David Sloan

So we can use that as a recreational area.

No.

It would have still been weird.

You wouldn't go jogging.

You wouldn't throw baseballs.

What they did is they got in their carriages and they rode around the cemetery.

Flowers, trees, green grass.

They're like, this is great.

And they might, in some cemeteries, stop and have a picnic at the grave of someone they knew or someone who was famous.

And so you would have this sort of celebrity culture.

Oh, wow.

And lots and lots of people did this.

Over the course of a year, tens of thousands of people would go visit Greenwood in Brooklyn or Mount Auburn in Cambridge.

So that really has to do with the 19th century believed in a closer relationship between living and dead.

You know, all sorts of ways.

I'll give you one very simple way.

When a person died, often at home, they would snip pieces of locks of their hair

They would put them in these elaborate creations, and they would put them on the wall of their house.

They'd walk into a house, and in the living room, there'd be a little thing of the young daughter who had died.

So starting in the 20th century, it happens as early as the latter part of the 19th century.