The Park and Whiting Family Stones Revisited: The Iconography of the Church Covenant

TheCanadian Review of American Studies, Volume IX, Number 1, Spring, 1978 TheParkand Whiting Family Stones Revisited: The Iconography of the Church Covenant David Watters Therich artistry of the gravestones of Grafton and Rockingham, Vermont, providesa unique opportunity to investigate the manner in which early Americanstonecarving reflected the religious and private life of the church community. Stones placed for children, including the Betty Lane and children,the Whiting children, and the Park family stones, not only are the best-knownmarkers in these cemeteries, but they also define the congregations 'doctrinal disputes over the status of children in the church. The death of children challenged the physical existence of the church, focusedthe struggle over baptismal rights, and tested the church's ability to providemeaningful religious consolation to the bereaved parents. As David E.Stannard has shown, the fear of death was central to the Puritan mind, and childrenwere constantly reminded of the death and judgment awaiting them. 1 Certainlytombstones for children conveyed didactic messages similar to those foundin sermons and tracts, but in the Rockingham and Grafton cemeteries wefindhope as well as doctrine expressed in portrait effigies for children. In .\femorialsfor Children of Change, Dickran and Ann Tashjian note: "Whereasadult portraiture was particularly geared to the religious presuppositions ofthepuritans, their theological schema was inadequate to responding fully tothedeath of a child, and thus rendered consolation and portrayal difficult."2 Theplaceof children in the church had been a thorny issue since the beginning of Congregationalism in New England, but it is debatable that the theology failedin the way the Tashjians claim. The foundation of New England 2 David Wauers I Congregationalism was covenant theology, and the nature of the covenant 1 , between God and his church, as understood by the parishioners of William Hall at Grafton and Samuel Whiting at Rockingham, included deep religious· and emotional consolation for the death of children. 1 The theory of a covenant community of saints was an old one in New; England by the time Samuel Whiting organized the church in Rockinghamin • 1773. The covenant as it was first established between God and Abraham (Gen. 17.7: And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and th\' seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee), had two components, a promiseto I Abraham, the faithful, saintly adult, and a promise to his seed. This seedwas. variously interpreted by early covenant theologians such as Ames, Preston.· and Bulkeley to be Abraham's children, the Jewish nation, Christ, and finall\' all believers and their children. 3 No minister would argue that grace couldb~ passed on by natural generation alone, but God would assume that eachchild of the faithful would find belief, and he would provide special means throughi the church for these children to receive grace. 4 The Congregational churchin ' New England was founded on the notion that God had extended the covenant with Abraham and his seed to all believers in Christ. Thus Samuel Mather could preach in 1666, "Christ is the Sun and Substance of the Covenantof Grace: Now this was the Covenant which God made with Abraham, and , sealed in Circumcision, that he would give him a Seed, which seed is Christ."S Mather goes on to stress the continuity of the covenant from the Old Testament , through the New Testament and finally into the contemporary church.: I and the imagery surrounding this covenant dominates descriptions of God's: people: "There was included in this Covenant [with Abraham] an ingrafted i Seed. It is the Apostle's Expression in Rom. 11. 17. I mean, a Seed not onlyof the Jews, but of the Gentiles. God did not only engage to Abraham that thm should be a Church of his own natural Seed, and that there should be Saints of his natural Seed, but that the Gentiles should be ingrafted into his Covenant, and so become his Seed. Thou being a wild Olive Tree ii-errgrafte,I in among them, and partakst of the Root and Fatness of the Olive Tree"(pp. 179-80). In countless sermons the true church is the true olive, and the children ofthe faithful are baptized as...