Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn Expanding our Educational Outreach | Page 10

Copying Books, Rare Records of Cemetery Operations,
Captured for Research Use
By Margaret L. Winslow , Curator of Historical Collections, and Brian A. Sullivan , Archivist
A project that will help educators and researchers
for generations to come has just been completed: thou-
sands of pages of outgoing correspondence, circa 1860 to
1925 contained in 65 volumes known as copying books
have been captured with high-resolution digital images by
Boston Photo Imaging. These irreplaceable, detailed copy-
ing books transport the reader back in time.
On March 31, 1902, James C. Scorgie, Superintendent
of Mount Auburn Cemetery, wrote to Mrs. Julie Nevins
of Washington, D.C., regarding her family lot on Eagle
Avenue, the final resting-place of her husband, Henry C.
Nevins: “Dear Madam, I went over to your lot yesterday
(Easter) morning about 9 o’clock and found the three
wreaths and cross there, and they were very beautiful. The
Easter lilies of which the cross were made were the most
perfect and largest lilies brought into Mount Auburn on
that day.”
This touching note is one of many that provide evidence
of the daily operations of the Cemetery and our staff ’s
ongoing dedication to an outstanding level of service.
Mount Auburn collected and cared for, in separate lot fold-
ers, the early incoming correspondence from lot owners
and tradespeople, but the Cemetery’s responses by super-
intendents and treasurers were hidden away in the pages
of the deteriorating copying books. Copying these fading
pages has been one of our highest preservation priorities
for many years. We are now thrilled to be able to make this
information available to staff and researchers. In 2006, a
generous donation allowed the project to get underway and
time was of the essence. The books’ leather bindings were
powdery with red rot, making handling them impossible,
and, inside, the ink was becoming illegible.
An initial survey of the newly available letters has already
yielded intriguing information. For example, they show
that Cemetery staff consistently warned lot owners that
8 | Sweet Auburn
The Cemetery’s fragile and fading copying books, historical volumes dem-
onstrating ongoing correspondence from Mount Auburn to lot owners and
tradesmen circa 1860-1925, have been digitally captured for use in research.
The type of letterpress in these copying book documents represents a means of
producing copies other than longhand duplicates. The original letter was trans-
ferred to a page by a process of blotting ink. Photos by Meg Winslow
marble monuments were destined to deteriorate in the
harsh New England environment. In 1889, Superinten-
dent James W. Lovering wrote to a Mrs. R.A. Vinal stating:
“None of the marbles stand well out of doors, and the
more elaborate the work the greater the liability to decay.”
Few cemetery records have survived to this extent. Our
collections offer an extraordinary snapshot of commemo-
rative and horticultural practices from the Victorian era
well into the 20th century that will be mined in the years
ahead by our staff as well as scholars. The copying book
digitization project will be precedent-setting—a model that
Mount Auburn staff will consult when planning to preserve
other significant archival collections.