People in Place: The Cemetery as Social Network

The Dorr Family Plot, Swan Point Cemetery, Providence, RI

(Author photos from November 2018)

What sparks your interest and makes you look again? Dig in a little deeper? Here is my example: the photo above shows the cemetery scene I first encountered around 2014. This seemingly normal family plot first made me pause and wonder what was up with the Dorr family, about whom I knew practically nothing at the time. I was already very familiar with Providence, Rhode Island's Swan Point Cemetery. Indeed, I have long considered cemeteries to be a kind of Facebook of the nineteenth-century. If you are engaged in a "People in Place" research project and curious about extended familial ties and social networks, it is definitely worth checking out with whom your research subject chose to spend their eternal slumber. Numerous times a visit to the cemetery has instantly clarified kinship connections I had puzzled over. So many stories to share about that!

I stopped in my tracks while walking by the Dorr family plot because of the contrast between the commemorative attention still being paid to the central gravestone belonging to Thomas Wilson Dorr and the damage this marker had suffered in the past. Alone out of the suite of six, this headstone was missing its foundation and had been set upright again, dug directly into the ground. Looking closer, I noticed that the gravestone to the left was damaged too, with a seriously fractured base. Perhaps someone had backed a vehicle into these two headstones at some earlier time? This was unlikely since the damage was lower down at the foundation - so maybe a lawnmower? It was possible, but notable that it was only these two stones impacted. I stepped closer to read the names.

This was my memorable earliest introduction to the living history of Lydia Allen Dorr (1782-1859) and her son, Thomas Wilson Dorr (1805-1854). What was it about Thomas Wilson Dorr as the 1842 Governor of Rhode Island under the People's Constitution that still seemed to have currency and draw people to place flags as though it was a pilgramage site? I didn't know the history or understand what I was seeing. And why would his mother's headstone be implicated in this? Or was that all just an accident? It's taken a long gestation period for me to answer this puzzle, and I'm looking forward to sharing my gathered revisionist history that brings Lydia Allen Dorr to the foreground.

Gravesite of Lydia Allen Dorr (March 12, 1782 - July 27, 1859) with her headstone’s damaged foundation.

Gravesite of Thomas Wilson Dorr (November 5, 1805 - December 27, 1854)

During that first stumble-by, I also took note of the family grouping on the Dorr site, and followed up with some quick research on Ancestry.com. Red flags continued to go off. As late as the 1850 census, three of the four adult sons were still living at home. It was unexpected to find them all together at the cemetery plot, even decades later. Here we find a prominent antebellum East Side of Providence husband and wife, together forever with their four adult never-married sons. The Dorr patriarch with no Dorr descendents from his line; his name stopped here. What was that about?

The central figure in this Dorr family cemetery plot is clearly the activist son, Thomas Wilson Dorr. He was the first to die in 1854 at the young age of 49, his health compromised during his imprisonment for treason. His headstone is the spatial headline, made more prominent by the twin flags and the arresting medallion proclaiming him the former state Governor under the 1842 People's Constitution. Even the prominent location of the Dorr family plot within Swan Point Cemetery makes the decorated headstone of Thomas Wilson Dorr provocatively hard to miss.

But here’s a question. Having anchored the first headstone in a central location, where does a family locate the second headstone? After all, no one can really predict the order or total number that will need to fit into a given family plot. As it turned out, the Dorr patriarch, Sullivan Dorr, was the next to be buried here in the Dorr family plot in 1858. The decision was made to place his headstone at the further left side, leaving room for Lydia's headstone to be closest to that of her son. Sullivan Dorr's headstone includes only minimal information: he was from elsewhere - from Boston. But died in Providence. With dates. Certainly it didn't feel like any love was lost there.

Lydia Allen Dorr passed on in 1859, and she was indeed buried beside her son, Thomas Wilson Dorr. A true Providence native, Lydia's marker notes that she is the widow of Sullivan Dorr (not the wife) and the daughter of Zachariah and Ann Allen. A long and nearly-illegible inscription follows.

As mentioned earlier, the remaining three headstones from 1884 to 1897 mark the final resting place of Lydia's three remaining sons - none of whom ever married. Placed at a distance behind the headstone of Thomas (the first born son) is the headstone of the second born child, a son, Allen Dorr (1808-1889). Allen lived at home while his parents were alive, and a later census records him living as a boarder out in Cumberland, RI with the farmer William A. Weeden and his wife. The two youngest sons, Sullivan Dorr Jr (1813-1884) and Henry Crawford Dorr (1820-1897) are buried in the front row flanking Thomas and their parents. Both of these sons remained in Providence. Indeed, Sullivan Dorr Jr. lived most of his life in the house where he was born.

Interestingly, in 1884 the surviving brothers, Allen and Henry, chose to bury their brother Sullivan next to Thomas, in the first row. But the final surviving brother, Henry, saved the final front row spot for himself, and buried Allen behind Thomas, giving the family plot a modicum of dynastic spatial depth - despite a lack of descendants. (Henry is coming into view for me. As I later discovered, it was Henry, the youngest brother, also a lawyer, who signed out Mary Shelley's gothic novel, Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus, from the Providence Athenaeum under Thomas's account in August 1842 while his older brother as leader of the Dorr Rebellion was on time-out exile in New Hampshire; the plot unresolved.)

Even my earliest fast take on the Dorr family cemetery plot made me wonder about the laden domestic environment this family brought even to their final resting place. What was that about? I started reading up on the Dorr Rebellion, a complicated piece of Rhode Island history that to this day has never been simply and adequately explained, in my opinion. Most notably, for over a century, nothing the historians were writing about the Dorr Rebellion captured the domestic tension I noticed on my first visit to the Dorr family cemetery plot. As the saying goes: No matter where you go, there you are.

I wanted to know more.

What could my perspective add that others were missing?