African Americans & 1800s Public Pleasure Gardens in New York City

Public gardens for "PEOPLE OF COLOUR"

A public pleasure garden was a privately-owned ornamental ground or piece of land, open to the public as a resort or amusement area, and operated as a business. But, not all of the public in America was welcome at public pleasure gardens. Some gardens served notice that "No People of Colour...can be admitted."

In the South, blacks were barred from most commercial pleasure gardens except as servants or musicians. However, in the North, many African Americans were taking the skills learned in traditional slave occupations and becoming skilled artisans as free laborers. They now had money to spend on leisure activities.

By 1810, 75 free black males were listed in the New York City directory with jobs as bakers, butchers, cabinetmakers, carpenters, coopers, hairdressers, sailmakers, shoemakers, tailors, tobacconists, & upholsterers. Women were working as housekeepers, millners, & seamstresses. In New York City, the 1810 census recorded 1686 slaves. By 1820 the number declined to 518, and no slaves appeared on the 1830 census.

Even though most blacks were free in the city, "no admittance for coloured people" continued to be the rule in many commercial gardens. In New York City, retired West Indian ship steward, William Henry Brown opened the African Grove opened to serve the city's African Americans about 1818. The garden was in the yard behind the house he rented on Thomas Street. Brown worked as a tailor by day to support the garden's operation.

The African Grove served ice cream, punch, and other refreshments to guests who arrived at the gardens dressed in their finest attire to enjoy the music of a band. Guests strolled along avenues or sat in refreshment boxes built to seat four or more. On inclement evenings, patrons repaired to a large shelter on the grounds.

In 1821, "some of the neighbors, not relishing the jocund nightly saraband of these sable fashionables, actually complained to the Police, and the avenues of the African Grove were closed" temporarily by authorities. To cut down on complaints about the outdoor entertainment and to extend his season beyond the warm summer months, Brown decided to move some of his entertainment indoors.

He opened a theater on the 2nd floor of his home. In 1821, he presented a production of Shakespeare's Richard the Third, followed by Othello and Macbeth. Among the other plays he presented, including John Hone's Douglas and Richard Sheridan's Pizarro, was one about the war between the British & the black Caribs on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, that he wrote & directed himself. The play was The Drama of King Shotaway.

Brown inserted a scene in the musical Tom and Jerry depicting a slave market in Charleston, South Carolina; where families were separated, as they were sold to different owners. He also staged a play, Obi; or, Three Finger'd Jack, set in Jamaica about a slave who ran away to the mountains to escape his cruel master.

Brown did not advertise his theater in the newspaper, but he did post playbills & handed out flyers around the city. When the neighborhood uproar and the sometimes violent competition from white theater owners increased, Brown moved his theater from place to place. By 1823, Brown was directing Pizarro in Albany, New York; apparently his garden and theater in New York City were closed.

Brown's African Grove closed in response to negative pressure from the surrounding white neighborhood. Such negative receptions did not deter the city's African American community, and by the end of the decade at least two more public pleasure gardens catering to blacks opened in the city.

In the city's first black newspaper Nicholas Pierson informed "People of Colour, that his MEAD GARDEN...was opened...for the accommodation of genteel and respectable persons of colour."

Two years later, new owners converted an old public pleasure garden, the Military Garden, into a resort for blacks called the Haytian Retreat. Once esbablished, little notice of their programs appeared in New York City newspapers.

Note: Unfortunately, the only photos I have of 19th-century African American women dressed for an outdoor setting, such as a pleasure garden, are post Civil War; but they are so good, I decided to share them with you. Photos by Alvan S Harper 1847-1911.  For everything there is to know about commercial gardens in New York City, from their heyday in the federal period to their decline after the Civil War, see Thomas M. Garrett, “A History of Pleasure Gardens in New York City, 1700-1865,” Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1978.

Design of the American Public Pleasure Garden after Dark

Lydia Medford described New York's Columbia Garden which sat near the Battery on the waterfront in 1800.

"A most romantic place, it is enclosed in a circular form and has little rooms and boxes all around, with chairs and tables...the trees are all hung with lamps, twinkling through the branches; in the center is a pretty little building with a fountain playing continually and the rays of the lamps on the drops of water gave it a cool sparkling appearance that was delightful. The little building, which has a kind of canopy and pillars all around the garden, had festoons of colored lamps, that at a distance looked like large brilliant stars seen through the branches; and placed all around were marble busts, beautiful little figures of Diana, Cupid and Venus, which by the glimmering of the lamps, partly concealed by the foliage, gave you an idea of enchantment. As we strolled through the trees, we passed a box that Miss Watts was in. She called to us, and we went in, and had a charming refreshing glass of ice cream, which has chilled me ever since. They have a fine orchestra and have concerts here sometimes."

Ironically, the details of the classical designs of many formal gardens with their intricate geometric beds were barely discernable at night. Usually the more formal gardens came to life only after dark under the illumination of torchlights or garlands of hanging lanterns strung along the sides of garden paths, dotted about the edges in trees, and near private supper boxes. The reflected swaying light lent the fragrant walks & secluded arbors the eerie intimacy of moving garden shapes in silhouette. The details of the living garden were lost in the dark, only the skeleton formed by the intersecting walkways separating the garden beds and the shadows
remained to form a backdrop. Strolling patrons, often lulled by their favorite libations, listened to music, & gazed up at fiery torches glistening through the trees. Twinkling candles, which garden patrons had paid for when they entered the resort, dotted the tables spread around the edges of the grounds.

How Our Grandfathers Lived, Albert Bushnell Hart, Annie Bliss Chapman, Macmillan 1916

American Public Spaces - The evolution of the White House gardens & grounds

Tulip magnolias (Magnolia liliiflora) at the White House in Washington, DC

The gardens at the White House evolved slowly as the nation grew. Initially President Geoge Washington (1789–1797) chose French engineer & architect Pierre-Charles L'Enfant (1754-1825) to draw a plan of the city of Washington, envisioning a setting of terraced formal gardens descending to Tiber Creek.


1791 Thomas Jefferson, [Proposed Plan of Federal City], March 1791, Ink on paper, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Manuscript Division Library of Congress.

When Washington & L'Enfant mapped out the "President's Park," in 1791, Washington sketched reflecting pools & terraced gardens falling toward the water from an executive palace rivaling Versailles on 82 acres. When finally completed, the White House was about a quarter of the size L'Enfant dreamed of, but gardens would surround the residence.

1792 Pierre Charles L'Enfant, Plan of the City of Washington, March 1792, Library of Congress

Washington expressed a desire to plant an American species botanical garden. To expand the grounds around the proposed White House, Washington purchased the land for what is now the South lawn from a tobacco planter named Davy Burns, while the North grounds originally belonged to the Pierce family before falling into the hands of speculators.

The cornerstone of the President’s House was laid October 13, 1792. When the White House was first occupied in 1800, the site of the South Lawn was an open meadow gradually descending to a large marsh, the Tiber Creek, & to the Potomac River beyond.

c 1793 Elevation of the north side of the White House, by James Hoban. Maryland Historical Society.

After Washington dismissed L’Enfant for insubordination, the design of the White House was thrown open to an architectural competition in 1792. James Hoban (1758–1831), an Irish-born & trained architect then living in Charleston, South Carolina, won the design competition for the White House. Hoban immigrated to the United States working as an architect & builder in Philadelphia & Charleston, from 1785 until his move to the nation’s capital in 1792.

1800 Etching of Original design of White House. Library of Congress.

When John Adams (1797–1801), the 1st President to live in Hoban's proposed mansion, moved into the house in 1800, one Washingtonian wrote that the grounds were "at present in great confusion, having on it old brick kilns, pits to contain water used by the brick makers."

1803 White House by Nicholas King in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

One of practical President Adam's first suggestions was to plant a vegetable garden to cut the growing food bill for the White House. Unfortunately Adams had headed back to Massachusettes, before his garden was planted.
c 1804 Jefferson's White House. Library of Congress.

Benjamin Latrobe (1764-1820) noted in 1803, "The surrounding Ground was chiefly used for Brick yards, it was enclosed in a rough post and rail fence." Presidents were faced with a scraggly, unpromising vista of tobacco-depleted clay soil scattered with abandoned workers' cottages bordered by a malarial swamp. The greatest majority of presidential landscaping efforts would be consumed with grading & filling projects throughout the 19th century.

1807 (1824) Benjamin Henry Latrobe's South Face Proposal to Jefferson. Library of Congress.

In 1801, President Thomas Jefferson (1801-09) began planning improvements for the White House gardens & grounds, including a stone wall around the house. Jefferson, who was always arranging & rearranging the grounds at Monticello, was the first president to devise an overall landscape plan for the grounds. The plan included a fence, as well as grading & planting the south grounds for more privacy. Jefferson kept geraniums, strawberries, figs and orange trees in pots & boxes in the windows of his office.

1807 (1824) Plans for the White House East Front by Benjamin Henry Latrobe in 1807. Library of Congress.

Jefferson wanted groves of trees, and he picked the location for the flower garden. Fences & walls were eventually built, where he had specified. He also directed the planting of numerous trees between 1802 -1806. Jefferson completed grading of the South Lawn, building up mounds on either side of a central lawn, similar to the 100-foot diameter mounds he built at his villa retreat Poplar Forest for his retirement in 1809.

1807 Charles Jensen. Stranger in America. Frontispiece. Library of Congress.

President Jefferson & his surveyor of public buildings, Benjamin Latrobe located a triumphal arch as a main entry point to the grounds, just southeast of the White House. Jefferson's arc of triumph was flanked by two memorial weeping willow trees. “No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth ... but though an old man, I am but a young gardener," he wrote to a friend from his Poplar Forest retreat in 1811.

1807 Latrobe White House Library of Congress.

William Stebbins described the grounds around the White House in Washington D. C. in 1810, "Extended my walk alone to the President's house: -- a handsome edifice, tho' like the capitol of free stone: the south yard principally made ground, bank'd up by a common stone wall: a plain picket fence on each side, the passage way to the house on the north: --some of the pickets lying on the ground."

1810 Etching of the White House

Hostilities with Great Britain, begun in 1812, culminated in the invasion of Washington on August 24, 1814. British troops entered the defenseless city; ate a dinner prepared for the fleeing President at the White House; and then torched the building, destroying all but the outer walls and most of the plantings.

1811 Etching of the White House showing a plan to add eagle statues

Paul Jennings, President James Madison's (1809–1817) personal slave who witnessed the burning, reports that it was the Madison's White House gardener, and not Dolley Madison who saved the portrait of George Washington from burning with the White House.
Jennings wrote, "It has often been stated in print, that when Mrs. Madison escaped from the White House, she cut out from the frame the large portrait of Washington (now in one of the parlors there), and carried it off. This is totally false. She had no time for doing it. It would have required a ladder to get it down. All she carried off was the silver in her reticule, as the British were thought to be but a few squares off, and were expected every moment.

"John Susé (a Frenchman, then door-keeper, and still living) and Magraw, the President's gardener, took it down and sent it off on a wagon, with some large silver urns and such other valuables as could be hastily got hold of. When the British did arrive, they ate up the very dinner, and drank the wines, &c., that I had prepared for the President's party."
Jefferson's 1809 Poplar Forest with earthen mounds planted with trees subsituting for traditonal pavilions and lines of trees forming Palladian“wings” or “hyphens.” (Thank you C. Allan Brown.)

At the urging of James Madison, Congress decided to rebuild rather than move the capital to another city. Hoban returned to reconstruct the President’s House, as it had been before the fire. President James Monroe (1817–1825) moved into a new house in the autumn of 1817.

While the White House was being rebuilt after the 1814 fire, James Monroe increased tree plantings on the grounds based on plans by architect Charles Bulfinch. Monroe (1817–25) named the first "Gardener to the President of the United States," Charles Bizet, giving him a salary of $450 a year.

When Bizet left the White House, he went to work for James Madsion at his private home Montpelier where he was paid $700 a year. A number of President Madison's slaves were trained as assistant gardeners, one of whom took over as head gardener, when Bizet returned home to France. Madison's garden contained a mixture of vegetables, fruit trees, flowers, & ornamental shrubs.

Mary Cutts, Dolley Madison's niece, left a description of Madison's Montpelier garden, "At some distance from the house was the garden laid off in the shape of a horseshoe by an experienced French gardener, who lived many years on the place; his name was Beazee; he and his wife came to Virginia at the time of the French Revolution and left Mr. Madison shortly before his death to return to "La belle France." They were great favorites with the negroes, some of whom they taught to speak French. Madame Beazee contrived a hat to shade Mrs. Madison's eyes; it was hideous, but she liked it and when she took her morning rambles always called for her "Beazee bonet."

"The choicest fruits, especially pears, were raised in abundance, figs bore their two crops every summer, which Mr. Madison liked to gather himself arbors of grapes, over which he exercised the same authority. It was a paradise of roses and other flowers, to say nothing of the strawberries, and vegetables; every rare plant and fruit was sent to him by his admiring friends, who knew his taste, and they were carefully studied and reared by the gardener and his black aids."

1814 White House on Fire. William Strickland, engraver. Library of Congress.

The front of the White House was used as a common for fairs & parades until 1822, when Pennsylvania the avenue was cut through the north side of the President’s Park & soon after a public park was established.

1814 A view of the president's house in the city of Washington after the conflagration of the 24th of August 1814. Library of Congress.

The federal government used Charles Bulfinch’s (1763–1844) planting scheme for a thick grove of trees for the square north of the White House & named the park in honor of General Lafayette in 1824-1825.

1818 Robert King, A Map of the City of Washington in the District of Columbia, Library of Congress.

When John Quincy Adams followed Monroe into office 1825-1829, he replaced gardener Bizet with John Ousley, who remained the White House gardener for the next 27 years. Adams was the first President to actually develop the flower gardens, that Jefferson had earlier plotted out.

1820 Painted depiction of the south face Baroness Hyde de Neuville

Instead of using seedlings as Jefferson had for his groves, Adams was first to plant ornamental trees. As an avid gardener himself, Adams personally enjoyed planting seedlings that included fruit trees, herbs & vegetables.

Washington City, 1820 Baroness Hyde Neuville.

In the summer of 1827, the president wrote in his diary, "In this small garden of not less than two acres there are forest and fruit trees, shrubs, hedges, (succulent) vegetables, kitchen and medicinal herbs, hothouse plants, flowers and weeds to the amount I conjecture of at least one thousand."

1820 The White House in 1820, a painting by George Catlin.

Adams himself planted herbs & vegetables, & after Congress passed a resolution to encourage planting mulberry trees as a way of fostering a silkworm industry, he planted a white mulberry on the White House grounds determined to nurture silkworms. While a U.S. silk industry never took root, one of Adams' plantings did, surviving until 1990.

1822 Illustration of the White House (New York Public Library)

Adams, who had served abroad as a diplomat, solicited plant specimens from consulates around the world as well as planting the 5 varieties of oak native to D.C. Adams was attracted to the idea of establishing a collection of uniquely American species on the grounds.

1826 Illustration of the White House (New York Public Library)

1830s Detail of Lithograph by D. W. Kellog & Co. Library of Congress.

During the 1830's President Andrew Jackson (1829–1837) became a big supporter of the White House gardens hiring several laborers to assist White House gardener John Ousley. During Jackson's term elm, maple, & sycamore trees were planted for the first time. He had walks laid out among garden beds filled with foxglove, dragonhead, sweet William and daisies.

1833 Painted depiction of the south face of the White House

The famous Jackson magnolias were added to the White House grounds in 1835, which he planted in honor of his wife Rachel, who died shortly before he took office in 1829. The oldest surviving trees on the property now are those two southern magnolias (Magnolia grandiflora) at the east end of what is now the Rose Garden.

1830s Garden Beds at the White House. Library of Congress.

About this time, square & rectangular garden beds were no longer in fashion. They could be oval, circle, diamond, star, crescent, or any shape other than a rectangle or square. Flowers were planted for their botanical significance.

Reportedly Jackson enjoyed naked morning dips in the Potomac, followed by weeding in the his garden. Perhaps because he actually worked in the White House gardens, Jackson spared no expense in providing house gardeners with the best grub hoes & mole traps, and it was during Jackson's term that the grounds began to look presentable.

In 1835, after a fire at Mount Vernon, George Washington's descendants presented Jackson with a feather palm that the first president had grown from seed. Jackson built an orangery to store the memorial plant. Citrus fruits for medicinal & culinary purposes shared the warm new space with pots of camellias, which were brought in to decorate White House parties.

Politics invaded the garden during Martin Van Buren's term from 1837 to 1841. Leafing through White House bills, Rep. Charles Ogle of Pennsylvania declared that Van Buren had been busy "constructing fountains, paving footways, planting, transplanting, pruning and dressing horse chestnuts, lindens, beds and borders, training and irrigating honey suckles, trumpet creepers, primroses, lady slippers...and preparing beautiful bouquets for the palace saloons."

1848 August Kollner (1813-1906) The President's House showing the statue.

President James K. Polk (1845–1849) placed a bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson by P. J. David d'Angers on the North Lawn in 1848, where it stood for 27 years before being moved to the Capitol. Polk saw a parallel between himself & the earlier expansionist. The statue stood in the center of the lawn, which was cut regularly & rolled & seasonally decorated with flower beds. Cut off from the driveway by a fence, this small garden was open to the public every day.

1846 First Known Photo of the White House

John Watt was appointed "Gardener for the Kitchen garden belonging to the Presidents House" in 1852. Two years later, in May 1854, he was given control over all the laborers on the grounds of the Presidential Mansion, causing the Public Gardener to entreat the Commissioner of Public Buildings and Parks to write Congress to fund additional staff.

1853 The north face of the White House with iron fence (Library of Congress)

"... having ascertained that Mr. Watt was the most competent person to take charge of the grounds around the President's Mansion, I appointed him to that duty, he still receiving only the pay of a laborer [$40 month]. This involved the necessity of dividing the force under Mr. Maher (the Public Gardener). Nine of the men were left under him, and the other six were placed under Mr. Watt."

1855 The north face with iron fence and statue of Thomas Jefferson (Library of Congress - Bohn's Hand Book of Washington)

Beginning in the term of President Franklin Pierce (1853–57), the president's expanding hothouses were emblematic of the nations's indoor gardening craze, eventually spilling over with the botanical specimins from Commodore Perry's adventures in China and Japan.

1860 The south grounds, showing the first greenhouse, built on the west terrace in 1857. Historical Society of Washington, D.C.

In 1850, the noted landscape gardener Andrew Jackson Downing (1815–1852) developed a landscape plan for the President’s House & the Mall. He attempted to soften the geometry of the L'Enfant plan, incorporating a semicircular southern boundary & some serpentine paths. He enlarged the South Lawn, creating a large circular ground he named the "Parade or President's Park" borderd by densely planted shrubs and trees.

1880 Etching of the north face with Thomas Jefferson statue erected by President James Polk

Gardener Watt ran into some controversy just as the Civil War was heating up. He became friends with Mary Todd Lincoln and agreed to help her hide some of her excessive spending by inflating the gardening bills he charged to the government to such an extent that the president had to be informed. Lincoln was incensed, refunded his wife's excesses, and fired Watts in early 1862.

1881 Etching of the north face of the White House

In 1867, garden responsibilities for the White House were transfered to the US Army Corps of Engineers. By 1871, Downing's plan for tree planting was initiated, as Ulysses S. Grant extends the grounds south beyond Jefferson's stone wall and had a great round pool dug into the South Lawn.

1890 The White House

After the Civil War, Julia Grant began the tradition of White House garden parties. She substituted floral bouquets for social calls. Her husband added a billiard room between the greenhouse and the mansion. But the gardens surrounding the White House today evolved from Downing's earlier plans.

1890 Photo of the Proliferation of Greenhouses at the White House during the 19th Century.

Hundreds of trees were planted under Rutherford B. Hayes, who initiated the tradition of plantings commemorative trees to represent each President and state. Hayes employed Henry Pfister as his gardener. Pfister remainded through the early 20th century, helping Edith Roosevelt design and install a colonial style garden.

Undated Photo of Grass Cutting on the White House Lawn.

1894 The White House (Library of Congress, BL Singley)

1900 Hand-tinted photo of the White House north face

Design in American Public Spaces -The Ornamental Urn

An urn is a marble, stone, earthenware, or metal vessel or vase of a round or ovoid form standing on a rectangular or circular base. Traditional Greek& Roman forms of ornamental garden urns are the tazza, a cup-shaped form whose width exceeds it height; and the campana, or upturned bell-shaped form.

Because early urns alsowere used to hold ashes of the departed, urns are usually solemn ornaments of reverence, taste, & refinement. Cremation was prevalent among the Greeks & during the Roman Empire, 27 B.C. to 395 A.D., it was widely practiced. The custom called for cremated remains to be stored in urns, which were sometimes elaborate and placed within detached columbarium-like buildings in the garden.
Detail of Closed or Lidded Campana Urn on an oversized Pedestal. 1772 William Williams (1727-1791). The William Denning Family.

Christians considered cremation pagan, & Jews preferred traditional sepulcher entombment. By 400 A.D., as a result of Constantine's Christianization of the Roman Empire, earth burial replaced cremation, except for rare instances of plague or war, for the next 1,500 years throughout Europe & its colonies.

In fact, it was news in the colonies, when urns filled with charred remains were found in Ireland in 1733. The South Carolina Gazette reported, "Dublin, Octob . 31. Last Week as some Workmen were digging up Stones for the Buildings at Power's Court, in turning over some great Rocks, they found several great curious Pieces of Antiquity, being 3 old Urns of a very uncommon Make, deposited together, and filled with Ashes, supposed to belong to some of the Danes, or old Roman People, who formerly visited this Island."

In 1737, the South Carolina Gazette also reported on an extract of a letter from England, "There was lately discover'd on Mr. Campton's Estate, at Coddlestock, near Oundle in Northhamtershire a beautiful Roman Pavement 20 Foot square and very little defac'd by Time; near it were found Bones, Ashes, and Pieces of Urns , an Indication that the Body of some noted Heathen had been buryed there."

Thirty years later in 1767, the Virginia Gazette reported similar findings "from Perth, that as some labourers were sinking a well near Abernethy, in Scotland, they discovered two urns , containing several pieces of antique silver coin, and from their inscriptions it appeared that that place had formerly been a Roman station." Later in the same year, they noted that in "Glasgow that some fishermen lately drug up, in the island of ST. Kilda, two antique urns , containing a quantity of Danish silver coin, which by the inscription appears to have lain there upwards of 1800 years."

The South Carolina Gazette printed a pastoral elegy to a local gentleman in 1757, which not only referred to urns but also to the crop he must have grown, rice. "Port-Royal plains! let never balmy dew, Pouring from chrystal sluices, water you, Nor, from their silver urns , the Pleiad 's poar The fruitful rain and soft prolific show'r. May blights and mildews on your fields remain. And wormy infects guaw your ricy grain: For in your neld's, entomb'd, does Damon lic. Port-Royal gods! Why did my Damon die?"

In the early republic & well into the 19th century, depictions of urns in the public landscape were used as memorial objects in the work being produced by American girls in private female academies, where the young women learned decorative painting & sewing as well as reading & writing. Outdoor memorial urns were usually depicted with a nearby weeping willow tree.

By the time of George Washington's death in late 1779, the weeping willow tree was firmly established as a solemn memorial; as the Pennsylvania Gazette reported on Mount Vernon high above the Potomac River in Virginia, "Now the flocks, the shades, the walks, the weeping willows, the mourning bird of night, the pensive streams, and the sad murmurs of the broad Potomac, which in pride rolled its waves before the mansion of its great improver, call, again and again, the sad story which has filled the world with sorrow, that the illustrious Chief of Mount Vernon is no more."

The emerging middle-class of the early republic & later Industrial Revolution embraced classic Roman & Greek literature & motifs. Urns appeared on imported wallpapers; on mourning jewelry; as furniture inlay; on funeral carriages; as knife cases, and as architectual ornamentation on private homes, outbuildings, & public buildings.

In 1789, needing more space & wanting a building of their own, Benjamin Franklin's Library Company bought a parcel of land near the corner of Philadelphia's 5th & Chestnut Streets. William Thornton, physician & amateur architect, won the design competition. His proposed building featured white pilasters & a balustrade surmounted by urns.

Samuel McIntire, South Front of the Greenhouse in the East Building Elias Hasket Derby House

The John Peirce House in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, built in 1799, featured a lantern tower crowned by urns. The Samuel McIntire, Peirce-Nichols House in Salem, Massachusettes, begun in 1782, has urns punctuating its fence. In 1795, he recorded in his journal paying for "Carving 4 Vases for the Summer House." The Elias Hasket Derby House, also in Salem, built in the late 1790s, had a roof balustrade with pilasters supporting 6 urns.

Urns remained in publiclandscape designs of the Early Republic. Urns & weeping willow trees dotted 19th century cemeteries, but it would be many decades before cremation was once again a commonly accepted form of burial in America.
1789 Detail Schoolgirl Depiction of a Memorial Urn.

1792 Mourning Brooch. 2 funeral urns, plus locks of hair memorialize Mann Page & Anne Corbin Page of Virginia. Made in Philadelphia.

1811 Sally Miller's Needlepoint Urn from Litchfield Female Academy.

1815 Detail Schoolgirl Memorial Urn.

1817 Detail of Miss Diademia Austin Haines composition of silk, spangles, paint and ink on silk. Moravian Museum of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

1819 Memorial for Lucy Libby. Miss Mayo's School, Portland, Maine.

1822 Memorial for Robert B. Harding. Miss Mayo's School of Portland, Maine.

1836 Detail Schoolgirl Memorial Urn.

For more about schoolgirl needlework, see Girlhood Embroidery, American Samplers & Pictorial Needlework by Betty Ring (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993) and The "Ornamental Branches," Needlework and Arts from the Lititz Moravian Girls' School Between 1800 and 1865 by Patricia T. Herr (Lancaster, Pennsylvania: The Heritage Center Museum of Lancaster County, 1996).