Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Gravestone of the Day

John Hammond, 1709, Watertown, MA

Here lyes buried ye
bidy of lieutenant
JOHN HAMMOND aged
85 years & 4 mo who
deceased novmbr 22nd 1709
blessed are ye dead that die in ye Lord

3 comments:

Roy said...

A very interesting stone; I've never seen another example of that Memento Mori - Fugit Hora strip just under the tympanum, at least not on any of the gravestones here on Aquidneck Island. Do you know who the carver was?

Caitlin GD Hopkins said...

According to the Farber Collection, this is an early Joseph Lamson stone.

You will often see the "Memento Mori" and "Fugit Hora" tablets on Lamson's early work in the Watertown/Cambridge area. Here are a few other examples:

Prudence Hammond, Watertown

Pyam and Elizabeth Blower, Cambridge

Robert J. said...

The American Literary blog today has a picture of James Russell Lowell's famous 19th-century Lamson-style facsimile:

http://americanliteraryblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/dark-without-within.html

—RJO