Here Lies the Supreme Court: Revisited

Abstract

Here Lies the Supreme Court: Revisited GEORGE A. CHRISTENSEN Show me the manner in which a nation or community cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender sympathies ofits people, their respect for the laws ofthe land, and their loyalty to high ideals. —William Ewart Gladstone I have always been more than a bit miffed with most American biographies. They al­ most universally end, in my experience, with the death of their subject, and, for whatever reason, they almost never address the after­ death events in the “life” being studied. I do not here mean any metaphysical considera­ tions of an afterlife, but I have always felt that “after-death” experiences should be addressed as part of a person’s true and complete bi­ ography. Questions of funeral tributes or the lack thereof, the disposition and location of remains, and the degree of attention and care provided to a gravesite are, 1 think, indicative of many factors, including the prestige or es­ teem in which the deceased was/is held by the family, the community and the nation. I have a modest personal collection ofref­ erence andbiographical material abouttheU.S. Supreme Court and its members, including what is, in my opinion, the “gold standard” ref­ erence work, The Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court.1 This “Bible” in the area of Supreme Court studies is loaded with reference data and information about the Court, but makes no mention—at least not in the edition 1 have at hand—of fi­ nal resting places for the deceased Justices. Intrigued, I considered this to be a major omis­ sionofsignificantbiographical information. In 1981, therefore, I contacted both the Curator and the Marshal ofthe U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to obtain an accurate, complete, and up-to-date listing ofthe burial sites ofSupreme Court Justices. I was informedby both officers at that time that such a source document of Supreme Court gravesite information did not exist. 18 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY Of course, I immediately decided that I would compile, write, and submit for publica­ tion just such a Supreme Court gravesite re­ search tool. At the time, I had no idea that I had just found a lifetime’s work of “digging” for and sharing such arcane information. And so began what some have considered to be my “obsession” with cemeteries and gravesites of American historical figures. Over many years and many thousands of miles oftravel to collect gravesite information, my primary focus has always been the U.S. Supreme Court. In my travels, however, I have also managed to visit the graves of all U.S. Presidents (except the relatively recent inter­ ments ofRonald Reagan and Gerald R. Ford), all U.S. Vice Presidents, and many industrial­ ists, educators, explorers, military heroes, and plenty ofnotorious folk as well. In 1982, hav­ ing compiled what seemed to me to be accu­ rate and complete information on all of the Supreme Court gravesites (then ninety-one in number), I wrote and submitted to the Supreme Court Historical Society a proposed article, “Here Lies the Supreme Court: Gravesites of the Justices.” My article was accepted and was published in the Society’s Yearbook (1983)? I was naively very pleased with the re­ sults of my efforts. I had tried to research, visit and personally verify all the information contained in the table entitled “Gravesites of the Justices” that was part ofthe 1983 article. However, I did not have the opportunity prior topublicationto complete a 100% personal on­ site verification visit for every gravesite listed. Post-publication, as I continued to visit and verify Supreme Court gravesites, I was even­ tually chagrined and forced to conclude that mypublishedarticle had inadvertentlypromul­ gated a few errors offact. I was further embar­ rassed to find that a few typographical errors had slipped into the final product. Almost from the very beginning ofmy re­ search, I had become convinced, in the sense of the Gladstone quotation at the head of this article, that ifthe United States was to be con­ sidered a nation with “respect for the laws of the land”—a country with “loyalty to high ideals...