Generations at rest

Diane Keating Huss, Barbara Huss, Katie Huss and the new pastor of James Island Presbyterian Church, the Rev. Dr. Earl A. Bland, are standing by the grave of John Huss, who died June 22 of colon cancer at 48.

They are animated. They joke a little. They laugh.

They are happy because they know in their hearts that the funeral was the sort of creative celebration John wanted.

"He would have loved the way we did everything," 20-year-old Katie Huss said.

"People went away happy, not sad," Bland said.

"It could not have happened so smoothly if we had not had the church," John's sister, Barbara, added.

Of course they are mourning, too. But the sadness is tempered by a certain kind of joy.

The family used no funeral home. John Huss was cremated, his ashes placed in a plain pine box handmade by his brother with wood harvested after Hurricane Hugo knocked down some trees. A simple pine box -- that was John's only request before he died, his wife said.

A bottle of Guinness and an oyster shell were placed inside the box. Family members had written their names and short messages of love on the inside panels and underneath the container.

The family dug the hole in the ground of the churchyard, and the boys in their clean white shirts, including the Husses' 11-year-old son, Johnny, replaced the dirt with their hands. In remembrance of his father's love of the ocean and beach, Johnny erected a small sand castle atop the dirt mound.

For the service, the sanctuary was packed, Bland said. The church handled all the details: the flowers, ushers, music and reception. Sixty-four members of the choir (nearly all of them) showed up to honor their fellow chorister.

"More people were singing at John's service than there were at Easter," Diane said.

The hands-on approach -- the dirt under the fingernails, the handmade pine box, the expressions of love, humor and faith -- was therapeutic for the family, everyone agreed. It was a way to celebrate a life ("his life, but also new life," Bland said) rather than merely mourn a passing. It was a form of Christian witness recognizing the wholeness of life on Earth and the most generous definition of the word "family," which encompasses both the living and the dead.

"People who've gone before us are still part of the church family," Bland said. "Both spiritually and physically."

Burial trends

Charleston, centuries old, has a disproportionate amount of sacred ground compared with other places in America. Its burial sites are so numerous that many have been lost to nature and neglect.

The dead are laid to rest in historic cemeteries such as Magnolia, in cemeteries run by burial societies that operate today on a shoestring and in unmarked graves throughout the Lowcountry. But it's the churchyards, with their generations at rest, that most vividly remind people of the ways in which the past is populated by religious and political leaders, laborers, soldiers, mothers and fathers, and children taken too soon. At an old Lowcountry church, where parking lots fill and worshippers gather, one can grasp the link between past and present -- the continuity of history.

Fifty years ago, the majority of burials still took place in churchyards, said Johnny Stuhr of Stuhr Funeral Homes. Today, most churchyards, especially those on the Charleston peninsula, are out of space, and one can find a resting place there only if the congregation has installed a columbarium to hold the ashes of the deceased.

At historic Circular Congregational Church, one of the oldest churches in Charleston, Stuhr has conducted just one burial in the churchyard in the past six years -- in a space acquired by the family a long time ago.

Bland and Stuhr estimate that burials in churchyards today constitute less than 10 percent of the total.

Cremations, on the other hand, have been on the rise.

The Cremation Association of North America reports that the U.S. cremation rate rose from 29.5 percent to 36 percent between 2003 and 2008. It is expected to surpass the 50 percent mark by around 2020. In South Carolina, the 2008 cremation rate was 23 percent.

The average cost of a cremation is $1,650, according to the Cremation Association, and that's far less than the $7,300 typically paid for a traditional funeral.

Stuhr, whose funeral home has a 38 percent cremation rate, said the option is increasingly attractive not only because it costs less, but because it gives families an opportunity to make sentimental connections to the land. Ashes often are spread in places once loved by the deceased, he said. It's a respectful way to honor the memory of a loved one.

Some families are opting to avoid churchyards and traditional cemeteries altogether. Instead, they bury their dead in "green" or "natural" cemeteries that employ sustainable practices. The first such cemetery, Ramsey Creek Preserve, was opened by Memorial Ecosystems Inc. in the Upstate of South Carolina in 1996.

Burials in green cemeteries typically do not include coffins, vaults, embalming chemicals or even grave markers. The bodies simply are absorbed by nature.

Sense of history

Back in the churchyard, many of the deceased likewise disappear without a trace, to the consternation of people such as Ann Andrus, historian at Bethel United Methodist Church.

Many forces are at work: storms that blow down gravestones, poor recordkeeping or lost paperwork, vandalism and theft, real estate development. Many graves have vanished under buildings and parking lots, especially downtown, Andrus said. The sanctuary of Bethel United Methodist was built atop some of the dead, she said.

When someone contacts the church for genealogy information, Andrus relies on the Works Progress Administration tombstone records of the 1930s because Bethel has so little on file. Or she visits the Charleston County Library's South Carolina Room, where death records from the early 1800s to about 1930 are kept.

Some years ago, an elderly man in Columbia contacted Andrus, saying he would not rest until the lost grave of an ancestor, an officer of the Confederate army, was identified. It took some effort, but Andrus finally was able to mark the grave of Gen. Francis Withers Capers.

On another occasion, a man in Florida, a descendant of Sgt. William Jasper (who raised the South Carolina flag at Fort Moultrie during the Revolutionary War after the British shot through the flagstaff), called Andrus to inform her that Jasper's son had been a member of Bethel and was buried in the churchyard. The exact grave has not been located.

Bethel, founded in 1786, originally stood on Cumberland Street. In 1795, its members purchased a lot at Boundary (present-day Calhoun) and Pitt streets -- "way out into the country" -- for use as a burial ground. When the congregation outgrew its building, a new sanctuary was constructed in 1797 on the cemetery site, where the church stands today.

The Methodist Church was opposed early on to the institution of slavery. Its ministers, sometimes outspoken, were dragged into the street and abused with mud and epithets, Andrus said. But such treatment did not change their minds. The church welcomed slaves and freed blacks as full members. Sometimes whites and blacks worshipped together. Slaves sat in the balcony, freed blacks sat downstairs at the back and whites took the best seats.

"Rejecting slavery is not the same as equal rights," Andrus said, noting that Methodists adopted a paternalistic view of slavery: It's bad but must be tolerated.

During this long period leading up to the Civil War, the churchyard mirrored the sanctuary occupied with worshippers. The burial grounds included a section for slaves, one for freed blacks and another for whites.

"When you walk through the churchyard and you see these old tombstones, and you see them leaning, displaced from the original spot, you can't help feeling a very strong sense of wonder," Andrus said.

What did these people do? How did they live? Andrus said she likes to consider how these generations, now buried in the ground around the church, once walked through the church door, once sat in the pews, once held open their hymnals and sang.

"It gives people an appreciation for all the lives that came before them," she said.

In touch

Charleston's sense of place is achieved in part thanks to the dead and their grave markers.

On St. Andrew's Day, Nov. 30, 1706, the Colonial Assembly passed the Church Act, creating 10 Anglican parishes in the Lowcountry, each of which was equipped with a church. The first was Old St. Andrew's Parish Church, built that same year. It still stands on Ashley River Road.

The city's early leadership largely was rooted in these Anglican churches.

Buried in the churchyard of St. Michael's are Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (1746-1825) and John Rutledge (1739-1800), both signers of the U.S. Constitution. Buried in the churchyard of St. Philip's are John C. Calhoun (1782-1850), U.S. vice president, U.S. congressman and senator; Christopher Gadsden (1723-1805), delegate to the Stamp Act Congress and First Continental Congress; and DuBose Heyward, author of "Porgy and Bess."

It is said that Porgy himself is buried in the graveyard of James Island Presbyterian Church, though it's never been confirmed, and some say it's unlikely. The churchyard is divided into two parts, white and black. The black burial grounds are owned and maintained by nearby St. James Presbyterian Church.

Doug Oswald, co-chairman of the cemetery committee at James Island Presbyterian, said the dead are buried with their feet pointed eastward so on the day of Resurrection they can rise up to face the sun.

He said the older generation took churchyard burial for granted, but young people have more options and fewer assumptions. Still, a church that keeps its dead offers certain advantages, he said. Two widows like to pause at their husbands' graves on their way to worship service each week. Two young girls stop at their grandfather's grave on their way to summer camp. Three times a week, a woman visits the graves of her husband and son, buried together in the churchyard.

The church keeps people together, among generations, Oswald said.

Henry Meeuwse, associate in ministry at James Island Presbyterian, said the definition of a church is a "community of believers," and that community includes those who have passed on.

The churchyard, which has 450 known graves, is well-maintained thanks to a budget and endowment, Meeuwse said. It is an active cemetery; plots are available. The church has overseen 12 burials in the past 18 months, he said.

Burial rights are sold to church members. "It's not a transaction of real estate," Meeuwse said, "but an option to be buried in this place."

The church was founded in 1706, but the earliest known grave marker, belonging to Esther Odingsells, is dated 1765.

Before any new burial is performed, the ground must be probed, Oswald said. Sometimes remains are discovered.

That's what happened to the Huss family. A small shift was required. John Jr. broke ground with a shovel his father liked to use at the beach to dig the moat around the sand castle.

The funeral of John Huss was a little like castle building at the beach: a quasi-improvised team effort that required creativity, passion and a good sense of fun. "It was very therapeutic for the family," Bland said.

Too often death is sterilized, separated from life, held at bay, Bland said. Survivors "become spectators, not participants."

Not the Husses.

Reach Adam Parker at 937-5902 or aparker@postandcourier.com.

An earlier version of this story misnamed the Confederate general buried in the churchyard of Bethel United Methodist Church. He is Francis Withers Capers, not Ellison Capers.