Oakwood Cemetary, RCHS, and MSMC

Obelisks in Oakwood Cemetery

Today we visited a cemetery, Oakwood Cemetery. I remember coming here last year to do community service, we painted the fences in the cemetery. This place was built in 1848 and graves were moved to the Oakwood cemetery from Troy. Local citizens started it because they saw the need for a place of rest for citizens in the community and in the surrounding area. The cemetery is non-sectarian and it is maintained as its old style landscape. The cemetery has undergone a few changes over the years. Cremation of bodies was a very unpopular way of dealing with remains. It was a taboo thing to do. But Troy's first burial ground was developed in 1796 and Uncle Sam was buried here. I don't think I can even understand the concept of a 'rural cemetery', it just seems really

Uncle Sam's grave

disrespectful to me to eat on someone's grave. I really like the obelisks I saw in the cemetery, this kind of iconography intrigued me.  Obelisks are phallic symbols that are derived from the ancient Egyptian Sun god, Ra. This reminded me of an excerpt I read in an Egyptian exhibition at the Albany Institute of History & Art. We can see appropriations of Egyptian culture in our customs and architecture and furniture. Most of our furniture, jewelry, and other accessories and decorations have some type of Egyptian influences.
We even saw Uncle Sam's grave, which, I did not really like. His grave could have been much better in honour of him since he was an important figure in American history and in Troy. I also saw a pond that was filled with green algae due to the run-off from the coffins. It comes from the corpses that release nutrients and from fertilizers used on plants in the mainland that ends up in the water. The water becomes very oxinated causing an abundance of algae to grow in the water. Then we traveled to the Gardner Earl Memorial Chapel. Which, by the way, was something we were supposed to due first in the morning but there was a scheduling issue. A Hindu funeral

Ceiling inside Chapel

was happening at the time. So after touring around the cemetery we toured the chapel. Since we did not have a tour guide to explain things to us, I was thinking of giving Alice a call and letting her do it. I'm so glad we did not have to eat in the cemetery, which I don't understand why we got lunch boxes in the first place.
Afterwards we went to RCHS to do further research on our artifacts.My artifact was an 1841 hand-woven coverlet. It was made with a looming machine with wool and sewing. I picked this object because I wanted to learn more about what this object was used for (initially I thought it was a carpet), who used it, why they used it, how and where it was made. It was hand-sewn in 1841 using wool as the background and linen to make the floral and fruit designs. I noticed it had a seam in the middle so the fabric which tells me that the fabric was original two pieces that have been sewn together, maybe because the looming machine they had at the time was not big enough. So far, I found lots of information on this object...now not to be lazy and do my artifact project. After that, we all finsihed packing up and rode the van to MSMC. We are going to be staying there for four nights and I am not looking forward to it. I am going to be so tired from traveling all day, every day.

My artifact, an 1841 coverlet for beds