Monumental undertaking

LINCOLN -- Fred Tingley looked death in the face more than 900 times -- and took photos.

At the request of the Lincoln Cemetery Commission, Tingley took pictures of all 900 or so of the pre-1900 gravestones in Lincoln's three cemeteries.

The stark black-and-whites, which he took over two years, have captured for posterity inscriptions and designs that are slowly being erased by time and the elements.

Tingley's unusual mission took him into the cemeteries at twilight with his tripod, 35mm Pentax, and hand-held flash.

He set up about six feet from each stone, and the conditions and light had to be right. He photographed in the spring and fall, avoiding the winter because of the snow and the summer because his glasses would fog up. The best time was toward the end of the day.

''To get the best pictures of the stones, you want the light coming in from the sides so that engravings are shaded. It makes the contrast better," said Tingley, who lives in Lincoln himself.

With the flash, night would work well, too, he said, ''but I thought somebody running around gravestones with a flash might attract attention."

Eventually, town officials hope to put Tingley's photos of the stones on the Internet, so that people interested in history and genealogy can see them, no matter how far away they live.

Tingley, a retired experimental physicist who worked in the defense industry, is descended from a long line of gravestone carvers. The Tingley family was in that business from the 1760s until about 1900, working in and around Attleboro and Providence. Since retiring in the mid-1990s, Tingley has been rediscovering his family's work, taking about 300 photos of stones carved by the Tingleys. He has no family connection to the Lincoln stones.

Tingley took a course on how to photograph gravestones from the Association for Gravestone Studies, an organization based in Greenfield that promotes study and preservation of gravestones. His background in physics has also helped him learn to shoot pictures.

''I'm not an artist with the camera, but I know the technology," he said.

Tingley said he felt no personal connection to the majority of stones in Lincoln that he photographed. He paused only over those that hinted at a poignant story.

''Any time a kid died, you'd see that and wonder why. Often, it was a plague, and it took three or four kids in the family," he said.

The old stones may have been meant to last forever, but they are quietly dying.

Marble stones suffer damage from acid rain, which eats away at the surface, making inscriptions hard to read, said John Spaulding of the Association for Gravestone Studies. Slate stones hold up pretty well, but they tend to be brittle. Granite stones last best of all, but lawn mowers and falling trees put all gravestones at risk.

The stones provide information about the people whose graves they mark, including their names, dates, and family relations. And though information from the stones in Lincoln was copied down by hand during the 1920s, the photos serve as an exact record. Researchers have found that information taken by hand is typically not always accurate, Spaulding said.

The stones are also cultural artifacts. The carvers were artisans, of course, but many could also lay claim to being artists.

''It was an art form, a folk art form in the 1700s," said Tingley, who describes his own work as seeking to preserve that art.

Early Puritan settlers placed little emphasis on art, and not much of it survives.

''This is really the only art that is still in existence from that period in America," Spaulding said. ''Really, the only artists of the time were the men who carved the gravestones."

Designs on the stones reflect the mostly Puritan settlers' economic situation and feelings about death.

During the 17th century, the stones were plain, but early in the 18th, they were often decorated with skulls and crossbones, Spaulding said. Around 1750, or shortly after Lincoln's Precinct Cemetery was established, gravestones were carved with a winged cherub, apparently reflecting a more positive view of death.

Many of the Lincoln stones include these depictions of angels.

''They got away from the death heads and were softening the image," Spaulding said.

Around 1800, carvers turned to urns and weeping willow trees, which emphasized the mourning of loved ones left behind rather than the demise of the deceased, Tingley said.

Lincoln's library typically gets about three to four requests a week for information about local history and genealogy, some from people who live far away, said reference librarian Jeanne Bracken. Putting the pictures on the Internet could be a help to them.

''I think those who do find it useful will be really thrilled," Bracken said.

Many of the stones Tingley has documented bear the name Flint, after one of the town's founding families, which began farming there in the 1600s.

Warren Flint Jr., a town resident and 10th-generation Lincolnian, praised Tingley's photo project as a means of preserving local culture. ''I think one could argue that cemeteries and the gravestones within them are as much a part of a community's history as its buildings and its social and economic heritage," he said.