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| Samuel Tarbell, 1776, Groton, MA |
In Memory of
Capt: Samuel Tarbell
who departed this Life
May, 23d: at 3 a clock after
noon 1776 Aged 78 Years
4 months and 14 days
Halt passenger as you go past
Remember time it runneth fast
My dust in narrow bounds do ly
Remember man that thou must die
This dust revive it shall again
And in a grave no more remain
When trumpet sounds I shall be rais'd
For this God's holy word hath said
4 comments:
I did a quick search on Captain Tarbell and according to Google books it appears he was on the wrong side in the war and his farm was confiscated by the state not long before he died. But I could be wrong.
Otherwise, it's a very nice stone with finely carved lettering.
This Capt. Samuel Tarbell died in 1776, but sometime after 1777 his namesake son, born in 1746, joined the royal army's American Dragoons. He served in New York in 1781 and 1782.
Massachusetts and New Hampshire moved to seize properties that the younger Samuel Tarbell inherited. Nevertheless, after the war he returned to Groton and died there in March 1796.
Curiously, the Groton historian Samuel Abbott Green wrote a lot about the resulting lawsuit without finding the older Tarbell’s death date—which is kind of hard to miss in this picture.
A Canadian source sheds a little light on the younger Samuel Tarbell’s life as a Loyalist. I guess he didn’t like being locked in jail for eight months in 1777.
What a family, indeed -- and it doesn't stop there. William Tarbell, a brother of the two captive boys who became Mohawk chiefs, was forebear of Edmund C. Tarbell (1862-1938), the famous artist.
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