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The Presence of the Dead among U.S. Protestants, 1800–1848

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 August 2019

Erik R. Seeman
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Abstract

Historians have long known that antebellum American Protestants were fascinated by death, but they have overlooked Protestant relationships with the dead. Long before the advent of séance Spiritualism in 1848, many mourners began to believe—contrary to mainstream Protestant theology—that the souls of the dead turned into angels, that the dead could return to earth as guardian angels, and that in graveyards one could experience communion with the spirits of the departed. The version of Protestantism these mourners developed was therefore, to use Robert Orsi's term, a religion of “presence,” a religion in which suprahuman beings—in addition to God—played an important role. Based on diaries and popular sentimental literature written mostly by women, this article brings to light an unexplored facet of antebellum Protestant lived religion: that the dead were “present with us tho’ invisible,” as one young woman wrote about her deceased sister.

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Articles
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Church History , Volume 88 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 381 - 408
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2019 

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Footnotes

For valuable comments and suggestions, the author wishes to thank Peter Marshall, Robert Orsi, Alexandra Walsham, Doug Winiarski, Victoria Wolcott, and an anonymous Church History reader.

References

1 Anna Eliza Heath Diary, Massachusetts Historical Society (hereafter MHS), 18 March 1825.

2 Ibid., 7 April 1825.

3 Ibid., 19 April 1825.

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9 On how these ideas combined to form an antebellum “cult of the dead,” see Seeman, Erik R., Speaking with the Dead in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming 2019)Google Scholar, chaps. 7 and 8.

10 Seeman, Erik R., Death in the New World: Cross-Cultural Encounters, 1492–1800 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 48, 68, 152–153, 181–183, 188–189Google Scholar; and Seeman, Erik R., The Huron-Wendat Feast of the Dead: Indian-European Encounters in Early North America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 53–54, 89–90, 119–120Google Scholar.

11 Scholars have paid far greater attention to death in sentimental literature than in diaries. Kete, Mary Louise, Sentimental Collaborations: Mourning and Middle-Class Identity in Nineteenth-Century America (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Giffen, Allison, “‘Till Grief Melodious Grow’: The Poems and Letters of Ann Eliza Bleecker,” Early American Literature 28, no. 3 (1993): 222–241Google Scholar; and Douglas, Ann, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), chap. 6Google Scholar. An exception is Hoffert, Sylvia D., “‘A Very Peculiar Sorrow’: Attitudes Toward Infant Death in the Urban Northeast, 1800–1860,” American Quarterly 39, no. 4 (Winter 1987): 601–616CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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32 Examples include “The Little Girl's Answer to Her Baby Cousin,” Juvenile Miscellany (Boston) 2, no. 3 (July 1827): 106; and “Lines, on Hearing a Mother Bid Farewell to Her Little Daughter,” New York Evangelist 7, no. 31 (30 July 1836): 124.

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37 Quoted in Rosenblatt, Paul C., Bitter, Bitter Tears: Nineteenth-Century Diarists and Twentieth-Century Grief Theories (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), 18Google Scholar (entry of 10 March 1844).

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42 Tileston, Mary Wilder, ed., Caleb and Mary Wilder Foote: Reminiscences and Letters (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918), 59Google Scholar (letter of 20 September 1837). See also Elizabeth Jocelyn Diary, CHS, 20 December 1842; and Wagenknecht, Edward, Mrs. Longfellow: Selected Letters and Journals of Fanny Appleton Longfellow, 1817–1861 (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1956), 144Google Scholar (entry of 14 October 1848).

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45 Sarah Brown Ruggles Eaton Diary, Rhode Island Historical Society, 19 July and 19 August 1833.

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49 Felicia Hemans, “Dirge of a Child,” in The Poetical Works of Mrs. Felicia Hemans, 4th American ed., 2 vols. (New York: Evert Duyckinck, 1828), 2:82. At least ten editions of this volume were published in the United States before 1850.

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54 W. D. B., “A Fragment.”

55 Upton, Another City, 217–221, quotation at 219; and Sloane, Last Great Necessity, 29–34.

56 On the rise of the “democratic family,” see Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (New York: Free Press, 1988), chap. 3.

57 Many thanks to my Buffalo colleague Neil Coffee for help with the Latin. He points out that familiares includes unrelated household members such as servants and slaves and could even extend to friends. I use it, however, only for blood relations.

58 Sloane, Last Great Necessity, 42; and Upton, Another City, 221–223, quotation at 223.

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60 Catherine Henshaw Diary, AAS, 14 April 1805.

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63 “The Village Grave-Yard,” The Club-Room (Boston) 1, no. 2 (1 March 1820): 70–77. For a small sampling of similar pieces, see “The Grave-Yard,” The Guardian; or, Youth's Religious Instructor (New Haven) 3, no. 3 (1 March 1821): 90–92; “The Grave of a Mother,” Religious Miscellany (Carlisle, Pa.) 1, no. 19 (30 May 1823): 295–296; and “The Mother's Lament,” Ladies’ Magazine (Boston) 1, no. 1 (January 1828): 16–17.

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66 Unknown artist, Memorial for S. C. Washington, c.1789. Watercolor, chopped hair, gold wire, and pearls on ivory. Yale University Art Gallery, ILE1999.3.18.

67 All items held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Museum numbers 918–1888 (ring), 920–1888 (brooch), 925–1888 (locket).

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74 “Laurel Hill Cemetery,” Episcopal Recorder (Philadelphia) 24, no. 2 (28 March 1846): 5.

75 W. Nixon, “Miniature Sketches: Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia,” Ladies Repository and Gatherings of the West (Cincinnati) 6, no. 11 (November 1846): 336. See also “Laurel Hill Cemetery,” New-York Evangelist 8, no. 29 (15 July 1837): 116; and Mrs. B., “Laurel Hill Cemetery,” The Subterranean (New York) 4, no. 35 (23 January 1847): 4.

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77 Adelia M. Beckley Lamb Diary, 17 July 1842.

78 Sarah Brown Ruggles Eaton Diary, 6 March and 13 April 1834.

79 Louisa Jane Trumbull Diary, 9 February 1833. Sentence crossed out in original.

80 Eliza M. Spencer Diary, typescript, MHS, 10 September 1832.

81 Ibid., 4 August 1833.

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