Transcript

Data set in stone: How cemeteries are still very much alive | Katie Goodsell | TEDxTrestleViewPark

[Applause] hello my name is Katie good salt but some people refer to me as the gravestone girl because I like cemeteries and I'm a data nerd it's a pretty good icebreaker right I love introducing myself to people with my nickname because it usually gives me some sort of reaction along the lines of huh that's different but that's good because he usually gets them thinking about something they're not thinking about possibly how cemeteries and data is combined and they're probably also wondering why I'm so proud of such a dark nickname well it may not be as dark as may perceive because cemeteries and gravestones are awesome as far back as I can member I've always had a fascination with cemeteries and gravestones and it started and I was a child my parents were actually the reason that I started to love cemeteries because we used to go visit historical cemeteries and East Sandwich Massachusetts up on the Cape every summer and they would amazingly entertain my idea of wanting to go sit and take photographs and read all of the grave stone carvings for literally hours on end and I also taught me that cemeteries don't have to be creepy they can be beautiful and that depth doesn't have to be as more of it as it normally is portrayed it can be science and sometimes pop culture just gets it wrong for instance if I walk through a cemetery day or night I'm not anticipating to see a vampire run by me after his or her next victim nor do I anticipate a zombie hand coming out of the ground ready to grab my ankle for dinner but on the contrary I visit cemeteries for their historical knowledge and stories carved in stone that celebrate one's life they're places that are full of information hidden in plain sight that data nerds like myself can see an interesting historical and cultural data that can show us how life was like eras ago without even opening a textbook think about it for a moment cemeteries are outdoor museums where I can walk up and touch history with the own palm of my hand knowing that someone years ago carved that gravestone with their own hands and tools I can't touch history at the Louvre can I I mean I can we probably won't end well for me but I can walk up to a historical person's gravestone and know that there's only about 6 feet or so between us it's really powerful and this became really evident during my undergraduate studies at Western Connecticut State universe when I was starting to do my quantitative and qualitative research as an anthropology student I had no idea what I was coming to research until one day I stumbled upon a familiar place it was unexpected but familiar at the old burying ground in Fairfield Connecticut when I stumbled upon this gravestone this is Sarah Osborne an 18 year old who died 265 years ago she clearly has no idea that I exist nor does she have any idea that the real reason I stumbled across to her gravestone was because I wasn't paying attention where I was walking it's typical 18 year old millennial 10 years ago that walked directly into a low tree branch that you can actually see above that gravestone and I narrowly missed landing on Sarah's gravestone in my fall dropping my cell phone and a very delicious strawberry donut in the process which is sad and has I dusted off my genes grumbling I noticed something upon her gravestone she died the same age as me suddenly I didn't care about my phone or the donut I cared about her who was she why did she die at my age what was her story and any passerby could read her gravestone and learn the basic knowledge that I learned that day as well Sarah Osborne was born June 28 1735 and she died July 2nd 1753 she was the daughter of Lothrop Lewis and she was the wife of Seth Osborne and that's it that's all you'd ever learn about her if you just referred to her gravestone but that wasn't enough for me questions ran through my head did she know how to read and write what was her life like what was her favorite color did she like broccoli when I stood up from her gravestone and looked around the manor of the cemetery I had an urge to walk to the next gravestone and learn about them so I did I walked to the next gravestone and the next one and the next one to the point where I was getting frustrated because so many people died around my age and then my thesis question arose if she died so young how many others did too and as I whispered this question I realized that cemeteries are more than just places of rest they also hold data data that I can analyze data that could possibly answer that question that I asked and cemeteries they aren't dead they're very much still alive thus began my journey of becoming the gravestone girl for the next three years I set off on my research in my analytical research throughout Fairfield County Connecticut by visiting 20 towns 159 cemeteries and manually categorizing just under 14 thousand gravestones in search to see if more than 50 people buried between the Georgian and Victorian eras so some 1714 to 1901 had died before the average age of 42 which was very young and I wanted to prove that gravestones can keep dataset if they're preserved and I basically lived in cemeteries almost every day for the remainder of my studies and my process was fairly simple I walk through each cemetery in each town and I take photographs of each gravestone up in these two eras sometimes this could take a few hours or days depending on how big Cemetery was hint the farmers tans and I'd then I'd upload my data and start calculating this is about where I became a data nerd because data could tell me stories and I loved that but what data am I talking about while each gravestone holds a very particular set of data sometimes they can leave me down roads where they have names I can tell what gender the person is they also list if the birth of dusty if I can't calculate the average age of death or they say if their wife husband son daughter father then I can analyze that later or they also have our work on them such as the photos you're seeing behind me and if I can't tell what age that they died on I can use their gravestone artwork to kind of guess where that gravestone was carved in what year and what's amazing also as I can look at the wear on a gravestone looking at the wear is really important and I usually marked down anywhere that was on the stone because stone stones we're quicker even though they are hard substance sandstone can wear quicker than say granite or are their possibilities like limestone but when they're preserved and they aren't preserved though this can happen unfortunately the photo on the left hand side was taken eight years ago and the photo on the right hand side is taking about a month and a half ago this is Sarah's mom's gravestone and we don't preserve some of our oldest cemeteries and grave graveyards records may be lost because prior to the mid-1800s we didn't keep civil records which is where through death or marriage dates such as huckleberry Hill Cemetery in Brookville Connecticut where some of the gravestones were ordered removed but not the graves themselves the majority were laid to rest such a stone and had no other record if cemeteries hadn't been recorded or catalogued and the gravestones are worn down or broken or hidden beneath oil we may never know who was buried there but preserved we can actually calculate data and analyze it to see what is carving the stone giving us a better picture of how the world was like if we zoom out and look at one cemetery or in my case we looked at 159 cemeteries and when we look at the gravestones per year this is actually sorted by deaf ear we can see a really interesting trend this shows us that Fairfield County started off with a less death which makes sense since us towns we start with a less population and then his death starts to boom the population grows since we don't live forever as we know and as we know the more the population grows the more we need have better places to bury our loved ones which is why we have more cemeteries than graveyards did you know that a graveyard can typically be a cemetery but a cemetery may not be a graveyard graveyards are usually associated with religious housings or communities and the burial pots sometimes are scattered because we bury people once they die while cemeteries are a bit more planned and organized because as we started to grow quickly in population we did an orderly place to bury our loved ones this growth can actually be attributed to the mortality rates especially at certain ages and when we order that same amount of gravestones by age of death we can see an interesting trend if you made it to about 20 years old you did pretty well but the younger you were the older you were unfortunately it was the highest amounts of death and then once you see a little bit more of a median age it's kind of amazing you can look into a little bit deeper when we look into both eras the Victorian era had a higher death rate around 56 years old well we look at the giorgia narrows 41 which is still underneath the average age of mortality but when you actually look at both of the data sets between the georgy and Victorian era when you break down to just people who died under the age of 40 to 19 years old was the median age of death for both eras rain around Sarah's age which brings me back to my original thesis question the overall both eras showed that less than half of the percentage did die but during the same era that Sarah died the Georgian era 50% did die over the average age but dis asked me more questions right I'm a question purse if you have a hearty test I wanted to see what else was going on I succeeded in achieving my overall question for my thesis question but I'm wondering why would people die so young so I decided to look at variables such as gender marriage disease seasons and months and towns that people are buried within to see if maybe they would give me a little bit more additional answers and when we lay off the percentages per town of people that died under the age of 42 years or younger I'm interested to see that the majority of the highest mortality rates are in cities and not towns could this be because there's more population and if disease were to occur I'd be easier to spread could be many factors gender-wise it was very intriguing as well we can see that more women passed away 42 years or younger unfortunately and home the Victorian era we actually tied male and females are at 50% by females unfortunately winning by 13 deaths we were almost there ladies and when I look at genders I wondered in marriage play at all only 18% of the gravestones that were catalogues stated that they were married so within that 18% I could see that 21% of the people that died under the age of 42 lived a longer lifespan so maybe marriage did play an effect on life longevity possibly if someone became sick there was someone there to care for them there's also a more financial stability and family and then I wanted to break it down based on seasons to see if that would be intriguing when we look at the seasons and months of death it makes sense that we have a higher amount of deaths during the colder months but during the summer months there's hardly any deaths and then I said you know I want to revisit the gender thing again with seasons so when I break out based upon gender we can see an interesting trend male and females carried along the same timeline for both eras for the majority but in February in both eras genetically swaps is it possible that deaths are higher during that month for females because of childbirth as we look at the lowest amounts of deaths in the summertime where conception would occur possibly in June for a February birth or did more people die in the colder months from illness so I does I'm gonna look at diseases to analyze illness I did research about diseases that spread throughout New England and Connecticut during these two eras and there were a good amount of diseases and epidemics that were catalogued because for prior to modern technology in 1728 there was an epidemic of pleurisy in Newtown in February and in 1716 there's outbreak of smallpox in December and when we lay over our original gravestone chart underneath some of the years that there were diseases we can see some of the largest spikes were also years the Dees occurred it could be a contributing factor oh wait 17:53 there is an outbreak of de century which is the inflammation of intestine from bacteria when you eat or ingest food or water that had people matter it's interesting 17:53 though where have we heard that year before Oh Sara died that year okay so when I did bit more research this information came up there was indeed an outbreak of dysentery within New England and within Fairfield County Connecticut where Sara lived during June and July of 1753 this epidemic apparently took people by surprise since epidemics usually happened during the colder months alongside another female resident from Fairfield Elizabeth Rowland who was buried in the same cemetery as Sara passed away at the average age of 27 just 16 days after Sara and it was documented that she died from dysentery where two to three people were buried in Fairfield Connecticut per day is it possible that we just found out how Sara died by looking at gravestones and the data that we combined from it and researching it is indeed possible because gravestones can be a data set and after presenting my people to my peers all my data during my senior year of my undergraduate career I wanted to hop back up on stage and tell people about hundred people that I had discovered and learned about during this process including Sarah the girl that started it all that even though I just told you about mortality rates and what was the most interesting thing was the people themselves and how we can learn about history from their gravestones Sarah's story just like many others can be unwoven by looking at her gravestone and the ones around her this is Sarah's family tree and even though Sarah only lived for 18 years she led an interesting life and so did her family we went on that for people and her immediate family died before the average age of mortality we also learned that three people and her family were named Sarah very popular name her mother was married twice Sarah had a child outside of wedlock with South Osborn whom she lay married soon afterwards and he remarried after she passed away it's a woman named Mabel and they had a daughter named you guessed it Sarah and unfortunately during all this process I didn't find out what her favorite color was or if she liked broccoli yet but what did I just tell you I told you about someone's life I barely scraped the surface of it but really I also really data to you data that I learned from cemetary because I decided to read a gravestone this is data that needs to be preserved for future generations and there's really easy ways to do it and to get involved visit a cemetery it's as simple as that read a history that surrounds you enjoy a walk and pick up some trash to visit a local Historical Society and learn how you too can preserve gravestones and sometimes help record gravestones just like I did and there wear and tear and finally become a gravestone nerd by learning and reading and I hope to encourage how cemeteries are really amazing places by writing a young adult novel named bones and drones and a coloring book as well to show kids that cemeteries aren't scary it can be awesome gravestones are amazing forms of artwork their historical timetables and data collectors located above residents that walked the land before us but that isn't their story that's just the beginning thank you you