I grew up in eastern Connecticut, where colonial-era graveyards are a staple of the landscape, and I spent many hours wandering around in them. My mother participated in a project to document all of the graves of Civil War soldiers in our area, and my brothers and I would often spend weekend afternoons searching local churchyards for soldiers and men who were the right age for service. I always found the older stones particularly fascinating. Just writing this makes me want to put aside my paper prospectus, grab my camera, and head out to the nearest boneyard for a joyful afternoon.
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Since I cannot justify that at the moment (damn you, homework!), I'll post some photos from Rhode Island. These are from the African-American sections of Newport's Common Burying Ground (Bull), Providence's North Burial Ground (Borden), and a cemetery in Bristol, RI (Burt).
Newport's merchants were rich enough to erect expensive
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The most interesting of these three stones is Patience Borden's. One can imagine that Borden may have written the epitaph herself, making sure that her identities as a free person, a Christian, and a wealthy, benevolent woman would be remembered by the community. If you are in Providence, you can find Patience Borden's monument (along with those of a few dozen other free and enslaved African-Americans) in the North Burial Ground about 100 ft to the west of the Stephen Hopkins monument.
Photo credits to Robert Emlen, who taught me the value of a well-composed slide.
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