The True Image: Gravestone Art and the Culture of Scotch Irish Settlers in the Pennsylvania and Carolina Backcountry

Abstract

The result is a window into the social worlds in which the bighams lived and worked. he traces their movement down the Great Wagon road along with a stream of Scotch-irish settlers from Pennsylvania to South carolina driven by the hunger for land and complicated pulls of kin- ship, religion, and politics. he treats the reader to accounts of marriage customs and the "great day" on the first Sunday after a marriage, to point out the ties that bound Scotch-irish set- tlers together as communities as well as con- gregations. outside of church, the settlers gath- ered at the militia muster and the convening of the county court, venues that Patterson sagely interprets as old institutions transformed into instruments of a new American society. return- ing to the bigham workshop in relation to nearby Scotch-irish stonecutters in chapter 3, Patterson views their work as reflections, and perhaps agents, of social change because stones broadcast a move from the mourning of old World bodies to the future-oriented remem- brance of their memories.