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 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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment