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| Mary Brackett, 1679, Granary Burying Ground, Boston, MA |
MEMENTO MORU FUGIT HORA
MARY BRACKETT AGED
-- YEARS WHO DYED
--ER ye 1 1679
Under these clods a pretious gemm ly hear,
Belov’d of God, & of her husband dear;
Pius and prudent, helpful to neighbors all;
By day and night, whenever they did call.
Pelican like she freely spilt her blood,
To feed her chickens, and to do them good.
1 comment:
That's some authentic medieval imagery for you. In heraldry it's called the-pelican-in-her-piety, a symbol of Christ, derived from the belief that the mother pelican pierces her breast to feed her young with her own blood.
The Brackett family was prominent in early Boston and Braintree, but on a quick glance I'm not quite sure where this Mary fits within them. They were from Sudbury, Suffolk; Richard Anderson writes, “Through his mother and his wife, Richard Brackett became a member of, and the first immigrant from, the largest kinship network as yet uncovered among the participants in the Great Migration.... Taking into account all these persons and their children, then, there were more than forty future immigrants to New England who were related to Richard Brackett by blood or marriage before their departure from England.”
—RJO
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