Methodology

I have added a small section to my previous post briefly summarising the articles I posted links to, so it provides at least an idea of what Victorians attitudes and beliefs were for those who don't have time to go to the links. This post will be dedicated to outlining the methodology I will be utilizing in my research. Three areas of focus were talked about in my first post, "Beginning My Research." The first area of focus is Victorian burial trends, the second is creating an electronic database and map, and the third is to make this research relevant to the community. Below I will flesh out exactly how I plan to complete these areas of interest. Throughout my research I will be consistently updating my methodology as what I plan to do, and what I actually do will likely change a little. Warning, this post may be a little dry but I will keep it as short and simple as I can, while still being clear about how I am going to do my research.

To help complete my first area of interest, I will be conducting an in-depth literature review to discover both what Victorian burial trends are, and the history of the church so I can any results, I will then analyse what burial trends are found at St. Stephen's. In my initial research I have found a number of resources that mention Victorian era memorials, cemeteries, or commemoration practices. I have also located information on the history of St. Stephen’s Cemetery via independently published books and preliminary permission to access the Church’s historical registers, maps, and other documents. Once the literature review has concluded and trends have been identified, analysis of the cemetery will take place while I am documenting the burials and after the database has been completed.

Paper Map of St. Stephen's Cemetery.

I will use Microsoft Access to create an electronic database containing all available information on Victorian burials present in the cemetery. Information that will be incorporated into the database includes: plot number; number of individuals; name(s) of the deceased; birth and death dates of the deceased; age of the deceased; additional inscriptions on tombstone; type of tombstone (e.g. tablet, column); tombstone materials; tombstone motifs; type of burial enclosure (e.g. mausoleum, fence, stone boundary); plot type (i.e. individual or family); and any additional notes (e.g. occupation). The OCSV has a set typology for monuments that I will be utilizing for this database. In addition to creating my own database of Victorian era burials, I will be consulting an electronic database of burials at St. Stephen’s Cemetery completed by the OCSV. This database was completed in 1994, and so will likely be useful for inscriptions that are no longer legible. I am sure that at least some inscriptions that are eroded away today were legible in 1994. I will also be cross-checking my own database with this one to ensure I have not missed any pertinent information or made any errors.


In addition to the database, I will be creating an electronic map of all Victorian era burials in the cemetery (the burials to the north and in front of the Church). A small paper map (shown above) will be my base point for creating this electronic map. Inscriptions and photographs of the monuments will be uploaded and attached to the appropriate plot on the map. If possible, software enabling 3D views of the photographs will be experimented with to facilitate a more realistic rendering of the burials. I have emailed a student who has worked with this type of software, so fingers crossed it will work for this project!

The most important part of this project, for me, is to make this research relevant to the community. I find that academic research often takes the information it needs from communities and gives very little, if nothing, back. It is my intent to give something back to the communities I am working with. I have spoken to the custodian and rector from St. Stephen’s Anglican Church and the president of the OCSV to help reach this goal. At this point, I have not been provided with any concrete tasks to complete at St. Stephen’s, although updating maps and an old Church database have been mentioned briefly. Throughout my research, I will be regularly updating my progress on this blog. I have already provided the URL to the OCSV, and will be emailing it to the curator from St. Stephen's shortly. I originally intended to provide it to him in person, but I feel I should get it to him soon as I already have a few posts. It is my hope that anyone interested from the Church or community will follow my progress on this blog as it occurs. I will also be providing St. Stephen’s Anglican Church with a paper to be completed by March of 2014. Hopefully I will able to upload the database and map that I have made online. This will allow anyone from the community to search the database easily and to have access to photographs and plot locations from the map. Discussion with the OCSV has brought up the possibility of expanding their webpage on St. Stephen’s Cemetery, as it is currently sparse. Overall, I am open to any suggestions and requests St. Stephen’s and the OCSV may have in regards to historical related duties and tasks. My goal with this area of focus is to have my research contribute to and benefit the communities in which I am working.

Sorry about how dry that was, but I would like to be completely transparent about what I am doing, and how and why I am doing it. This post covers my planned 'how' so I wanted to make sure it was thorough.

Contextualising Victorian Monuments

Although I introduced my research in my first post, I did not go into great detail about why exactly I am looking at the Victorian era. I intend to provide a more thorough background to my interest in Victorian era burials,as well as a bit of history on Victorian funerals in this post. In this way, I can be clear about why I am so interested in doing this research, as well as provide a contextual base to enhance understanding of Victorian attitudes about death.

In my introduction I stated why I am interested in working at St. Stephen's Church and how this project idea came about. However, I have yet to explain why I am so interested Victorian era burial trends. Ever since I was a child, history has been one of my favourite subjects, and thus anything historical has always caught my attention. Cemeteries often have attracted me as they often provide a breadth of historical information with personal anecdotes, names, and motifs written or carved on the monuments. One of the first experiences I had with a cemetery was one behind a friend's house on an acreage they were renting. This particular acreage had a very old farmhouse on it, and the cemetery behind it was an old family cemetery. Almost all of the monuments dated to the mid 19th century to the early 20th century. Most of the monuments were rather ornate and our imaginations began to run wild imagining the lives that the people described must have lived in her house. As I grew up, I noticed that monuments dating around the Victorian era tended to be more ornate and varied. This pattern was explained somewhat when I began to learn about Victorian attitudes about death. Since then, this era has been particularly interesting to me. When I discovered that the child burial patterns in Ross Bay conformed to Victorian era trends, it made me wonder what other trends were present in that period.

The Angel of Grief monument erected by William Story for his wife in 1894. The link below provides the full story.  A quick Google search reveals the popularity of this monument in the era.
http://wallacestudy.blogspot.ca/2013/03/the-angel-of-grief.html

Here are some links that will hopefully provide easy access to contextual information about Victorian era funerals and mourning. Not all of these touch on monuments, but it does provide a good idea of the attitudes that may help to explain the types of monuments found in the Victorian Era. The gist of many of the articles is that funerals tended to be an extravagant affair in the Victorian era. People would forgo the necessities of life in order to ensure proper funerals. Mourning for widows was extended over a long period of time, and for the first year they were required to wear all black. Length and extent of mourning depended on how close a person was to the deceased (i.e. the more distantly related, the less mourning was required). Many people in the Victorian era had many superstitions about death, and thus small rituals would be followed such as stopping all the clocks in a house and covering mirrors once someone has died. Victorian era obsession with death was often exemplified in poetry and prose, and a favourite pastime of Victorians was picnicking in cemeteries.

Mourning in the Victorian Era by Heather Rothman: This article provides a brief description of appropriate behaviour and dress around mourning as well as external sources.

Victorian Funeral Customs and Superstitions: This is a post on a blog for Oak Grove Cemetery, which is a Victorian era cemetery in Fall River, Massachusetts. This particular post touches on fears many Victorians had surrounding death and being buried (or being buried alive, a real but rare occurrence). If you look to the right and scroll down, you can find a section called categories where other interesting posts about the cemetery and Victorian era practices are listed.  There is an interesting post entitled "Arches, gates, and doors" that provides information on the symbolism of these types of monuments.

Funeral Practices in the Victorian Era: This article provides an in depth overview of what a Victorian era funeral would look like, what kind of funeral money could buy, and even touches on types of monuments that were popular.

So this explains the deep rooted interest in the Victorian era that has sustained my interest in researching trends in this period. I have also attempted to provide a few resources that will help contextualise some of the attitudes surrounding death and funerals in the Victorian era.

Moving Forward

A few things have happened in the last week and half. First, I received JCURA!! JCURA stands for the Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Award and it provides monetary help to undergraduates completing their own research. This is very exciting for me because it provides me with funds to make the 40 minute drive (one way) out to the Church every week. It will also provide me with money to complete the poster project I will be doing for JCURA in March, and any other expenses that may crop up during my research. Here is a link to the UVic page that presents the abstracts of other people who also won. There is definitely some awesome undergraduate research going on!

Second, I finally finished a proposal I have been working on for the past 2 1/2ish weeks. I completed my rough draft with plenty of time to spare and I ended up going back to it a lot and changing minor things over and over again. It got to the point where I decided that if I did not submit it, I never would haha. So, that is done and it feels good to have it out of the way and submitted. Another academic stepping block has come up in the form of ethics. Both my professor and I are not sure whether or not I will be needing to complete an Ethics form for this project. Thus, we will be looking into this and if so I will complete this before my work at the cemetery begins.

Third, I had a meeting with two people from the Old Cemeteries Society of Victoria. Here is a link to their website. The OCSV has done a number of really great things at Ross Bay, including cleaning  and repairing tombstones and fences surrounding burials, meticulously recording the burials, and gathering information about those buried at Ross Bay. They do this purely on volunteer hours and with donations! They conduct tours of Ross Bay every Sunday (each with a different theme) and I highly recommend going to one! Tours are only $5 for a non-member and $2 for a member (instructions on how to become a member are on their website). All money collected goes back into maintaining the tombstones.

Ross Bay Cemetery.

The two members with whom I met showed me the OCSV database on Ross Bay, which is lovely and something I doubt I can recreate (but I will try valiantly!). They also showed me folders and binders that hold the database they have on St. Stephen's, information about how they completed the project, and historical information collected on the Church and cemetery. Within this binder is a section on the history of individuals buried at St. Stephen's and this should prove to be both interesting and useful for situating my project results. They also told me about a disc where an older member of the St. Stephen's congregation was filmed reminiscing about the graves and Church.

We also discussed some possibilities for things I could do. Three tasks came up that I am very much looking forward to. One is updating/adding to the OCSV webpage on St. Stephen's, and the other two involve me separately uploading my electronic database and map to the St. Stephen's Anglican Church Official website (with the Church's permission of course). I will be attending a cleaning session with the OCSV on September 28. We will be working in Section O of Ross Bay, near May St. and Memorial Drive. Anyone can join and it should prove to be a fun day! I would like to thank the OCSV for taking time out of their day to meet with me and review all the resources they have on St. Stephen's. They were very helpful and the meeting was quite valuable to me. The meeting ended with me frantically search for my wallet (I was wearing a new sweater with tiny pockets), which makes me feel a little silly. But I found it! It had sneakily fallen out while I was getting out of my car and was still sitting underneath it! Thankfully.


Next week I will be meeting with the custodian and rector from St. Stephen's Church and we will be going over my project description and timeline. I hope to be out and working in the cemetery by the beginning of October. I plan to be at the cemetery every Thursday for most of the day, although this may change after my meeting next week.

Here is a beautiful fall picture of Ross Bay to finish my post!

http://wikimapia.org/38550/Ross-Bay-Cemetery

Beginning My Research

First, I will begin by stating how I began this journey and why I am interested in working at St. Stephen's Anglican Church. The idea of doing a directed studies project began with my supervisor, Dr. Erin McGuire, sending out an email asking if anyone would be interested in creating a usable cemetery database for future classes of hers. I was immediately interested in this as directing my own research as an undergraduate student is a goal of mine. In addition to this, I have a strong interest in making academic research easily available and relevant to the public, and I felt that I could use this as an opportunity to do so. After looking at a few Church cemeteries around Victoria, I settled upon St. Stephen's cemetery as it has a long history in Saanichton. It is the oldest church in continuous use on its original build site (151 years!). Shortly after, I sent an email to St. Stephen's Trust Society and hoped that my project would be something that interested them. 

The beautiful St. Stephen's Church. 
http://www.ststephenstrust.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/st_stephens_anglican_church_front.jpg

The custodian of St. Stephen's Anglican Church was prompt to respond and we eventually organized a meeting between him, myself, and the rector of the Church. The meeting itself was held in a hall/centre on the Church property on a day in which some of the Church ladies serve soup and dessert for free for anyone who wishes to attend. It was a lovely meeting (the soup was delicious!), and I am very much looking forward to working with and around all of the people I met that day. 

Now to get to my actual research. In general I will be researching the history of the Church and cemetery and those people who were integral to it's existence to situate the results of my specific research objectives. More specifically I will be creating a database of all of the Victoria era graves, including any inscriptions, motifs, stone materials, and monument types (following a system set up by the Old Cemeteries Society of Victoria). I will be looking at which Victorian burial trends are present within the cemetery (if any). A particular interest of mine will be to examine Victoria era children's burials. Through an assignment I completed for a past course, I discovered that previous studies have shown that Victoria era child burials often follow one of two trends. They are found most often either as individual burials with miniature monuments, or within family monuments and plots (Buckham 2003:168-170). That is to say, they are rarely found as individual graves with full sized monuments. I also noticed these trends at Ross Bay Cemetery, in Victoria, B.C, and this gives some insight into the reach Victorian era trends had. In addition to examining if these trends are present in an Christian cemetery, I may also, if time permits, compare St. Stephen's Anglican Cemetery to the Anglican sections of Ross Bay Cemetery to investigate potential similarities and differences. By documenting and researching a small, Christian cemetery, I hope to examine the extent and nature of Victorian era burial trends on a small scale. In addition to this academic research, I am hoping to do any tasks/updating the Church needs done in regards to anything historical (e.g. updating maps). I will be providing my completed database to the Church (although I do believe the Old Cemeteries Society has already made one), as well as a paper that will be completed next semester. In addition, I will be providing this blog URL to the Church so anyone can stay abreast of my research as it gets completed. I am completely open to any suggestions, and I hope that my research at the Church will be beneficial to the Church in some way.  

The cemetery surrounding the Church. 
http://www.ststephensanglican.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/cemetery-1s.jpg

As of today, I am waiting to join a cleaning bee held by the Old Cemeteries Society of Victoria to learn how to properly monuments. I will hopefully be meeting with the Church custodian and rector next week to update them in person, and from there I will hopefully begin in-person research at the Church!

Reference:

Buckham, Susan
      2003   Commemoration as an expression of personal relationships and group identities: a case                          study of York Cemetery. Mortality 8(2):160-175.