The International Order of Odd Fellows Cemetery in Santa Fe Photograph by Alysia Abbott in 2016 Courtesy of the Santa Fe Chapter of the I. O. O. F.
A Little Earth for Charity: A New Kind of Cemetery in 19th Century Santa Fe
February 20, 2020, 3pm
Dr. Alysia Abbott
545 Canyon Road, Suite 2, Santa Fe
Historic Santa Fe Foundation presents a lecture by Dr. Alysia Abbott entitled A Little Earth for Charity: A New Kind of Cemetery in 19th Century Santa Fe. The talk is scheduled for Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 3pm in the sala of HSFF offices located at 545 Canyon Road, Suite 2, Santa Fe.
ADMISSION FOR NON-MEMBERS IS $10.00.
Due to limited seating reservations are required.
ABOUT THE TALK:
In the middle of the 19th century, a movement was growing to abandon the traditional sanctified Catholic burial grounds that had been in use in Santa Fe for centuries. The reasons were both esthetic and practical. The old cemeteries were unhealthy, unattractive, and difficult to maintain. In addition, the traditional Catholic burial grounds could not permit the burial of Protestants. The mostly Protestant men and women who were following the Santa Fe Trail and settling in La Villa Real, were set to transform the concept of cemetery as Santa Fe had always known it. They needed cemeteries and so they were obliged to create them.
The new cemeteries would take all faiths. They were to be placed outside of town, in open spaces, for the orderly and “sanitary” disposal of the dead. They would become the communal resting places of Santa Fe. They would provide space for high and low born, administrators, merchants, teachers, clergy and the ordinary people of Santa Fe. The International Order of Odd Fellows Cemetery is one such place, commissioned in 1884 as the “Aztlan Cemetery” on vacant farmland southwest of town.
The “Odd Fellows” considered it their mission to provide a “Little Earth for Charity”, a place where the indigent and the outcast of Santa Fe could have dignified burial. The cemetery founders also saw the cemetery as the resting place for members of Santa Fe’s burgeoning fraternal and sororal community and their families. Prominent citizens buried with undesirables? The idea was radical, but the Odd Fellows cemetery is its testament. Recent efforts to document the history and the monuments of the I. O. O. F Cemetery have revealed that it is indeed the resting place of an amazing cross section of the people who lived and died in Territorial Santa Fe.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Dr. Abbott holds a B. A. in Archaeology from the University of Texas and an M. A. and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of New Mexico. She has over 30 years of archaeological and historical research experience in New Mexico and the broader Southwestern United States.
After working as an archaeologist for the Forest Service, the Park Service and the Pueblo of Zuni, her career in the study of Santa Fe history and prehistory began when she came to work for the New Mexico Historic Preservation Division in 1998. She later moved on to work as a Preservation Planner for the City of Santa Fe, before establishing her own archaeological research firm in Santa Fe in 2004.
Her wide ranging Santa Fe research projects have included excavations at the San Miguel Chapel and documenting the early pre-Columbian settlement of Santa Fe. In 2017, she received the City of Santa Fe’s Historic Preservation Historic Districts Review Board and Archaeological Review Committee Heritage Preservation Award for a study of a portion of the historic Acequia Madre. Her most recent research involves documenting the extensive history of Santa Fe’s historic cemeteries.