"Gravestones are an important source of genealogical information but they also have their own history. Initially craft products that reflected locally available materials, traditional skills, and local, regional, or cultural stylistic and symbolic traditions, gravestones increasingly became modern, standardized and mass produced industrial products through the course of the 19th century. Canada became part of a North American consumer marketplace in which materials, designs, and eventually monuments themselves originated outside the locality, produced at a few centralized quarry sites and wholesaled to local monument makers who added the inscriptions and became more retailers than craftsmen. This presentation looks at the work of some of Ottawa's early gravestone makers in the context of this transition from craft to industry."The presentation is at the City of Ottawa Archives, 100 Tallwood Drive, Nepean,
The meeting will be followed by a meeting of the Computer Special Interest Group
I would love to be in Ottawa for the Memorial lecture, as I knew both Ryan Taylor (as my editor/colleague/friend and Brian Gilchrist. At early OGS conferences they were often mistaken for each other because they looked somewhat alike. They both were good humoured about this.
ReplyDeleteI am a taphophiliac, so love cemeteries and photograph them when on genealogy hunts. A few years ago, in preparing an article for publication, I did my first Grave rubbing which disclosed a remarkable engraving which led to a an article which has caused much interest here in Niagara.
On a return from England years ago, when sharing travel photos with colleagues, one asked if I'd had a good time as so many pictures were in graveyards. The answer was yes indeed.