery is the resting place of the city's most colorful and venerable residents. With the erection of monuments and the donation of land, Mount Hope Cemetery also made important contributions to the City on the Penobscot. In the twenty-first century, it remains a popular location for burials and with visitors to its picturesque ground. Join historian Trudy Irene Scee as she celebrates this enduring centerpiece of the Bangor community.

Growing urban populations prompted major changes in graveyard location, design, and use During the Industrial Revolution people flocked to American cities. Overcrowding in these areas led to packed urban graveyards that were not only unsightly, but were also a source of public health fears. The solution was a revolutionary new type of American burial ground located in the countryside just beyond the city. This rural cemetery movement, which featured beautifully landscaped grounds and sculptural monuments, is documented by James R. Cothran and Erica Danylchak in Grave Landscapes: The Nineteenth-Century Rural Cemetery Movement. The movement began in Boston, where a group of reformers that included members of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society were grappling with the city's mounting burial crisis. Inspired by the naturalistic garden style and melancholy-infused commemorative landscapes that had emerged in Europe, the group established a burial ground outside of Boston on an expansive tract of undulating, wooded land and added meandering roadways, picturesque ponds, ornamental trees and shrubs, and consoling memorials. They named it Mount Auburn and officially dedicated it as a rural cemetery. This groundbreaking endeavor set a powerful precedent that prompted the creation of similarly landscaped rural cemeteries outside of growing cities first in the Northeast, then in the Midwest and South, and later in the West. These burial landscapes became a cultural phenomenon attracting not only mourners seeking solace, but also urbanites seeking relief from the frenetic confines of the city. Rural cemeteries predated America's public parks, and their popularity as picturesque retreats helped propel America's public parks movement. This beautifully illustrated volume features more than 150 historic photographs, stereographs, postcards, engravings, maps, and contemporary images that illuminate the inspiration for rural cemeteries, their physical evolution, and the nature of the landscapes they inspired. Extended profiles of twenty-four rural cemeteries reveal the cursive design features of this distinctive landscape type prior to the American Civil War and its evolution afterward. Grave Landscapes details rural cemetery design characteristics to facilitate their identification and preservation and places rural cemeteries into the broader context of American landscape design to encourage appreciation of their broader influence on the design of public spaces.

A horror story of a children's pet cemetery and another graveyard behind it from which the dead return.

The first settlers of what would become Bangor, Maine, established a community initially known as Kenduskeag Plantation, and since that time, generations of residents have relied on the Penobscot River for food, water, recreation, industry and transportation--it has provided a route to the ocean and to the world. The people of Bangor created a community that has remained dedicated not only to economic growth but also to providing for the needs of the impoverished. A leading port city and the "lumber capital of the world" during the nineteenth century, Bangor also claims America's second oldest garden cemetery, an unrivaled public library, the nation's oldest community orchestra and one of its oldest community bands. Citizens of Bangor have served in the Civil War and all subsequent American military engagements. They have overcome fires and floods that decimated the city and epidemics that devastated the population. They have known colorful and notorious characters, such as local brothel owner Fan Jones and America's public enemy number one, Al Brady, as well as dedicated individuals and families who have served as community leaders and caretakers year after year, decade after decade. And they have adapted to such modern socioeconomic challenges as evolving transportation methods, the Ku Klux Klan, urban renewal and the city's shift to a distribution and service center. Historian Trudy Irene Scee presents all of this and more in this full history of the Queen City of the East.

An insider’s guide to wicked, weird, and wonderful New England. A rich compendium of macabre and historic New England happenings, this travelogue features firsthand accounts of almost 200 sites throughout New England. This region is full of the macabre, the grim, and the ghastly—and all of it is worth visiting, for the traveler who dares! Author J. W. Ocker supplements directions and site information with entertaining personal anecdotes. Topics include: Legends and personalities of the macabre Infamous crimes and killers Dreadful tragedies Horror movie locales Notable cemeteries and gravestones Intriguing memento mori Classic monsters