101 Ways, Part 64: Quitted the Stage

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

I've been reading a lot about African American gravestones lately. Here's an epitaph mentioned by Angelika Kruger-Kahloula in her article, "Tributes in Stone and Lapidary Lapses: Commemorating Black People in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century America" (Markers, 1989):

In memory of

CAESAR

Here lies the best of slaves

Now turning into dust:

Caesar the Ethiopian craves

A place among the just.

His faithful soul has fled

To realms of heavenly light,

And by the blood that Jesus shed

is changed from Black to White.

Jan 15 he quitted the stage

in the 77th year of his age.

1780

North Attleborough, MA
picture available here