Crawford Duncan - The Ampersand Man

What is an Ampersand?

This small, elegantly shaped symbol replaces the word “and” in written communications. The early Perry-Cumberland County tombstone carver, Crawford Duncan (ca. 1810-1850), used this symbol so frequently on his tombstones the temptation to dub him “The Ampersand Man” is irresistible! ¹

Crawford Duncan left a legacy of easily recognizable, often quirky memorials scattered across southern Perry County and northern Cumberland County. His work is full of contradictions. Sometimes the lettering and artwork are painfully clumsy, at other times beautiful and technically challenging.

He used Germanic symbolism, but never the German language or script. His customers often had German names and spoke the local Pennsylvania German dialect at home but wanted their memorials in English. The use of Pennsylvania Dutch symbolism was already going out of fashion in the mid 1840s,² and the red sandstone tombstones themselves would no longer be used after 1850.

Duncan presents an intriguing chapter in the history of Cumberland and Perry Counties. Perry County was carved out of northern Cumberland County in 1820, just about the time the young stone carver from across the Blue Mountain was beginning his career as a provider of tombstones for a largely Lutheran, rural and conservative clientele in the two counties. He was one of the last carvers to use the three lobed red sandstone grave markers, the three lobes themselves a reminder of the Holy Trinity.

Source of red sandstone

The source of these stones is also unknown. At first, they may have been quarried and prepared close to their final destination. But by 1820, there are so many of them it is more likely they were quarried from a larger source and the “blanks” prepared with steam powered stone saws. Red tombstones may have been were quarried at the Fiddler’s Elbow quarries of Lower Swatara Township in Dauphin County,³ well within range to be transported by wagons and canals to Cumberland and Perry counties.

Where to find Duncan stones

Identified Duncan tombstones are found in five Cumberland County and eleven Perry County cemeteries. These figures do not include “lost” or destroyed cemeteries in both counties, and the search continues for additional examples of them. Due to acid rain and eroding of the stones, many stones in surviving cemeteries are completely illegible and unidentifiable.

Life of Crawford Duncan

Painfully little is known about Crawford Duncan.⁴ Young Crawford was probably born in present-day Spring or Tyrone Township of Perry County, the oldest child of James and his wife, whose name is unknown. Their children included Crawford, born ca. 1810, James Jr. ca. 1814, William ca. 1815.

The family was not prosperous. In 1821, three sons of James appeared on the Pauper School Children listing for the county. In 1823, only James and William were on the list as Crawford, now 12, was ineligible for free schooling at county expense. His formal education was short and sketchy at best. Pauper Schooling was in English and this is reflected later in his work. Once out of school, boys were expected to start earning a living or learning a trade.

Apprenticeship

Young Crawford was probably apprenticed to a stone mason or tombstone carver. Since both of these occupations were likely to be part time or seasonal, they are not often mentioned in tax lists, making identification of a possible master very difficult, as well as the fact it was not usual for tombstone carvers at this time to “sign” their work. ⁵

In 1826, James Duncan was assessed $48 in taxes indicating he did not own property. When his father died about 1830, young Crawford was 18 to 20 years old and ready to set out on his own, or more likely working for another established stone mason or tombstone carver. It does seem likely he learned his craft from a German carver, since he used such strongly Germanic symbols such as the flat heart, quarter moon, and six-pointed star or flower.

On his own

Crawford Duncan appears on the 1835 Carroll Township (Perry County) tax lists.⁶ By this time he was married to Susannah Foltz (Foultz). The Foultz family was settled in the Landisburg/Kennedy Valley area and was Germanic in origin. The Duncan children likely spoke the local Pennsylvania Dutch dialect with their mother and relatives. In 1840 the family lived in Tyrone township. After 1842, Duncan was in Penn Township near Duncannon and paid $21 in taxes. His business was increasing nicely. In 1850 he was back in Carroll Township and paid $25 in taxes. ⁷

A stone carver required a horse and wagon to move the heavy stones. In 1837, Duncan purchased a horse from Jacob Sidle, a wealthy landowner and merchant of Carroll and Rye Townships. The horse was deemed unsatisfactory and Duncan went to court to recover his money, claiming it had a serious health condition affecting its ability to work.⁸ Sidle countered saying it just had a runny nose. A panel of court appointed arbitrators investigated the matter and agreed with Duncan. Sidle was ordered to repay $10 of the $15 purchase price.⁹

In 1841, Duncan carved a tombstone for his niece Rebecca Duncan, daughter of his brother, William, and his wife Catherine Dunkelbarger. The child was buried at St. Peter’s Church nearby in Spring Township in Perry County. William settled in Bridgeport and is shown as a farmer in the tax records.

We next hear about Duncan when Wilson Welsh’s mercantile business in Landisburg and Bridgeport failed in 1842 ¹⁰ The case moved slowly through the court system until the Court of Common Pleas ordered Welsh’s assets inventoried. Duncan owed two notes for cash amounting to about $65 as well as a smaller amount which was probably for groceries and sundries. In the 1840’s $70 was a sizable debt which constantly plagued the Duncan family.

It was customary at that time ¹¹ for stone carvers to order their blanks from a local merchant who procured them from the source. The stone carver may have picked up the blanks from the merchant, transported it to his workshop, and prepared the stone. Contracts for delivery and setting of stones vary from place to place, and it is unclear who was responsible for installing the stones at the gravesite. ¹²

Productivity

Based on dates of existing tombstones attributed to or signed by Crawford Duncan, there are three in 1843, nine in 1845 and three in 1846. These years seem to have been the most productive of Duncan’s career. One stone was produced in 1847 and none in 1848 and 1849.

Last Years

Obviously, something serious happened in Crawford Duncan’s life, whether accident or illness is unknown, and his career as a gravestone carver was ending. Without producing more gravestones, he could not cover the notes to Welsh, and by 1850 Duncan, his wife, Susannah and two younger children, James and Mary, were listed as inhabitants of the Perry County Poor House at Loysville.

Duncan, age 41, is described as “criple”, Susannah is 37, James is 4, and Mary is 3. They had no further resources to keep the family together except the grim alternative of the Poor House. After 1850, the record ends for Crawford Duncan. Despite the number of stones he carved commemorating others, there is no stone that has been located for him. It is possible Duncan was buried in the Poor House Cemetery just south of the Poor House near Loysville. Very few stones are found there.

Duncan Family

Duncan’s son, James, served in the Civil War and afterwards lived in Sandy Hollow. Susannah and Duncan’s mother, Elizabeth Foultz, are buried at Young’s EUB church near Meck’s Corner in Carroll Township, Perry County. Her gravestone was carved by “M. Foultz”, perhaps her grandson and Crawford Duncan’s apprentice.

Duncan’s nephew, Samuel Duncan, also served in the Civil War. A son of William and Catherine Dunkelbarger Duncan, his obituary mentions he was a stone cutter by trade. It is interesting to speculate that Duncan may have had two nephews apprenticed to him, although only “M. Foultz” is known to have produced tombstones.

End of red sandstones

The record ends in 1850. The railroads had reached Cumberland and Perry Counties and white marble gravestones became widely used. The old green or blue-gray slate and red or brown sandstone memorials were superseded by the whitish marble which did not weather nearly as well as the native stones.

Whether the quarries were exhausted or the prevailing style of white marble swept the market, the reddish-brown stones became rare after 1850. There are styles in mortuary art just as in any other area of life. Families wanted their monuments to express their standing in the community. For lack of a better term, Perry and Cumberland County residents were becoming Americanized and no longer expressed their Pennsylvania German or Scots-Irish heritage as they had earlier. Members of the Lutheran and German Reformed churches wanted their preaching in English. The old stones, while perhaps quaintly charming to later generations, were definitely outdated.

Currently about 100 tombstones have been identified or attributed to Crawford Duncan. His total output could have been many times that number. Vandalism in some cemeteries has resulted in the desecration of whole rows of stones such as at Reibers’ Church in Carroll Township. Some cemeteries, especially in northern Cumberland County have disappeared entirely due to modern development. The relentless acid rain and air pollution washes away the old carvings.

Red Sandstone

In Cumberland County, anywhere north of the Conondoguinet Creek is “off the limestone” and red-brown sandstone is frequently found along with native slate. The red sandstone, so similar to that of the uplands of southern Germany and northern France (The Palatinate and Alsace) proved to be easily quarried, carved, and weather resistant; as well as abundant. By the time cemeteries began to appear in Cumberland County about 1750, it had been in use for nearly forty years.

A three-inch-thick, 12” by 24” slab of red or brown sandstone weighed about 100 lbs. Every additional inch of thickness added 20% more weight. (4” thick, 12” by 24”, weighs 120 lbs.) A completed stone could weigh between 300 and 400 pounds. After 1800, with increasing industrialization, the stone could be cut by steam powered saws, and transported by canal or railroad. By 1830, when Crawford Duncan was setting up shop, stone could be transported by canal from the Fiddler’s Elbow quarries in Dauphin County to Newport in Perry County.

Crawford Duncan was one of the last tombstone carvers to make extensive use of ancient and modern symbolism. Fewer and fewer even remembered what the six-pointed stars and half-moons denoted - let alone the far more obscure “urbogen” which marks the end of the old year and beginning of the new.

Very little research has been done into the symbolism of early tombstones, and most of it has been in New England and the Mid-Atlantic coastal strip. In Pennsylvania, Preston A. Barba, Don Yoder, and August C. Mahr have suggested pagan and pre-Christian origins for “Pennsylvania Dutch Symbolism” ¹³

The symbols that Crawford Duncan used may be thousands of years old, and their meaning has changed radically. Adoration of the sun or moon, expressed by compass stars or rosettes and waning/waxing moons may now be interpreted as good luck charms painted on a barn more often than carved on a tombstone.

As noted in “The Moons of Muddy Creek”,

The annual course of the heavens, North, south, East, and West, the winter and the summer solstices, the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, and the changing seasons that came with them deeply stirred primitive man to express himself in signs that denoted these changes. Circles, spoked wheels within circles, 6-pointed compass stars, spirals, radiating half and quarter-suns, the urbogen, these were letters in a sign language in which he expressed his adoration.

Symbolism used by Crawford Duncan

It is unclear if Duncan “decorated” blanks as he preferred. Delong suggests there were sample books or lists illustrating popular symbols without giving their meanings.¹⁴ In any case the ancient sun symbols had morphed into good luck symbols or vague intimations of the resurrection.

Ninety-eight tombstones from Cumberland and Perry Counties were identified as Crawford Duncan products on the basis of his signature or consistent use of forms such as “AGD” for “Aged”. These tombstones are found in St. Peter’s Brick Church Cemetery on Brick Church Road in Lower Frankford Township, in Diller Cemetery on Creek Road in West Pennsboro Township, and Council Bluff Cemetery on Asper Road, all in Cumberland County. In Perry County Duncan stones can be found in Blain at the Lutheran Cemetery, Loysville Cemetery, New Bloomfield Union Cemetery, Montebello Cemetery on Montebello Farm Road in Wheatfield Township, and the Mt. Zion or Old Dutch Cemetery at the end of Old Dutch Cemetery Road in Carroll Township.

As stated above, whether the tombstones were chosen from several examples, or specially ordered remains unclear. Customers clearly preferred familiar symbols. However, the star is the most popular symbol with nineteen examples. It is followed by sixteen examples of the very pleasing “flat heart”, and ten each for the “peaked arch,” “sunrise/sunset,” and “circles”.

Circles small and large present special problems. Some appear to be “Eternity Rings” with a short popularity span between 1830 and 1850. Some examples have the name and vital information within a plain circle. Others have sun rays shooting outward from the circle. Are they to be interpreted as sun symbols or eternity symbols?

Leaves and branches of foliage frequently appear with the flat hearts. Willow trees are a common symbol of mourning and are found on six tombstones, as well as three unidentified trees. Six pointed stars ae found on only five tombstones despite its enduring popularity as a barn symbol. One example of a swastika is found. However, the swastika used by Crawford is a different design than that we have come to know.

The four remaining examples present reminders of very ancient usage.

A broken stone at Loysville depicts a non-willow tree growing out of a pronounced “Urbogen”. The author identifies this as a “tree of life” growing out of an ancient symbol of life and renewal. A puzzling example of an “ur-rune”, the symbol of an aurochs, an early Norse writing system symbol is found on one stone. It’s similarity to an ampersand and is striking and pronounced.

There are two very strange “wedges” found on tombstones at Council Bluff Cemetery in Cumberland County. The first for John Bear points west and is enclosed in a box. The second for Elias Asper is unenclosed and points east. The author would gladly welcome any suggestions as to the purpose or meaning of these symbols! While Duncan often “erases” mistakes by simply carving them out, he corrects the mistake with the proper name or date. The “wedge” or arrow has no indication of any meaning.

Origin of symbolism

Crawford Duncan did not use overtly Christian symbolism. Crosses, Bibles, and angels are not found on his gravestones. He used symbolism even older, much of it from what we now consider “folk art.” As the PA Dutch historian John Joseph Stoudt, explains

“Pennsylvania folk art was religious in that it employed traditional Christian images that may in the end prove to be universal archetypes, both as designs and symbols of psychic integration. Some symbols may antedate Christianity, existing in pagan form before they were adapted to Christian interpretation.” ¹⁵

Louis Winkler, an astronomer at the Pennsylvania State University, explains the” urbogen” as the shortest arc the sun travels in the course of a day during the year. It marks the end of the old year and the beginning of the new year. The Celts and early Germanic groups celebrated a post-harvest holiday about the first of November. ¹⁶

Preston A. Barba, a scholar of German folklore, considers “urbogen” as among the ancient symbols of heliolatry or sun worship, which also included circles, and the six-pointed compass star. The “urbogen” is the lowest arc of the waning sun (about 21 degrees above the horizon). It symbolizes the death of the old year and rebirth.

Yet the “urbogen” definitely appears with a Tree of Life growing out of it on at least one Crawford Duncan stone in Cumberland County, and may appear in a slightly altered form on many more. Then again, Duncan may just have liked arches and did not realize he was a link to the chain of an ancient symbol. ¹⁷

August C. Mahr – considers such symbols to be part “of European peasant folk art, inclusive of the Pennsylvania Dutch area…their origin in a Cult of the Sun…during the Bronze Age…” He further adds “The most careful and methodical exploration of Bronze Age sites has proved that the Sun Cult must have been in honor throughout Europe for at least 1500 years.” ¹⁸

The comparison of motifs from Bronze Age horse gears and the “double star ring” found at St. Peter’s Brick Church in Upper Frankford Township is striking evidence of the persistence of ancient motifs. However, many restaurants and taverns wishing to suggest an “old world” atmosphere display similar horse gears and brass decorations. ¹⁹

Frequency of motifs

Dr. Barba adds “The most frequent design on tombstones of the years approaching the middle of the 19^th century is the 6-point compass star. It is the period (1750-1850) when this popular sun symbol begins to appear on the painted barns of the Pennsylvania Germans.²⁰

A tabulation of the probable or authenticated Crawford Duncan stones of Cumberland and Perry Counties supports this observation. Nineteen of 92 stones (34%) had at least one such motif. ²¹

Other favorite motifs are the crescent moon, and the rising or setting sun, signifying the end or beginning of life. These may be lost memories of pre-Christian northern European religions that have accumulated quite different attributes over the centuries. Certainly, one of the most surprising found on a Crawford Duncan stone is the UR-rune and sun symbols such as the swastika dating back several thousand years.

In addition to the loss of symbolism, the German language ceased to be used. It was “old-fashioned” possibly thanks to the Public School Act of 1834, ²² English educated children couldn’t read it. Women’s names were among the first to be anglicized. German spelling of a popular name such as, Elisabet became Elizabeth. Like the equally popular Katerina became Catherine; the pronunciation was essentially the same. The Elisabets and Katerinas who sent their husbands Heinrich Dewees and Johann Graessel off to war in 1776 may have been surprised to find themselves the wives of Henry David and John Gresley in the 1800’s! ²³

Words as Symbols

Gravestone decorations are not always pictorial. Verses were used more frequently as prosperity spread. At first short Biblical inscriptions were used. ²⁴ At the end of the period, Crawford Duncan carved a verse that sounded exactly as if a life-long German speaker tried writing it out in English. ²⁵ George Zimmerman tombstone Blain Lutheran cemetery inscription reads:

Eflicted sore long time

I bore physentans ware

In vane till god did

Pleece to give me ease &

Cure me of my pane

The reader can almost hear the cadence and stresses of a speaker of Pennsylvania German in these lines. “Physician” may have been beyond the capability of Duncan or the Zimmerman family to pronounce, but they approximated it as best they could. Capital letters and plurals were a continual source of trouble as well.

Demographics

Crawford Duncan marketed his tombstones in a generally twenty-mile circular area. This area was predominantly settled by people of German-Swiss-Huguenot heritage with residents belonging to the Lutheran or German Reformed churches. Blue or North Mountain cuts through this section of the Ridge and Valley system in Pennsylvania. The Cumberland-Perry County line runs along the top of this ridge, creating a boundary which was not considered geographically significant between 1800 and 1850 and in no way hindered travel. From Sterrett’s Gap in the northeast to Three Square Hollow in the southwest there were twelve passageways across the ridge, approximately one per mile. Eight of these were wagon roads, one a former pack horse track, and the remainder bridle or foot paths. ²⁶ All traffic moved at the pace of a horse or mule team at the fastest, the pace of a walker at the slowest.

The Blue or North Mountain was not a major barrier; freight wagons and droving herds moved south to the markets and ports; loaded wagons returned north with goods for the Juniata Basin. Normal business and visiting were frequent across this very porous border. Many local families had moved north across the Cumberland Valley from York and Adams Counties to settle in Duncan’s market area. Going to the “Pisgee” or the Pisgah Hills of Carroll Township, Perry County, from Middleton Township in Cumberland County was not setting off on a vast expedition, but rather a pleasant day’s journey.

The lack of symbolism and majority of white marble gravestone carved after 1840 is more a fact of Americanization than ethnic origin. A more detailed survey might reveal a slight lead in Germanic names, reflecting the character of the population.

A look at the history of Perry County shows an influx of German settlers after 1780, with a domination of agriculture. The milling industry, an important adjunct of agriculture, was purchased from the Scots-Irish founders and never relinquished. The freighting and droving industries, vital to the market based agricultural economy, was controlled by men like Harry “Whiplash” Hench and Philip Mumper, definitely of the German community.

The two groups tended to keep to themselves at first. The 1760 tax list included “a dutchman”. However, by the 1820’s Abraham Fry, a member of the Fahnestock-Reider-Zinn-Smith (nee Schmidt) family married Statira Marshall and the race to the altar was on.

The old Scots-Irish families tended to become professionals - lawyers, doctors, teachers, and county officials. They also tended to choose white gravestones as soon as they were available, with ethnic German families clinging to the familiar red and brown tri-lobed stones that were increasingly rare after 1850.

Not only was Crawford Duncan one of the last stone carvers providing the comfortingly familiar red sandstones to conservatively minded rural Lutheran and Reformed families, he offered the safety of ancient symbols whose original meanings had long since disappeared. The symbols weren’t necessarily Christian but they were part of the heritage brought from Europe and offered a modicum of protection and comfort to strangers in a world changing radically and faster than ever.

The dusky tri-lobed tombstones are fast disappearing: victims of time and technology, acid rain and pollution. Stones at Loysville have left more tombstones illegible in the past 20 years than the previous 200.²⁷ Very shortly, the tombstones will be gone, and with them, the memory of Crawford Duncan, the Ampersand Man. There is, of course, no doubt as to Duncan’s favorite symbol. He used the graceful ampersand 32 times on his 98 identified tombstones!