Abstract
This chapter focuses on three individuals whose anatomized remains were recovered from burial vaults associated with an abolitionist church in Manhattan. Active between 1820 and 1850, the vaults contained the remains of some 200 individuals. Only three—an adult, an infant, and an adolescent—displayed evidence of postmortem intervention. The adult and infant were likely subjected to autopsies, relatively private procedures that only briefly interrupted the funerary process. The adolescent, by contrast, was probably dissected, and thus objectified in a public spectacle that dismembered the body and transformed the cranium into a teaching specimen. Yet remains of all three individuals were interred together, alongside other members of the congregation. These cases shed light on societal changes taking place during a period of rapid urbanization, when the makings of race and class, gender and life course, self and other were intertwined with the variable processing and positioning of human bodies.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
- 1.
Lab designation of this cranium is “Vault IV—Individual HHHH.”
- 2.
Present and in articulation were portions of the left frontal and parietal; four additional frontal fragments were reconstructed, and fragments of the left parietal, occipital, and both temporals were also identified.
- 3.
Age at death is based on cranial suture closure and other morphological characteristics (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994). On the ectocranium, the intersecting sutures at bregma are obliterated, though only partial bridging occurs along the remainder of the coronal suture. The endocranial surface is fused and obliterated, and the meningeal grooves are cut deeply on this surface. Yet there are no pacchionian bodies and the bone remains dense and more youthful in appearance.
- 4.
The surname was misspelled on the coffin plate as “Evens.”
- 5.
The social category of “child” is based on the criteria used by the church to assess burial fees (see Ellis 2014a).
- 6.
Lab designation of this cranium is “Vault IV—Individual A.” Two frontal fragments, a left parietal and occipital, were identified. For more detail on the assessment of demographics characteristics and the methods used, see Novak and Willoughby (2010).
- 7.
In 1822, Peter Roe is listed as residing in lower Manhattan (White and Mooney 2010). He and his family may well had fled north during the yellow fever epidemic that summer. They were perhaps residing only temporarily in the Spring Street neighborhood at the time of Oswald’s death in November.
- 8.
Lab designation of this cranium is “Vault II—Individual J.” For details and elaboration on demographic assessment and methods, as well as skeletal and dental pathology, see Novak and Willoughby (2010).
- 9.
This estimate is based on the left femur, though this element clearly underestimates the number of individuals in this vault, which is closer to at least 20–25 persons. Subadults are underrepresented in this count because their femora were either not recovered or too fragmentary to be included in the estimate.
References
Agarwal, S. (2012). The past of sex, gender, and health: Bioarchaeology of the ageing skeleton. American Anthropologist, 114, 322–335.
The American Sentinel, September 22, 1824.
ASSTM. (1824). Celebration of a Sunday school establishment. American Sunday School Teachers’ Magazine and Journal of Education, 1(1), 21–29.
Appaduri, A. (1998). Dead certain: Ethnic violence in the era of globalization. Public Culture, 10, 225–247.
Boutin, A. T. (2011). Crafting a bioarchaeology of personhood: osteobiographical narratives from Alalakh. In A. Baadsgaard, A. T. Boutin, & J. E. Buikstra (Eds.), Breathing new life into the evidence of death: Contemporary approaches to bioarchaeology (pp. 109–133). Santa Fe: SAR.
Buikstra, J. E., & Ubelaker, D. E. (1994). Standards for data collection from human skeletal remains: Proceedings of a seminar at the Field Museum of Natural History. Fayetteville: Arkansas Archeological Survey.
Burrows, E. G., & Wallace, M. (1999). Gotham: A history of New York City to 1898. New York: Oxford University Press.
Campbell, C. (1987). The romantic ethic and the spirit of modern consumerism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Cherryson, A., Crossland, Z., & Tarlow, S. (2012). A fine and private place: The archaeology of death and burial in post-Medieval Britain and Ireland. Leicester: University of Leicester.
The Courier and Enquirer, July 14, 1834.
Crossland, Z. (2009a). Acts of estrangement. The post-mortem making of self and other. Archaeological Dialogues, 16(1), 102–125.
Crossland, Z. (2009b). Of clues and signs: The dead body and its potential traces. American Anthropologist, 111, 69–80.
DeGidio, W. W. (2003). Ware family history: Descendants from ancient, medieval, and modern kings and queens, and presidents of the United States. Virginia: Wanda Ware DeGidio.
Duffy, J. (1968). A history of public health in New York City, 1625–1866. New York: Russell Sage.
Duncan, W. D., & Schwarz, K. R. (2014). Partible, permeable, and relational bodies in a Maya mass grave. In A. J. Osterholtz et al. (Eds.), Commingled and disarticulated human remains: Working toward improved theory, method, and data (pp. 149–170). New York: Springer.
Ellis, M. A. B. (2010). The children of Spring Street: Rickets in an early nineteenth-century urban congregation. Northeast Historical Archaeology, 39, 120–133. Ellis, M. A. B. (2014a). A disciplined childhood: a social bioarchaeology of the subadults of the Spring Street Presbyterian Church. In J. Thomson, M. Alfonso, & J. Crandall (Eds.), Tracing childhood: Bioarchaeological investigations of early lives in antiquity (pp. 139–158). Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
Ellis, M. A. B. (2014b). The children of Spring Street: The remains of childhood in a nineteenth century abolitionist congregation. Unpublished dissertation, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY.
FFP. (1828). Frey family papers. New York Historical Society, New York, NY.
Finkelstein, B. (1985). Casting networks of good influence: The reconstruction of childhood in the United States, 1790–1870. In J. M. Hawes & N. R. Hiner (Eds.), American childhood: A research guide and historical handbook (pp. 111–152). Westport, CT: Green Wood Press.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Vintage Books.
Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality. New York: Random House.
Fowler, C. (2010). From identity and material culture to personhood and materiality. In D. Hicks & M. Beaudry (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of material culture studies (pp. 352–385). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Geller, P. (2009). Bodyscapes, biology, and heteronormativity. American Anthropologist, 111, 504–516.
Geller, P. (2012). Parting (with) the dead: Body partibility as evidence of commoner ancestor veneration. Ancient Mesoamerica, 23, 115–130.
Gifford, J. M. (1975). Emily Tubman and the African colonization movement in Georgia. The Georgia Historical Quarterly, 59, 10–24.
Godman, J. D. (1828). Introductory lecture to the course of anatomy and physiology in Rutgers Medical College, New York (2nd ed.). New York: H. Stevenson.
Gorn, E. J. (1987). “Good- bye boys, I die a true American”: Homicide, nativism, and working-class culture in antebellum New York City. The Journal of American History, 74, 388–410.
Halperin, E. C. (2007). The poor, the Black, and the marginalized as the source for cadavers in United States anatomical education. Clinical Anatomy, 20, 489–495.
Harris, O. J. T., & Robb, J. (2012). Multiple ontologies and the problem of the body in history. American Anthropologist, 114, 668–679.
Harrison, S. (2010). Bones in the rebel lady’s boudoir: Ethnology, race and trophy-hunting in the American Civil War. Journal of Material Culture, 15, 385–401.
Harvey, D. (2000). The body as an accumulation strategy. In Spaces of hope (pp. 97–113). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hatch, N. O. (1989). The democratization of American Christianity. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Headley, J. T. (1873). The great riots of New York 1712 to1873. New York: E. B. Treat.
Hodges, G. R. G. (2012). New York City cartmen 1667–1850. New York: New York University Press. Revised edition.
Husband, J. (2010). Antislavery discourse and nineteenth-century American literature: Incendiary pictures. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hutchings, S. (1894). Remembrances of the Rev. Samuel Hutchings. Ms. in possession of Thomas Hutchings, IN.
Ingold, T. (2011). Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description. London: Routledge.
Kaestle, C. F. (1983). Pillars of the republic: Common schools and American society 1780–1860. New York: Hill and Wang.
Lemire, E. (2002). “Miscegenation”: Making race in America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Meade, E. D. (2010). “A free church for the people”: The history of the Spring Street Church and its burial vaults. Northeast Historical Archaeology, 39, 8–18.
Meade, E. D., & White, R. L. (2013). Public life, personal grief: The contrasting existence of a nineteenth century New York family. In M. F. Janowitz & D. Dallal (Eds.), Tales of Gotham: Historical archaeology, ethnohistory and microhistory of New York City (pp. 313–326). New York: Springer.
Meckel, R. A. (1990). Save the babies: American public health reform and the prevention of infant mortality 1850–1929. Baltimore: John’s Hopkins University Press.
Mintz, S. (2004). Huck’s raft: A history of American childhood. Cambridge, MA: Belknap.
Molleson, T., & Cox, M. (1993). The Spitalfields project, volume 2: The anthropology. The middling sort. York: Council for British Archaeology.
Moment, A. H. (1877). The seventy-fifth anniversary of old Spring Street Presbyterian Church, New York City: The sermon and the services. New York: Spring Street Presbyterian Church.
Mooney, D. B. (2010). Lost within the rubble: The archaeological findings from the Spring Street Presbyterian Church burial vaults. Northeast Historical Archaeology, 39, 19–39.
Moore, W. (2005). The knife man: Blood, body snatching, and the birth of modern surgery. New York: Broadway Books.
Morin, E. (2010). Introduction: Archaeological and forensic investigations of an abolitionist church in New York City. Northeast Historical Archaeology, 39, 1–7.
NYCDR. New York City Death Records, Volumes 4 and 5. The Family History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, UT.
Novak, S. A. (2014). Leave taking: Materialities of moving over land. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 24, 1–9.
Novak, S. A., & Willoughby, W. (2010). Resurrectionists’ excursions: Evidence of postmortem dissection from the Spring Street Presbyterian Church. Northeast Historical Archaeology, 39, 134–152.
Nystrom, K. C. (2011). Postmortem examinations and the embodiment of inequality in 19th century United States. International Journal of Paleopathology, 1, 164–172.
Nystrom, K. C. (2014). A bioarchaeology of structural violence and dissection in the 19th-century United States. American Anthropologist, 16, 765–779.
Reitano, J. R. (2010). The restless city. New York: Routledge.
RFP. Roe family papers. Unpublished MS 774. Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.
Richardson, R. (1987). Death, dissection and the destitute. London: Routledge and Kegan.
Robb, J. (2013a). History in the body: The scale of belief. In J. Robb & T. R. Pauketat (Eds.), Big histories, human lives: Tackling problems of scale in archaeology (pp. 77–99). Santa Fe: SAR Press.
Robb, J. (2013b). Creating death: an archaeology of dying. In S. Tarlow & L. Nilsson Stutz (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of the archaeology of death and burial (pp. 441–457). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Robb, J., & Harris, O. J. T. (2013). The body in history: Europe from the Palaeolithic to the future. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rodseth, L., & Olsen, J. (2000). Mystics against the market: American religions and the autocritique of capitalism. Critique of Anthropology, 20, 265–288.
SM. Spring Street Presbyterian Church session minutes 1811–1835. Unpublished. The collection of the Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA.
Sappol, M. (2002). A traffic of dead bodies: Anatomy and embodied social identity in nineteenth-century America. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Schultz, S. M. (1992). Body snatching: The robbing of graves for the education of physicians in early nineteenth century America. Jefferson: McFarland and Company.
Segal, D. A., & Yanagisako, S. J. (2005). Unwrapping the sacred bundle: Reflections of the disciplining of anthropology. Durham: Duke University Press.
Sellers, C. (1991). The market revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846. New York: Oxford University Press.
Simmel, G. (1971[1908]). The stranger. In D. N. Levine (Ed.), On individuality and social forms (pp. 143-149). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sofaer, J. R. (2006). The body as material culture: A theoretical osteoarchaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
TM. Spring Street Presbyterian Church trustees’ minutes 1811–1825. Unpublished. The collection of the Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA.
TR. Spring Street Presbyterian Church trustees’ record 1826–1841. Unpublished. The collection of the Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA.
Tarlow, S. (2011). Ritual, belief and the dead body in early modern Britain and Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, C. W. (1989). Sources of the self: The making of modern identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
WFP. Wickham Family Papers, 1785–1958. Unpublished MS 773. Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.
White, R. L., & Mooney, D. B. (2010). Stories from the rubble: Analysis of the mortuary artifacts from the Spring Street Presbyterian Church vaults. Northeast Historical Archaeology, 39, 40–64.
Wright, C. E. (1984). Merchants and mandarins: New York and the early China trade. In D. S. Howard (Ed.), New York and the China trade (pp. 17–50). New York: New York Historical Society.
Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Acknowledgements
I thank Kenneth Nystrom for his invitation to participate in this volume, and for his insightful comments on my chapter. I am grateful to my numerous collaborators on this project, but especially Joan Brenner-Coltrain and Stephanie Gladyck for allowing me to include their unpublished findings. These findings were funded in part by an Appleby-Mosher grant through the Maxwell School, Syracuse University. My thanks also goes to Anthony Faulkner, Valerie Haley, Ralph Stevens, and Joseph Stoll for producing the images in this chapter, and to Lars Rodseth, Meredith Ellis, and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Novak, S.A. (2017). Partible Persons or Persons Apart: Postmortem Interventions at the Spring Street Presbyterian Church, Manhattan. In: Nystrom, K. (eds) The Bioarchaeology of Dissection and Autopsy in the United States. Bioarchaeology and Social Theory. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26836-1_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26836-1_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-26834-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-26836-1
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)