Hidden in plain sight: mixed methods and the marble orchards of the Vlach Rom (Gypsies) in Toledo, Ohio

Abstract

While American Romanies live a remarkably secretive cultural existence, their grave locations and memorial stones offer accessible evidence about their history and active, on-going communities. This article elaborates a less-intrusive ethnographic method that uses Romani cemetery data to explore and map the distributions and social networks of American Romani communities. This case study identifies Vlach Rom memorial sites located in Toledo, Ohio's Calvary Catholic Cemetery. Data were gathered on the memorials and spatially cataloged using a global positioning system (GPS). Additionally, genealogical data on the families were collected whenever available in order to construct and map family networks. Conjectures explaining the spatial distribution were tested by empirically investigating geographic information system (GIS) maps of different gravesite attributes. Land availability was the most likely factor determining the distribution. Evidence of Toledo Rom history and cultural practices were also gathered and reviewed from a qualitative analysis of the memorial stones. These discoveries have the potential to advance Romany studies—by applying modern analytic tools, GPS and GIS hardware and software to reveal otherwise “hidden” knowledge.

Keywords:

• Romani studies
• GIS
• social network mapping
• American Romanies
• ethnographic cemetery studies

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr. David J. Nemeth of the University of Toledo for his mentorship, advice, and support on this project since its inception. I would also like to kindly thank Dr. Beth Schlemper of the University of Toledo for her suggestions, revisions, and guidance along the way. I am additionally grateful for the thoughtful and constructive feedback from Dr. Alyson Greiner and the two anonymous reviewers. A special thanks to Samantha McNamara, who graciously lent her language expertise to edit this article. The quality of this paper benefited tremendously thanks to these contributors.

Notes

1. Though this case study does not embody the full potential of this method, robust application of a Romani spatialized social network data on Romanichals can be found in my master's thesis (Chohaney 2012).

2. The Rom's foundational location in the cemetery was determined by calculating the unweighted mean center of the four founding gravesites. Euclidian distances between this point and all other gravesites (n = 30), excluding the founders, were logged along with the years of death etched in the respective gravestones. Spouses of the founders who were interred at the same gravesite were not included in the data; the earliest date on couples’ gravestones was used for calculation. This information was input into STATA 12 statistical computing software, and a Pearson's r correlation with 95% confidence intervals was calculated.

3. See Chohaney (2012).