John Hartshorn

Copy of a few figures in grave gables designed by Hartshorn

John Hartshorn (born around 1650; died after 1737) was a New England stonemason whose gravestones were a defining style for the stonemasons of the lower Merrimack valley in the 18th century .

Since the 19th century, when interest in Puritan tombstones awoke, it was considered certain that many tombstones in the area around Haverhill in eastern Essex County, Massachusetts from the years 1690-1720 and from Norwich, Connecticut after 1720 by a stone mason were made, the name of which was unknown. Through a graffito on a gravestone released by the erosion of the earth and the comparison of genealogical data, he could be identified in 1973 as John Hartshorne, who was first documented in Haverhill in 1672 and worked there as a farmer and tailor. Around 1690 he began to make tombstones. The execution suggests that he had at least some previous sculptural knowledge.

Compared to the tombstones that were made in Boston, his style is noticeably simpler and more abstract. It was sometimes assumed that he had incorporated Indian influences into his designs, but his reduced style is probably more an expression of original New England folk art. The cherubs common in England were rejected by the New England stonemasons (or rather their Puritan customers) as idols , but in comparison to the Boston designs, which often showed winged skulls, skeletons and other death allegories, the figurative elements in Hartshorn are often strongly stylized reduced to the simplest geometric shapes.

Hartshorn's specifications had a style-defining effect on the stonemasons of the following generations, especially where, after the Great Awakening (around 1740), adherents of Orthodox-Calvinist beliefs ( Old Lights ) prevailed: in New Hampshire, in rural areas of Connecticut and in Massachusetts in the counties Middlesex and Worcester ; in areas dominated by the New Lights , on the other hand, after 1740 "lovely" elements such as angels, birds and the like increased on the gravestones.

literature

• Peter Benes: Lt. John Hartshorn: Gravestone Maker of Haverhill and Norwich . In: Essex Institute Historical Collections 109, 1973, pp. 152-164.