Monday, August 18, 2008

101 Ways, Part 1: Died

For a brief intro to the "101 Ways to Say Died" Series, click here.

One of the most common ways to say "died" in an early New England epitaph is to just come right out and say it: died. No euphemisms, no flowery language, just died. It's not quite as popular as "departed this life," but it is a close second.
Thaddeus Ridden, Marblehead, MA (1690/1)

1 comment:

Caitlin GD Hopkins said...

I've been looking over the examples in Forbes and I think it might be a stone by William Mumford. It has that pronounced triangle-inside-triangle nose and lots of shared uprights in the lettering. The tympanum design is similar to the Prudence Whitwell stone (opposite pg. 6 in Forbes) and the borders remind me of the Nathanael Mather stone (pg. 18).

I generally think of Lamson stones as having squarer heads and more lower-case letters.

What do you think?