For a brief intro to the "101 Ways to Say 'Died'" series, click here.
I recently reread Drew Gilpin Faust's
This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War and was more impressed than I was on my initial read last spring. She manages to keep the reader emotionally invested while still historicizing the emotions of her subjects, which is not an easy thing to do. The central point of the book— that Americans had to adjust their expectations for the "good death" in the face of the scale, location, and circumstances of death during the Civil War — is powerful and well argued.
When I was in Plymouth this weekend, I was thinking about Faust's work when I came across the gravestones of Joseph Churchill (d. 1836) and Thomas Russell (d. 1786). Faust argues that 19th-century Americans expected to die at home, surrounded by family and friends who would hear the dying person's last words and witness the state of his or her soul at the moment of death. If someone survived childhood diseases and accidents, he/she was expected to lead a long life and die a "good death," which is why the the Civil War was so disastrous for their understanding of death — thousands of men died all alone, away from home, with no witnesses, often with no identifiable remains. Faust argues that Americans had to improvise new ways of dealing with death when their expectations became untenable.
But what about people from Plymouth and other maritime communities? Surely they would not be shocked by the deaths of young men far from home. You can't turn around on Old Burial Hill in Plymouth without tripping over a cenotaph dedicated to someone who died in Cuba or Guadaloupe or off the coast of France. What were the expectations about death in these communities and did the Civil War have the same impact on them as it did in other places?
Faust maintains that uncertainty about a loved one's fate was one of the cruelest tortures for Civil War soldiers' families. The men and women and Plymouth had a long history of coping with uncertainty.
Joseph Churchill's epitaph is a good example. His family doesn't really know what happened to him — all they can do is "suppose":
ERECTED
in memory of
JOSEPH CHURCHILL,
who Sail'd from Boston
Nov, 1836,
in the Brig Plymouth Rock
of Plymouth,
Bound to Rochelle in France,
and supposed Foundered
at Sea aged 54 years.
Also his Children
JOSEPH LEWIS, died at
sea on board the Brig
Androscoggin of Portland
Aug. 1842, aged 37 yrs.
MARCIA GOODWIN,
died May 2, 1839,
aged 22 yrs.
Thomas Russell's family faced similar uncertainty:
In Memory of
Capt. James Russell who died
Sept. 28, 1792 aged 32 years.
And also Mr. Thomas Russell
supposed to be lost at Sea in a severe
Snow storm Decr. 4&5 1786
aged 24 years, both Sons of the late
____________
It seems unlikely that maritime communities' expectations of death could have been rattled as substantially as others' during the Civil War. They had a long history of uncertainty and cenotaphs.
One note: It seems that when someone was lost at sea, the placing of a cenotaph relied on one of two things happening: 1) fellow seamen returning with positive knowledge of the death or 2) the death of another family member who required a gravestone. Many, many "lost at sea" cenotaphs are dedicated to more than one person. Usually, pre-1800 stones dedicated to more than one person are intended for spouses, young siblings, or mothers with infants, but cenotaphs are often inter-generational or commemorate adult siblings. Tragically, these are often similar to the Russell stone — dedicated to 2, 3, 4, or more brothers lost at sea.
Josiah Manning, one of the most prolific gravestone carvers in eastern Connecticut during the 18th century, carved his own gravestone. It does not appear to be particularly special — there are more than a dozen stones in Windham Center cemetery that are very similar stylistically. If you did not know that Manning was a carver, you might walk by without noticing anything unusual unless you noticed the message on the back:
