Overview

This is the story of a uniquely shaped pioneer gravemarker brought by the first wave of immigrants arriving in southern Illinois in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Although the book focuses on the spatial and the temporal distribution of the style in Illinois, it also provides a cultural context for this folk gravemarker as the nation rapidly changes from a frontier society to a commercial/industrial society beginning about 1845 and continuing into the 20th century. The book explores the origins of the marker in America and Europe, offers a preliminary look at stylistic change, and tracks the migration of some of the families whose names are inscribed on the markers.

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9780998460604

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Reviews

Mike McNerney's enthusiasm, inquiring intelligence, experience, and sure-handed technical skill in the field make this a major contribution that students of American cultural geography will find indispensable and irresistible because his energetic style pervades every page and invites the reader to share in the joy of discovery. Mark Bouman, Chicago Region Program Director, The Field Museum Mike McNerney plumbs the mysteries of one of America's most evocative cultural artifacts: The wraithlike necked discoid gravemarker type which haunts rural graveyards from the Atlantic to the Midwest. Mike's study celebrates not only this one type but vernacular gravemarkers and graveyards in general, a forsaken national treasure. J. Daniel Pezzoni, Architectural Historian, Landmark Preservation Associates, Lexington, Virginia Mike McNerney is to be admired in tackling the subject of necked discoid gravemarkers, their simplicity making analysis most difficult. He has produced a well illustrate book, cataloguing the gravemarkers, discussing their shapes, and finding similar examples and variants outside of Illinois and across the Atlantic in Ireland and northern Britain. Mary B. Timoney, Archaeologist and Author of: Had Me Made: A Study of Grave Memorials of County Sligo from c. 1650 to the Present (2005). Keash, Ballymote, Co. Sligo, Ireland

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