The mania for assembling colonial tombstones in St. Anne’s Churchyard, Annapolis, climaxed in June 1926 with the translation, not of another stone, but of human remains: those of the last pre-revolutionary governor of Maryland, Sir Robert Eden. The three-year search for the bones by lawyer and antiquary Daniel Randall in the ruined church of St. Margaret’s Westminster culminated in the commissioning of an elaborate stone to mark the new grave and a grand re-interment ceremony. The Eden translation relied extensively on forensic analysis and public pageantry to secure national and even international validation for the groups that supported it. It ignited, however, a noisy public dispute between St. Margaret’s and St. Anne’s that overshadowed the triumph and the continues to sour relations between the neighboring parishes to the present day.
About the presenterMichael P. Parker
Michael P. Parker, a professor of English at the United States Naval Academy, has written several articles on death, mourning, and funerary practices in Annapolis.