Category: Article

To Victorians, urns on tombstones represented the body as a container for the soul, which then passes on to the afterlife. Urns became popular as funerary ornaments after the Civil War. A Greek Revival swept across the US and brought the omnipresent urn with it as a symbol of structure and democracy. Victorians saw the […]

This popular Victorian headstone symbol is found throughout Union Cemetery, located at 650 Bee Street in Placerville, CA. Its origins trace to a book titled The Gates Ajar, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Published in 1868, just three years after the end of the Civil War, The Gates Ajar tells the story of a young woman […]