Mount Hope Cemetery Gift Shop

Merchandise

Gravestones in Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester, New York
Published by the Friends of Mount Hope Cemetery
$20 (tax included) plus $3 shipping/handling

Mount Hope Cemetery is a striking outdoor art gallery, with hundreds of thousands of gravestones reflecting 175 years of interpretations concerning memory, sorrow, and grief. The Friends of Mount Hope Cemetery's newest book commemorates these gravestones in their endless variety and diverse approaches to death.

Within the book's 134 full-color pages, you'll discover stunning photographs of monuments in granite, marble, limestone, sandstone, zinc, steel, ceramic clay, wood, and bronze. These raw materials have been fashioned into simple Colonial tablets, soaring Egyptian obelisks, mausoleums that look like Greek temples, ornately carved steles and columns, winged angels, stone figures in flowing robes, flora and fauna of every type, favorite pet dogs, and a cornucopia of Victorian symbols.

The 6- by 9-inch book is printed on fine, heavy, coated paper stock and spiral-bound so that each page can be turned up completely flat. A full-page map of the cemetery notes each gravestone location by section or range number. The text features information about the materials and styles of grave markers from the early 1800s to the present, as well as interesting information about the permanent residents memorialized by the markers. A section of seven pictures shows steps in the creation of a gravestone, and a dictionary of symbols found in Mount Hope Cemetery is included.

This book maybe ordered using the Book Order Form. Click on the form below in PDF or Word format:
Book Order Form.doc Book Order Form.pdf

Buried Treasures

This book resurrects the stories of some 500 individuals buried in world-famous Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester, New York. The good and the bad, the famous and the notorious, the rich and the destitute, the creative and the eccentric, the lucky and the unfortunate, are all represented on these 176 pages with mini-biographies and a pictorial kaleidoscope of Victorian funerary art. The book covers the period from the cemetery's inception in 1838. There is even a dictionary of symbols and decorative motifs used in 19th- and 20th-century gravestone design. This is a book to enhance your visit to America's first and largest municipal Victorian cemetery. It is also a book to read at your leisure about Rochester's amazing past.
Inspired text by Richard O. Reisem. Stunning photographs by Frank A. Gillespie.

To purchase this book, download and print our order form in PDF or Word format:
Book Order Form.doc Book Order Form.pdf

Frederick Douglass and the Underground Railroad
Text by Richard Reisem with Photographs by Frank Gillespie

This 100-page soft-covered book traces slavery in New York State from its early existence within the Dutch colony called New Netherlands, through its years as a British colony, and finally during America's slave history up to the Civil War (1861-65).

The book contains a biography of Frederick Douglass and chapters devoted to brief but poignant stories of Rochester's many abolitionist citizens who risked all to assist enslaved people as they journeyed to freedom in Canada. Readers will be introduced to several of Mount Hope Cemetery's permanent residents whose participation in the local Underground Railroad story has not previously been told.

In keeping with the Friends' mission to provide historic information to a broad audience at an affordable price, this book, a $20 value, is available to the public for just $10.

To purchase this booklet, download and print our order form in PDF or Word format:
Book Order Form.doc Book Order Form.pdf