Vast Public Indifference

On the Boston Massacre

2011-10-11T16:57:00.001-04:00

LOL of the day, courtesy of The Globe and Mail:

Right next door is the Granary Burying Ground. Here you find the graves of three men who signed the Declaration of Independence - John Hancock, Robert Treat Paine and Samuel Adams. Benjamin Franklin's parents are buried here, too - victims of the Boston Massacre. The spot where the patriots were killed is marked by a circle of cobbles, right in the heart of Boston's bustling financial district.

This reminds me of one of my colleagues, who tells an awesome story about getting flustered during an oral examination and telling his examiners that Anne Hutchinson was eaten by a bear. I can just see 112-year-old Josiah Franklin throwing snowballs at those darned redcoats.

This is an old article (4/10/1982), so I can't link directly. I found it while doing a little research on modern perceptions/uses of Boston's burying grounds. If you want to look it up, the title is "Boston's Freedom Trail Leads to the Birth of a Nation" by Helga Loverseed and it was published in the Travel section.

Two Thoughts

2011-10-06T14:00:00.002-04:00

1: Tea Party partisans deride Occupy Wall Street as a "mob." It's not like I expect Sean Hannity to read Gary Nash, but seriously. I can't even wrap my head around the idea of someone simultaneously embracing the Boston Tea Party as the height of patriotism and rejecting crowd actions — mobs — as inherently unlawful/illegitimate/bad.

2: Lee Fang at ThinkProgress argues that Occupy Wall Street is the real heir to the Boston Tea Party. His particular arguments aside for the moment, why does this matter as much as it does? Why isn't it enough to be right in the present? What do progressive movements gain by appealing to the authority of the past? Arguing over who really embodies the legacy of the Founders sounds like Civil War-era posturing — why is it still so effective today?

Kansas Jayhawks

2011-09-19T09:31:00.001-04:00

US Senator James Henry Lane

Big Jay

The town of Osceola, Missouri has passed a resolution asking the Kansas University Jayhawks to change their mascot because it celebrates "domestic terrorists." This week will mark the 150th anniversary of the Sacking of Osceola, an 1861 raid in which Unionist Jayhawkers attacked and burned the town, killing nine civilians. This incident was one in the long string of vigilante attacks that characterized Bleeding Kansas before and during the Civil War.

The University of Kansas is obviously resistant to this idea. A KU spokeswoman issued the following statement by email:

A Jayhawk is a blue bird with a red head and a big yellow beak that wears boots. It would be hard to confuse it with anyone with terrorist intent, though we admit we have been terrorizing the Tigers on the basketball court for some time. Tigers have been known to kill people. Bears, too.

The University may want to rethink its flippancy on this issue. Jayhawks are not really just birds. But, then, Tigers are not really tigers, either, but rather, the Columbia Fighting Tigers, a home-guard unit that protected Columbia, MO from Confederate bushwhackers during the war. I could stand to see both teams cheered on by a Unionist militiaman.

No word on whether the citizens of Osceola, more than 97% of whom are white, will be changing the name of their town any time soon.

Stanley-Whitman House

2011-09-16T09:40:00.001-04:00

I'm off to Connecticut this evening to prepare for a talk I'm giving at the Stanley-Whitman House in Farmington on Saturday. The museum is hosting a symposium on 17th-Century Connecticut and I will be speaking about the Dorchester Removal. In 1635, a large number of the inhabitants of Dorchester, Massachusetts pulled up stakes and moved to Connecticut. Why? Short answer: regional identity, political/ecclesiastical differences with the Massachusetts government, and economics.

Sexy George Washington

2011-09-13T12:26:00.001-04:00

If you're looking for inspiration for your Halloween costume, look no further than the Miss Universe 2011 National Costume competition. Sexy Big Bird is so 2010.

Past Miss USA National Costumes below the fold:

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

Stono Rebellion

2011-09-09T11:42:00.003-04:00

Stono Rebellion: September 9, 1739

Hymowitz Award Nomination

2011-08-22T11:41:00.000-04:00

If you are a history teacher, chances are, you have read at least one essay that starts out with,

Throughout history, societies have . . .

Hopefully, you have crossed these words out and drawn some sort of frowny face before commenting on the inherent weakness of such grandiose statements. In a better world, the student writer would take this advice to heart and learn the joys of being specific. In the actual world, he will go on to write an opinion piece for the New York Times.

In today's NYT, Professor Joel Bakan informs us that "there is reason to believe that childhood itself is now in crisis." Oh noes! What with the gadgets and the sugar and whatnot, the apocalypse is surely upon us.

Look, I'm sure that Professor Bakan actually has some interesting things to say about the purported subject of his essay — the conflict between corporate rights and children's rights at the end of a century of enormous changes in the laws that govern both American corporations and American children. Too bad that's not the essay that made it into the NYT.

Instead of an insightful consideration of who benefits from these specific legal developments, we get an awful lot of fuzzy, a-historical pearl clutching. I have no doubt that poor regulations expose children to harmful chemicals. But is it actually true that, "children today are being exposed to increasing quantities of toxic chemicals"? Like, more than when they worked in tanneries? Or when lead paint and plumbing were still big? Is the risk of toxic chemical exposure really increasing relative to the pre-Superfund era?

Prof. Bakan does raise some tepidly interesting points about over-medication, but the whole piece is just terribly framed. I swear, when I read, "Throughout history, societies have struggled with how to deal with children," my eyes rolled of their own accord. It doesn't help that the whole first paragraph is a standard-issue "it feels like something is wrong" when the kids these days get all mesmerized by their beep-beep-boop-de-boop. Bakan offers a brief nod to the idea that his own parents' generation was likely just as concerned about The Rock and Roll as he is about The Internetz, but he glosses over that quickly, assuring readers that, "the issues confronting parents today can’t be dismissed as mere generational prejudices."

Where have I seen this before?

The wise Man doth justly condemn the folly of those, that are always saying and complaining, what is the cause that the former dayes were better than these? . . . Such complaints often proceeding from Ignorance in History, or non-observation of the vices in those of former, and virtues in some of the present Generation . . . All this not withstanding, some Times are more corrupt, dark, and miserable than can be said of all . . . Yea, the dreggs of those times are now at hand.

That's Increase Mather, on the case in 1679, in his "Call from Heaven," a pamphlet on the raising of godly children.

The Hymowitz Award is awarded for misuses of history in jeremiads.

Name of the Day

2011-08-21T15:06:00.001-04:00

Urania Rainsford Belcher

via Find a Grave

Dirty Jokes

2011-08-20T13:26:00.000-04:00

Whenever I find myself wishing I could just time-machine myself back to 17th-century Massachusetts to get some answers to my more maddening research questions, I remind myself that if I did manage to time travel, I would find myself in prison within hours.

Evidence:

In 1653, Dr. William Snelling was fined 10 shillings plus court fees for "cursing" after telling this joke "in way of merry disourse":

I'll pledge my friends
And for my foes
A plague on their heels
And a pox on their toes.

This last line was considered too racy to be copied into the court records.

On Rearranging Gravestones:

2011-08-19T13:04:00.000-04:00

The grounds have been laid out in regular alleys and gravel paths, and embellished with a great variety of native forest-trees, some of which are of stately growth. The gravestones of many generations have been raised up, and numerous seats located under shady branches, where the aged and weary may pause, and the mourner find a quiet resting-place. Yet it is to be lamented that the mounds and hillocks of the dead have been cut down to an unnatural level, and so many stones misplaces to form a geometrical row on the borders of the paths. This mode of restoring and adorning an ancient churchyard is singular; and to speak of it kindly, and not in anger, it certainly was not the act of good taste.

-Thomas Bridgman on Copp's Hill, 1851

Name of the Day

2011-08-18T08:57:00.000-04:00

Goodeth Copp

That's Judith to all you picky spellers out there.

Obituary Opinions

2011-08-17T10:32:00.002-04:00

Much of the time, early New England death records (at least in their printed form) are little more than names and dates. Sometimes, we get a bit more information about the circumstances of death, as in the case of the Pepperell Tragedies.

And sometimes, we get Obituary Opinions. Whoever was recording deaths in Roxbury in the 1640s added a whole lot more to his entries. Doubtless, these commentaries are meant to preserve evidence of the deceased person's situation re: salvation, but some of them come off a bit saucy:

1642: There were 2 infants dyed in the birth, it was conceived to be through the unskillfullnesse of the midwife, none of the parents were of our church

1643: Mary Onion the wife of Rob. Onion died of a cold and [sweat?] taken in childbed her child also dyed, because she was stubborne, and would not submitt to the paines, bit she was after filled with dredful horror of conscience and dyed under them, but I hope under some tokens of mercy

1643: Goodman Stone, an old Kentish man dyed, he was not of the Church, yet on his sick bed some had some hopes of him.

1646: Bro. Griggs who lay in a long affliction of sicknesse & shined like gold in it, greatly glorifying God and magnifying his grace in Christ.

1646: Ezbon, an Indian, hopefully godly, haveing lived 10 yeare among the English, could read, desired to serve God &c. dyed

John Bull, Chronology, and "Puritanism"

2011-08-15T10:43:00.000-04:00

Charles Bardin stone, 1773, NCBG, Newport, carved by John Bull

This week, I've been reading the papers from the 1976 Dublin Seminar on Puritan Gravestone Art. In general, the essays are good and thought-provoking, especially David Hall's curmudgeonly contributions, in which he expresses doubt about pretty much all of the other contributors' conclusions.

One essay that had me nodding along until the last page was Dickran Tashjian's "Puritan Attitudes Toward Iconoclasm." His main argument is that gravestones were regarded as civil art and thus were not considered violations of the 2nd commandment. He cites plenty of relevant 17th-century sources to back up his argument that Puritan scholars in Massachusetts and England regularly argued that the prohibition against idolatry only applied to ecclesiastical settings, not civil images. Since graveyards and the stones in them were civil, rather than sacred, objects, images were not a problem, and there was no reason to smash up any gravestones.

This is all very useful to me, and I was pleased to have found this essay until I turned to the last page. Tashjian qualifies his argument a bit by noting that "imagery still had to conform to public taste," which would not have endured outrageously idolatrous images. In view of this assertion, he argues that the Charles Bardin stone in Newport (by John Bull, 1773) does not depict God, but, rather, Moses (contra Ludwig) because representing God the Father "would have been taken as idolatrous by the terms of the Puritans' interpretations of the Second Commandment."

Needle scratch.

Wait, wait, wait. I'm all on board for discussing Puritan interpretations of the Second Commandment in Massachusetts in the 17th century. But if those are the parameters of the discussion, you absolutely cannot extrapolate to make an argument about a stone carved in Newport in the late 18th century. John Bull may have been many things — a runaway apprentice, a mutineer, a thwarted genius, an ungrateful SOB — but he was not a Puritan. And he didn't live in a Puritan colony. And, lest the point be overlooked, he carved this stone in 1773.

I'm pretty uncomfortable using the term "Puritan" for Massachusetts in general after 1680 or so, though I'll make an exception for self-professed adherents like the Mathers. What does it even mean to characterize Rhode Island — which wasn't even "Puritan" in the 17th century — as "Puritan" 100 years later? The mind, it boggles.

This is my main gripe about the many gravestone studies I have read so far, both in the Dublin Seminar papers and in books by the Tashjians, Ludwig, etc., and even David Stannard's The Puritan Way of Death: they are incredibly sloppy when it comes to chronology. If you are making an argument about "Puritans" based on sources written 1590-1640, you cannot, cannot, cannot, marshal a stone from 1785 into your argument. It's like trying to make an argument about music during the American Civil War and citing The Black Eyed Peas as an example.

Name of the Day

2011-08-04T16:07:00.001-04:00

Copp's Hill, Boston, MA

I could not make these things up if I tried.

Name of the Day

2011-06-24T15:51:00.003-04:00

Smallhope Bigg

b. 1605, England

d. 1644, Middlesex Co., MA

Come on, now. This is just silly. This is not one of those names that seems funny because the meaning of a word has changed over time or because the alliteration is unusual. Perhaps Smallhope's parents wanted to make sure their son was humble in spite of his surname.

Ancient Gravestone Protests Blown Call

2011-06-22T12:16:00.002-04:00

Proof that people have been complaining about referees for thousands of years:

The tombstone was donated to the Musee du Cinquanternaire in Brussels, Belgium, shortly before World War I. It shows an image of a gladiator holding what appear to be two swords, standing above his opponent who is signalling his surrender. The inscription says that the stone marks the spot where a man named Diodorus is buried."After breaking my opponent Demetrius I did not kill him immediately," reads the epitaph. "Fate and the cunning treachery of the summa rudis killed me." The summa rudis is a referee, who may have had past experience as a gladiator.

Name of the Day

2011-06-14T21:11:00.003-04:00

Rexella van Impe

Not a colonial American name — Mrs. van Impe was born in 1932 — but notable anyway.

Name of the Day

2011-06-13T15:22:00.004-04:00

Love Marks

Love was baptized by Rev. William Cooper on August 11, 1728. Her sister, Esther, was baptized at the same time.

Name of the Day

2011-06-06T16:05:00.003-04:00

Dionysia Savage Ravenscroft

Dionysia was the daughter of Major Thomas Savage of Boston. In 1679, she married Samuel Ravenscroft.

@IncreaseMather OMG ROFL #burn

2011-06-02T21:56:00.018-04:00

Yes, that was me giggling over my copy of Increase Mather's Narrative of the Miseries of New-England, By Reason of an Arbitrary Government Erected there Under Sir Edmond Andros (1689). The aside in this sentence regarding the construction of the original King's Chapel kills me:

'Tis notorious they went a begging to all the Congregations in the Town for Money to Erect their Edifice, which they call a Church (tho' by the way it was never Consecrated).

Confederates in Harvard's Memorial Hall

2011-05-27T10:57:00.350-04:00

via

With the advent of the sesquicentennial, there has been a surge of interest in all things related to the Civil War. At Harvard, this has taken the form of intensified debates over the inclusion of Harvard's Confederate dead in Memorial Hall.

Memorial Hall via Wikipedia

Harvard's Memorial Hall was built in the 1870s as a monument to Harvard's Union war dead. It is a huge, gothic building that houses Annenberg Dining Hall, Sanders Theatre, and a memorial corridor lined with marble plaques that bear the names of 136 Harvard graduates who died while serving with the Union army. The plaque in the center of the transept declares,

This hall commemorates the patriotism of the graduates and student of this university who served in the Army and Navy of the United States during the war for the preservation of the Union and upon these tablets are inscribed the names of those among them who died in that service.

The controversy arises from the fact that the 71 Harvard graduates who died in the Confederate armed forces are not included in this memorial. When the cornerstone for the building was laid (1870), the prevailing sentiment was toward honoring only those soldiers who had fought against treason. During the reconstruction era, Cambridge was still proud to characterize the war as a sacred struggle over both union and slavery, as demonstrated in the sphinx monument at Mount Auburn Cemetery (1872), which bears the text,

AMERICAN UNION PRESERVED
AFRICAN SLAVERY DESTROYED
BY THE UPRISING OF A GREAT PEOPLE
BY THE BLOOD OF FALLEN HEROES

Yet, the reconciliationist narrative came to Cambridge as surely as it swept over the rest of the nation. By the time the 50-year celebrations rolled around, there were active efforts to include the names of Harvard's Confederate dead at Memorial Hall. Monuments erected at Yale and Princeton during this era jumbled the names of Union and Confederate dead and honored all as patriots.

In the past year, the campaign to include the Confederate dead in Memorial Hall has ramped up again. Many pro-memorialization advocates have latched onto the fact that Memorial Church (a different building on campus, built in 1932 to commemorate the WWI dead) lists the names of several Harvard men who died serving in the German army in WWI and one Divinity School graduate who died in WWII. Last fall, the Harvard Crimson ran a long article about the differences between the Memorial Hall and Memorial Church commemoration philosophies, in which it quoted Prof. Alan Dershowitz as saying,

The University needs to adopt a policy one way or the other. The current inconsistent standard is unacceptable, and it’s particularly unfortunate that the exception seems to be for a member of the Nazi army, one of the darkest regimes in human history, and a regime with which Harvard had too cozy a relationship.

While I tend to think that Prof. Dershowitz would probably rather see the deletion of German soldiers from Memorial Church than the addition of Confederates to Memorial Hall, others have come to the opposite conclusion. The Harvard Confederate Memorial Initiative is a small, but vocal organization dedicated to advocating for a Confederate memorial at Harvard. You can view their intro video here. Their cause has been getting some attention, not just from the Crimson, but from conservative media outlets like World Net Daily. Last summer, a WND reporter confronted White House press secretary Robert Gibbs over the Memorial Hall issue — Gibbs had no comment. The HCMI also has a Facebook petition (currently rather pathetic at about 130 "likes"). Executive Director Roger McCredie told the Crimson that the HCMI's goal is to correct the historical narrative of "South equal bad. North equal good":

If you want to talk slavery, we can talk slavery all day long and about how no one’s hands are clean from it—including the Fanueil family and the Brown family, both of whom made fortunes on the slave trade. This extremely skewed view of history and of historical perspective has become pandemic—it does not infect merely Harvard; it infects the entire educated and cultural edifice of the United States these days.

Now, I know Mr. McCredie has a particular political agenda to advance, but this sort of thing is rage-inducing. He seems to be confusing Harvard with a mediocre elementary school circa 1990. The Harvard curriculum is hardly trying to cover up Northern complicity in American slavery with courses like Sven Beckert's "Harvard and Slavery" or faculty research like Jill Lepore's New York Burning or events like last month's joint conference with Brown, which was called "Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development" and focused on slavery's role in national economic development after the Revolution. When someone claims that academic historians are ignoring or trying to cover up Northern slavery, I know that I can safely disregard everything else in his/her manifesto because he/she clearly has no grasp of what academic historians do. Northern slavery is one of the hottest things going in Early American history at the moment. People who pretend otherwise are willfully ignorant in service of their neo-Confederate politics.

Yet, admittedly, academic historians are notoriously awful about getting the word out about our work. Part of that is our fault (we generally for one another rather than for a wide audience and punish colleagues who try to engage with the public), part is the fault of the structure of history education at the k-12 level (holiday history controlled by politicized state committees and useless AP-driven fact cram later on), part is the fault of public figures who appeal to history as a cover for their own biases (see the entire Scalia oeuvre), and part is the fault of an incurious general public that can't be bothered to read anything more challenging than a David McCullough biography. As an historian with a commitment to public history, I think it would be a great idea to do some public outreach regarding Harvard's role in American slavery and its considerable ties to the Confederacy.

Therefore, I propose the following exhibit:

Remembrance

In the transept of Memorial Hall, two rows of rectangular display pedestals will stand along the East and West walls, each directly under a memorial panel and mirroring the panel in shape and size, though tipped at a slight angle so that visitors can view the contents easily. Each pedestal will display an object or text relating to Harvard's multifaceted role in creating, sustaining, and challenging American slavery and the war that ended it. A final pedestal will stand at the North end of the transept, under the stained glass window, bearing the names of the 71 Harvard students and alumni who gave their lives in support of the Confederacy and its cause — not in violation of their position as Harvard men, but in fulfillment of it.

Examples of objects that would go into these cases:

J.T. Zealy / Louis Agassiz Daguerreotypes:

In 1850, Harvard's most celebrated naturalist, Louis Agassiz, traveled to South Carolina, where he commissioned a series of photographs of African-born slaves and first-generation African-Americans in an attempt to gather evidence about racial types. Agassiz believed that various races were created separately, and his use of scientific methods, including these photographs, lent his ideas intellectual weight in antebellum America. The daguerreotypes — many of them depicting their subjects nude, in the poses now familiar to us from mug shots — are held by Harvard's Peabody Museum. They are not on display, partly because they are fragile and partly because they are ghastly. For more information, see Molly Rogers' Delia's Tears: Race, Science and Photography in 19th-Century America. This book reprints all of the images in full, something I would not do here, even if I had permission.

Portrait of Thomas Wentworth Higginson by Frank Weston Benton (1893)

Higginson, a fiery abolitionist who contributed openly to John Brown's cause, was a member of the class of 1841. He was a true radical and found that the reforms brought about by the Civil War fell far short of his hopes for racial justice. In 1904, he gave a Decoration Day speech in Sanders Theatre in which he suggested that Confederates might be included in the tablets in the transept. While some historians (David Blight) have argued that Higginson represents the erasure of abolitionism from Civil War memory, others (W. Scott Poole) argue that Higginson's remarks in 1904 "speak to his own disillusion about the possibilities of nationalism and his doubts about whether or not it could serve as a force for racial justice." Higginson's portrait (along with various quotations) would provide an unparalleled example of the complexity of Harvard's relationships with abolitionism and Civil War memory.

Samples of "Negro Cloth" from Rhode Island 1839-1850 from Baker Library (Harvard Business School)

Many Harvard alumni and donors (ex: Francis Cabot Lowell, class of 1793) were industrialists who turned slave-grown Southern cotton into cheap cloth. Some of this material, like the samples above, were manufactured in order to be sent back to Southern plantations to clothe those same slaves. Several cases in this exhibit would be devoted to the Harvard/factory/plantation nexus.

Other cases would showcase other items related to Harvard's historical support of and entanglement with slavery — receipts for gifts from slaveowning or slave-industry alumni, a replica of the gravestone dedicated to Cecily (d. 1713, 13-year-old slave to William Brattle, class of 1680), a fragment of brick from an 18th-century college building built using slave labor, etc. An exhibit like this would probably be the fruit of research conducted in undergraduate seminars (like Prof. Beckert's) and by professors and community members as part of a commission similar to Brown's Committee on Slavery and Justice. Its catalog would probably go on to form part of a larger report by the commission laying bare Harvard's complicity. I know that a report from a steering committee doesn't sound like a very friendly way to get the word out, but there was plenty of interest in Brown's report, and Harvard's would make a bigger splash. People might not read the report, but they would read the NYT article about the report.

In this way, Harvard could engage in meaningful reflection on its institutional history. I think that a public exhibit in Memorial Hall would be a powerful way to write Harvard's Confederate dead back into its story, not with celebration, but with conscience. The point would be to bring context to the names already on the walls in the transept. They were the memorial that Harvard needed in 1870, but we need something more in 2011.

Roger McCredie and others who call for the names of Harvard's Confederate dead to be added to the rolls of honor in Memorial Hall argue that Harvard should acknowledge its role in the development and maintenance of American slavery. I agree. But simply adding the names of Harvard's Confederates would not just acknowledge that role — it would perpetuate it. If Harvard were to take such a bold and public step in favor of a reconciliationist narrative that argues that the Civil War was about personal valor and sacrifice, rather than a struggle over treason in defense of slavery, the institution will have lent its considerable cultural capital to the mythology of the Lost Cause. It will have arrayed what arms it has on the side of a white supremacist, anti-intellectual movement that is stuck in the mindset of the 50th anniversary while the rest of the nation observes the 150th. Luckily, I think there is very little chance that this will happen, particularly under the administration of President Faust, who is, after all, a scholar of the Civil War with a particular interest in memorialization. If the names of Harvard's Confederate dead are added to Memorial Hall — and I hope they are — they must be part of an effort to confront Harvard's institutional complicity, not an attempt to prolong it.

An Obituary for Mr. Cheever

2011-05-22T10:21:00.008-04:00

On the death of Ezekiel Cheever, noted schoolmaster, Samuel Sewall composed this obituary:

He was born January, 25. 1614. Came over to N-E. 1637. to Boston: To New-Haven 1638. Married in the Fall and began to teach School; which Work he was constant in till now. First, at New-Haven, then at Ipswich; then at Charlestown; then at Boston, whether he came 1670. So that he has Labour'd in that Calling Skillfully, diligently, constantly, Religiously, Seventy years. A rare Instance of Piety, Health, Strength, Serviceableness. The Welfare of the Province was much upon his Spirit. He abominated Perriwigs.

No higher praise.

Samuel Sewall on Mourning Executed Criminals

2011-05-21T17:03:00.087-04:00

On Thursday, we saw the family of convicted pirate John Lambert successfully lobby Judge Sewall for permission to bury Lambert in King's Chapel burying ground. Today, I would like to highlight another example of a Boston family going into public mourning after an execution.

On November 13, word reached Boston that Lady Alice Beckenshaw Lisle had been beheaded in Winchester, England. Lady Alice (age 68) had given shelter to fugitives from the Battle of Sedgemoor, the last battle in the Protestant Duke of Monmouth's campaign to depose his Catholic uncle, James II. Lady Alice claimed that she did not know that the fugitives had been involved in the Monmouth Rebellion. Nevertheless, she was tried and convicted at the Bloody Assizes on August 25, 1685 and sentenced to be burned to death. King James II commuted her sentence to death by beheading, an order that was carried out on September 2.

Most Puritan Bostonians had been horrified by the ascension of a Catholic king and were in sympathy with Monmouth's Rebellion. The same ship that brought news of Lady Alice's execution also brought "a Rumor that the Government [of New England] will be Changed, this Fall or Winter, by some Person sent over, or a Commission to some here." This rumor proved true with the establishment of the Dominion of New England a few months later.

None in Boston mourned Lady Alice's death more deeply than did her daughter, Bridget Lisle Usher, widow of late Harvard president Leonard Hoar and wife of Boston merchant Hezekiah Usher. The week after the news arrived, Sewall noticed that "Madam Usher, her Daughter and Husband" attended Rev. Cotton Mather's Thursday lecture "in Mourning." I don't know whether their presence in the audience influenced Mather's choice of material at all, but Sewall's notes indicate that the content of the lecture would have called attention to Lady Alice's case and the plight of Protestant New England more broadly:

Mr. Mather Preaches from Numb. 25. 11. Shewed that Love was an ingredient to make one zealous; those that received good People received Christ, Mat. 25. Said that if the Government of N.E. were zealous might yet save this People. 2d Part of 79th Ps. sung. Madam Usher, her Daughter and Husband in Mourning.

Imagine Bridget Usher and her family dressed in mourning as the congregation around them sang the 79th Psalm, which begins with,

O god, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps.

If they sang the second half, they sang,

Let the sighing of the prisoner come before thee; according to the greatness of thy power preserve thou those that are appointed to die;

Mather's other texts were similarly on-point. Numbers 25:11 concerns the actions of Phineas, a grandson of Moses' brother Aaron, who saved the Israelites from God's wrath by proving his zealousness. Matthew 25 is the famous parable of the wise virgins and the foolish virgins, which contains well-known passages on preparedness and hospitality:

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

I am not a scholar of Puritan worship practices, so I don't want to jump to the easy conclusion that Mather chose this passage to comment on Lady Alice's righteousness. Yet, it seems to me that all this talk of extending hospitality to those in need had to have focused the congregation's attention on her case, especially with her family sitting there in mourning.

In any case, this is an instance where Boston's religious and political loyalties allowed the family of someone executed for treason to mourn that death brazenly in public.

Samuel Sewall on Burying Executed Criminals

2011-05-19T15:34:00.029-04:00

We have already seen what Samuel Sewall thought about commemorating executed criminals. In the case of the executed Quakers, he argued that people who died on the gallows should have no monuments erected to their memory. This is of interest to me because you would think that you would want to drag out the example as long as possible, so Sewall's opposition to any marker shows that marking a grave was considered a sign of respect.

The executed Quakers were not buried in a graveyard — they were buried near the gallows on Boston Common. Presumably, burial within the graveyard was also a sign of respect, though Puritan graveyards were not formally consecrated. This also comes up in the case of burials for people who committed suicide. In 1688, an Indian servant named Thomas hanged himself, and the Boston coroner "ordered his burial by the highway with a Stake through his Grave." Earlier the same year, the wife of Samuel Marion had hanged herself, but she was given a graveyard burial after three witnesses testified that she had been insane for some time preceding her death.

From the evidence I have gathered, it seems that executed criminals were not generally buried in graveyards, but there are some exceptions. In 1704, for example, Sewall allowed the family of John Lambert, a convicted pirate, to claim and bury his body in the Kings Chapel burying ground.

By my Order, the diggers of Mm Paiges Tomb Dugg a Grave for Lambert, where he was laid in the Old burying place Friday night about midnight near some of his Relations: Body was given to his Widow. Son and others made suit to me.

Even if he was willing to let the family bury the body with some sort of dignity, Sewall did not want them to flaunt their actions. Most funerals took place in the late afternoon, but John Lambert was buried at midnight.

This makes me wonder: was Samuel Sewall — who is famous for repenting his involvement in the Salem witch trials — involved with the burial of Rebecca Nurse? Family legend says that the Nurse family exhumed and re-buried Rebecca's body under cover of night after she was executed for witchcraft in 1692. The circumstances seem similar. Might Sewall have given his blessing to the Nurses as well as the Lamberts? Or might the mercy he showed to the Lamberts have been inspired by his guilt over doing nothing for Rebecca Nurse?

Samuel Sewall on Hortatory Names

2011-05-18T16:34:00.014-04:00

In 1701, Samuel Sewall was one of the judges who heard the case of Esther Rogers, accused of murdering an infant daughter born out of wedlock. Rogers was found guilty and Sewall chastised her for not living up to her name:

I told her . . . Esther was a great saviour; she, a great destroyer. Said did not do this to insult over her, but to make her sensible.

So it seems that at least some people were thinking about first names as exhortations to good behavior. It makes the Jezebels and Vajezathas all the more perplexing.

Gravestone of the Day: Othniel Tripp

2011-05-14T20:33:00.008-04:00

Othniel Tripp, 1740, NCBG, Newport, RI

In Memory of

Othniel Tripp, died

March ye 19Th 1740

In ye 66Th year

of his age.

Othniel is a judge in the Book of Judges.

2011-05-07T12:32:00.002-04:00

From CNN: Plan Would Replace Controversial Grave Markers

A Thought for Grading Day

2011-05-07T10:50:00.104-04:00

I am incredibly discouraged by my students' final projects. Yes, I know that I am teaching for a Gen Ed class, but it is still a Harvard Gen Ed class.

One of the main themes of our course has been that Harvard's museum collections are, in many significant ways, artifacts of American imperialism. The Peabody Museum's anthropological collections are the most obvious example, but other collections have substantial imperialist implications. The Natural History Museum is full of things that Agassiz collected in South America during his quest to prove his theory of polygenesis. The Herbarium is full of the orchids that Oakes Ames loved so much, but collected in the understanding that tropical flora was a critical resource in the era of the Spanish-American War. There are a hundred examples, and we must have talked about at least a dozen in class.

Of these, we spent the most time discussing Harvard's collection of Native American artifacts. I thought that we had ground this topic into a fine powder by the sheer weight of our repetition and elaboration on the themes: the myth of the Disappearing Indian, the exhibition of human subjects at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, NAGPRA and the politics of collecting/displaying grave goods, the institutional burden we bear and possibilities for collaboration and reparation in the future, etc. etc. etc. Honestly, there were at least 8 lectures that were substantially concerned with Harvard's very complicated relationship with Native Americans from the days of the Indian College to the modern Peabody's extraordinary efforts to embrace NAGPRA.

And yet, I am still spending my weekend reading bullshit student papers about how a series of craniometric casts taken from the 73 Cheyenne and Arapaho prisoners (men, women, and children) held at Fort Marion in the 1870s presents a wonderful example of how benevolent white Americans civilized and Christianized the poor, suffering savages. After all, the army may have killed their families and forced them to live in stinking cells in the Florida heat, but, hey, they got shirts! And some of them made sketches during their indefinite incarceration! And not that many of them died! So it was a rousing success for all involved.

Honestly, I had to stop reading them. I am writing this post while half way through a paper. I got to the line, "Thiswas their first time experiencing true human civilization," and I just had to put it down.

The thing is, it is very difficult to explain to these students why they are getting bad grades on these papers. They have a thesis: Imprisonment was good for the Cheyenne prisoners. They have evidence: Look! Harriet Beecher Stowe visited and said they were being treated really well! She was super psyched about converting them to Christianity! But they are completely uncritical of any of the primary sources. If the commander of Fort Marion says that his prisoners were living in the lap of luxury, then by golly it must be 100% true. The thought of considering that army officer's understanding of "luxury" within the savagery/civilization paradigm of the 19th century never seems to occur to them, which is super depressing because we just spent an entire effing semester talking about that very topic. But they think that writing a paper of the appropriate length and with a bunch of quotations should get a decent grade. Even if the (poorly-supported) arguments they make are directly antithetical to the course values and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they learned less than nothing all semester.

But I don't just want to rant. I have a serious question. Do we do a disservice to students by presenting them with primary sources in a Gen Ed class? Working with primary sources seems to be the holy grail of working with students — let them see the real stuff! let them decide for themselves! — but what about its potential to do more harm than good? I am really worried that these students are coming out of this course not only no better off than they were before, but actually worse because they feel that they have confirmed the validity of their prejudices. After all, the primary sources say that white, Christian Americans wanted to help the Cheyenne, so it must be true. These are Harvard undergrads in 2011 who are honest-to-goodness, unironically arguing that it's a damn good thing that white Americans put Cheyenne children in boarding schools where they could be civilized. And they think that they learned that in my course. It is a disgrace.

You can say, oh, well, you just have to teach them to be critical of the primary source, but I don't think there is much more I can do. How more explicit can we be than multiple lectures and sections dedicated to the critical examination of primary documents and objects? And, lest I let the point pass, — Harvard students. I can guarantee you that there are at least three Harvard grads going out into the world with their Harvard diplomas thinking that they learned that the systematic efforts to eradicate Native American cultures was a wonderful idea. And they think that I taught them that. At Harvard.

I saved some good papers for later, if I am still able to see straight.

SSA Baby Names Predictions Update

2011-05-05T10:54:00.042-04:00

The Social Security list of the top 1,000 baby names for 2010 is out! Let's see how I did predicting the top risers and fallers:

Fastest Rising Names (Girls):

Everly: Strike out, not in top 1,000 for 2010. Next year, for sure.
Tiana: Nailed it! Ranked #604 in 2009, #334 in 2010! This was the third-fastest riser (behind Maci and Giuliana).
Aurora: eh. This name rose an anemic 15 spots.
Cecilia: Wrong! down 11 spots.
Harlow: Yes! #904 in 2009, #778 in 2010. I said it would go up 100+ spots; it went up 126.
Bristol: Yes! Went from #666 to #562. Over 100 spots again.
Bonus prediction: Amalia: Nope, didn't happen.

Fastest Rising Names (Boys):

Archer: #681* in 2009, #550 in 2010. The SSA does a list of "Change in Popularity," but it only accounts for names that were in the top 500. If Archer were included on that list, +131 would make it the #5 fastest riser of 2010.
Bentley: Called it! Top riser for boys in 2010. Up 414 spots over 2009.
Jaxton: Modest success. Rose from #853 to #798.

Fastest Falling Names (Girls):

Analia: Called it! This was absolute rock bottom for falling names. Went from #330 to #802. I am so relieved.
Miley: Modest success. Dropped 28 spots.
Yaretzi: Completely and utterly wrong — it rose 125 spots! There must be some celebrity in Spanish-language media that I am unaware of.

Fastest Falling Names (Boys):

Aaden: Called it! This terrible spelling was the fastest falling name for boys.
Peyton: Wrong-o. Only lost one spot, which is basically the same as holding steady.
Jacoby: Modest success — it lost 29 spots.

I think I did pretty well! I correctly predicted the fastest fallers for both boys and girls, and I picked a couple of good risers (Bentley and Tiana). I'm kicking myself for not choosing Maci as well — I picked Bentley and didn't even consider Maci. I didn't have enough faith in the power of Teen Mom.

My worst miss was Yaretzi. Not only did it not fall, it rose substantially! I must just not be plugged in to the pop culture reference fueling its rise.

*In addition to releasing the 2010 list, the SSA has slightly revised the 2009 list — Archer used to be #679 in 2009, now it is #681.

Beer Summit, 1689-Style

2011-05-04T22:21:00.027-04:00

I've been enjoying Samuel Sewall's accounts of sightseeing in England during his trip in 1689 (he was part of the delegation attempting to renegotiate Massachusetts' charter). Along with the great buildings and libraries, Sewall visited plenty of graveyards and churches. One of these was the Jewish cemetery in London:

Went and saw the Jews burying Place at Mile-End:Some Bodies were laid East and West; but now all are ordered to be laid Northand South. Many Tombs. Engravings are Hebrew, Latin, Spanish, English,sometimes on the same stone. Part of the Ground is improv’d as a Garden, thedead are carried through the keepers house. First Tomb is abt the year 1659.Brick wall built abt part. Ont’s two sides 5444, Christi 1684, Tamuz 21, June23, as I remember. — I told the keeper afterwards wisht might meet in Heaven:He answered, and drink a Glass of beer together, which we were then doing.

Sewall still wanted to convert the Jews — his famous hymn, "Once More Our God Vouchsafe to Shine," contains a verse praying that the "harde'ned Jews" will learn to worship " their Rightful Lord" — but, apparently, beer has some sort of mystical power to unite people (briefly).

Illegal Quaker Burying Ground, 1685

2011-05-03T13:06:00.079-04:00

Samuel Sewall did not like Quakers. This was hardly an extraordinary position among Massachusetts Puritans, but Sewall was particularly strong in his disapproval, going out of his way to oppose Quakers even when his fellow Puritans were willing to give them a chance. In 1708, when a group of Quakers petitioned the Governor and Council for permission to build a meeting house in Boston, Sewall opposed the measure, saying that he, "would not have a hand in setting up their Devil Worship" (Sewall Diary 23 Aug. 1708).

Sewall's diary is full of references to Quakers — he clearly kept a keen eye out for them. Of particular interest to me are his references to Quaker burials.

In June of 1685, a small group of Quakers asked Governor Simon Bradstreet for permission to build a fence around the graves of the "Boston Martyrs" — Marmaduke Stephenson, William Robinson, Mary Dyer, and William Leddra — on Boston Common. These four Quakers had been executed in 1659 (Stephenson and Robinson), 1660 (Dyer), and 1661 (Leddra), for the crime of returning to Massachusetts to proselytize after being banished on a previous occasion. Their fellow Quakers wished to honor them and, no doubt, draw attention to their own continued presence in the colony. This was a particularly sore subject in 1685, as the colony's charter had been revoked the previous year, partially due to concerns about the lack of religious toleration in Massachusetts. When Governor Bradstreet brought this request before the Council, it was unanimously denied. Sewall, writing in his diary, noted that, "it is very inconvenient for persons so dead and buried in the place to have any Monument" (Sewall Diary 17 June 1685).

The Quakers were not big on obeying earthly authorities, so they went ahead and built the fence anyway.

In August, Sewall passed by the gravesite on his way to Dorchester and saw

a few Feet of Ground enclosed with Boards, which is done by the Quakers out of respect to som one or more hanged and buried by the Gallows: though the Governor forbad them, when they asked Leave.

Of course, today, there is a big statue of Mary Dyer next to the State House, but this commemoration was a dramatic gesture of defiance in 1685.

Osama bin Laden Buried at Sea

2011-05-02T11:49:00.008-04:00

As a student of colonial American mortuary culture, I generally have very little to say about modern foreign policy, but my ears perked up when I heard that Osama bin Laden was buried at sea. This seems to have been done so that his gravesite would not become a shrine for his followers. Burials continue to be important public, political statements.

Samuel Sewall on Breastfeeding

2011-04-29T11:04:00.098-04:00

It's been a wild week here. Since last Friday, I have,

moved to a new house with my husband, 6-month-old daughter, cat, and far, far too many boxes of useless objects that I hope to donate rather than unpack
presented a draft chapter of my dissertation to the Harvard Early America Workshop
concluded lectures and sections for the 270-student Gen Ed course for which I am head TF
traveled to Connecticut to celebrate Molly's first Easter

Now, I am in the midst of unpacking, revising, and advising student research projects.

Still, I am finding a little time for my own research at night. I have (re-)begun reading Samuel Sewall's diary with a particular eye toward his many descriptions of funerals and graveyards. I don't want to miss any little mentions, so I've been reading the whole thing, not just scanning.

I'm only up to 1690 (the diary runs 1674-1729), but I am already enthralled. Sewall records so many details of daily life in 17th-century Boston — not just details of his own life, but suggestive little stories that flesh out large parts of the goings on in town. In addition, he is an attentive parent and a loving husband. His writings about his children are simultaneously sweet and horrible, particularly when he laments his inability to comfort his young children when they are particularly disturbed by Bible verses he has asked them to read.

One thing I was not really expecting to find in the diary of an eminent Puritan judge was information about breastfeeding practices. At first, I just put a little check mark next to references to nursing babies (this info is not really pertinent to my dissertation), but the little check marks have added up.

Here is what Samuel Sewall has to say about breastfeeding:

On April 2, 1677, when Sewall was 25 years old, his wife (Hannah Quincy Hull Sewall, age 20) gave birth to their first child, John. In his diary, Sewall gives a long account of the birth, ending with, "The first Woman the Child sucked was Bridget Davenport." He does not record the names of other women who may have nursed little John, but "first" suggests that more may have been involved.

Apparently, there was some difficulty in getting baby John to latch on to his mother's breast. On April 7, Sewall wrote,

first laboured to cause the child to suck his mother, which he scarce did at all. In the afternoon my Wife set up, and he sucked the right Breast bravely, that had the best nipple.

Two days later, he noted,

The Child sucked his Mothers left Brest well as she laid in the Bed, notwithstanding the shortness of the Nipple.

Both of these passages were omitted from the 1878 MHS publication of the diary, but they are hardly prurient. I find these passages touching. Two young parents, earnestly coaxing their reluctant newborn into nursing, discussing specifics like nipple shape in a matter-of-fact way — it is a revelation to imagine a Puritan judge and his wife in this way. I still cannot quite shake my mental image of the elderly Sewall to imagine him as a young man, but this passage helps. This is not a pompous medical or theological tract — it is an intimate moment in the life of this young family.

The next mention of breastfeeding practices comes in 1685. The Sewalls' fifth child, Hull (b. 8 July 1684), had been ill since early infancy, suffering from fits and convulsions. On April 28, 1685, Sewall notes that his wife "Began to wean little Hull to see if it might be a means to free him of convulsions." At the time, Hull was just shy of 10 months old, and the explanation Sewall gives about his weaning indicates that he would have kept on nursing well past 10 months if his health had been better.

On January 31, 1687, Sewall notes that Joseph Brisco's wife is suckling newborn Stephen Sewall (b. 30 Jan 1687). On Sept 29, 1688, he writes, "Lydia Moodey comes hether to dwell, helping my wife to nurse the Child Joseph [b. 15 Aug. 1688]." It is not clear whether Moodey's duties include breastfeeding the baby, or if "nursing" is a more general term.

Another note from February 2, 1690 indicates a more typical weaning scenario: "Little Joseph [18 months old] sucks his last as is design'd, his Grandmother taking him into her Chamber in order to wean him." Sewall makes many other references to infants sleeping in bed with their parents, so presumably, little Joseph has gone to sleep in his Grandmother's room, where he cannot nurse. At the time of this weaning, Hannah Sewall was about 8 weeks pregnant with her next child (Judith, born a month prematurely in August of 1690). I'm not sure whether Joseph's age or his mother's new pregnancy precipitated the weaning.

There may be more references to breastfeeding in Sewall's diary. As I said, I am only up to 1690, and the Sewalls still have four children in the future (Hannah gave birth to 13 children — only 6 survived infancy).

Baby Name Predictions

2011-04-21T10:55:00.001-04:00

The Social Security list of the top 1,000 baby names for 2010 will be coming out in the next few weeks. The Baby Name Wizard always has a contest seeing who can predict the fastest rising and fastest falling names of the year, and I thought it might be fun to write down my predictions in public to see how I do.

If you are into modern baby names, leave your own guesses in the comments!

My predictions:

Fastest Rising Names (Girls):

Everly: not in the top 1,000 in 2009, but I think it will break onto the scene in a big way for 2010. It could be the new Neveah. Ever is right behind!
Tiana: ranked #609 (and falling) in 2009, but The Princess and the Frog will change that. It came out at the end of 2009, so it had the full year of 2010 to rise.
Aurora: this is a risky choice because Aurora was already #217 in 2009, so it doesn't have much room to rise. Still, it is the title character of 2010's most popular telenovela, and telenovela names have a track record of spiking popularity.
Cecilia: Pam and Jim on The Office named their baby Cecilia. It might not rise very far because SSA counts Cecilia and Cecelia as different names.
Harlow: All of those androgynous H names are hot right now — Harper, Hadley, etc. I'll take Harlow for +100 spots on the chart.
Bristol: She won't go away.
Bonus prediction: Amalia will make the top 1,000 for the first time.

Fastest Rising Names (Boys):

Archer: debuted in 2009 at #679. Similar-sounding Asher is at #165 and still climbing, so I think Archer will gain ground.
Bentley: we already saw a dramatic jump (from #940 in 2008 to #518 in 2009) thanks to MTV's Teen Mom Maci and her little Bentley. They were still in the news in 2010 and I think this name will rise even more.
Jaxton: The Jackson trend is completely out of hand. It's only a matter of time.

Fastest Falling Names (Girls):

Analia: This was the fastest-rising name for girls in 2009, thanks to a telenovela. I am hoping that it falls back into obscurity, both because it looks like "pertaining to the anus" and because I worry that someone, somewhere, might mistake Amalia for Analia.
Miley: Miley Cyrus had a bad year, and I think that this name rests on her fortunes. It burst onto the list at a shocking #278 in 2007, peaked at #128 in 2008, and slipped to #189 in 2009. I think it will lose at least 100 places in 2010.
Yaretzi: big spike last year — must be some celebrity I don't know about

Fastest Falling Names (Boys):

Aaden: Jon & Kate are finally off the air. Hopefully, they will take their spelling issues with them.
Peyton: As it rises for girls, it will fall for boys.
Jacoby: The Red Sox were terrible last year.

Obscure Biblical Names: Z

2011-04-20T21:33:00.000-04:00

Zebudah Parmenter

m. Phineas Parmenter, 3 June 1736

Sudbury, MA

The KJV doesn't seem to have Y names — it renders them all as Js or Es.

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Obscure Biblical Names: Xerxes

2011-04-15T07:49:00.000-04:00

Xerxes Paulk

Springfield, MA

emigrated to Ohio in 1798

Ok, Xerxes is not that obscure. There is limited choice in X names in the Bible, though.

This is somewhat interesting, though, because the name Xerxes does not appear in the KJV or Geneva Bibles — the KJV renders the king's name as Ahasuerus, while the Geneva Bible says Ahashuerosh. Modern translations give the king his Greek name — Xerxes. So where did Xerxes Paulk get his name? He was a Baptist preacher, and, while the 18th-century Baptists were not known for their learning, someone in his family may have been an educated man with access to a Greek testament or Herodotus.

Again, a terrible name for a Christian child.

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Note: There are no W names in the KJV.

Obscure Biblical Names: Vajezatha

2011-04-14T06:47:00.001-04:00

Meet Vajezatha Daniels of Mendon, MA.

I think this goes on the list of names that may have been ok once upon a time, but are not good for the 21st century. See also Urana Daniels.

In the Bible, Vajezatha is another of Haman's sons, killed in the Book of Esther. I've given up trying to understand why New Englanders gave their children the names of people they believed to be the enemies of God. And such horrible names!

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Songs of '61: The First Gun is Fired

2011-04-13T13:15:00.002-04:00

The First Gun is Fired

by George F. Root

April 1861

The first gun is fired!

may God protect the right!

Let the free-born sons of the North arise

in power's avenging might

Shall the glorious Union our fathers made

by ruthless hands be sundered?

And we of freedom's sacred right

by trait'rous foes be plundered.

Chorus:

Arise; Arise; Arise!

And gird ye for the fight,

And let our watchword ever be,

May God protect the right.

The first gun is fired,

By echoes thrill the land,

And the bounding hearts of the patriot throng,

Now firmly take their stand;

We will bow no more to the tyrant few

Who scorn our long forebearing,

But with Columbia's stars and stripes,

We'll quench their trait'rous daring

The first gun is fired,

Oh! heed the signal well,

And the thunder tone as it rolls along

Shall sound opression's knell,

For the arm of freedom is mighty still,

But strength shall fail us never,

The strength we'll give to our righteous cause

And our glorious land forever!

Obscure Biblical Names: Uzziel

2011-04-13T09:23:00.002-04:00

Uzziel Rea

b. 1693

Danvers, MA

Uzziel Rea had a son named Archelaus, presumably after Herod Archelaus, aka the son of Herod the Great. In the Gospel of Matthew, Joseph and Mary are so afraid of Herod Archelaus that they never return to Judea. Why on Earth would you name your New England child after the guy who followed his father in his desire to kill baby Jesus?

There are a bunch of Uzziels in the Bible, none of them particularly distinguished.

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Obscure Biblical Names: Tobijah

2011-04-12T09:15:00.004-04:00

Edited: Per Boxfoot's explanation, I hereby deem Tobijah insufficiently obscure for this series. We'll go with Tyrannus instead (see comments). It raises an interesting question: which is a worse name for a child born in Massachusetts in 1775: Herod or Tyrannus?

Tobijah Perkins

Topsfield, MA

Not Tobias, not Elijah. Tobijah.

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

The First Shots Are Fired

2011-04-12T06:55:00.001-04:00

Today is the 150th anniversary of the shots fired on Fort Sumter that marked the beginning of the Civil War. I'm sure there are many fine tributes to the day all over the internet.

My contribution will be to point you toward Jill Lepore's essay in the American Scholar: "How Longfellow Woke the Dead."

Lepore argues that we should read Longfellow's famous poem, "Paul Revere' Ride" in its original context — not as a piece of singsong schoolroom verse, but as a call to arms at the beginning of the Civil War:

"Paul Revere’s Ride” is a poem about waking the dead. The dead are Northerners, roused to war. But the dead are also the enslaved, entombed in slavery—another common conceit: Frederick Douglass once wrote about his escape as “a resurrection from the dark and pestiferous tomb of slavery.” Who shall wake? Neglecting Longfellow, taking the Sumner out of Longfellow, juvenilizing Longfellow, has had its costs. Decades of schoolroom recitation have not only occluded the poem’s meaning but have also made it exceptionally serviceable as a piece of political propaganda, not least because political propaganda and juvenilia have rather a lot in common.

Take a look — it's a great read.

Obscure Biblical Names: Salathiel

2011-04-11T09:08:00.006-04:00

Salathiel Judd

b. 1769

d. 1820 Chester, MA

In the Bible, Salathiel is named in the extensive genealogy of Joseph.

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Harvard Admissions Exam

2011-04-09T13:36:00.000-04:00

This version of the Harvard Admission Exam (1869) has been going around among the graduate students. It includes sections on Latin and Greek translation and grammar, History and Geography, Arithmetic, Algebra, and Geometry.

Take a shot at the History and Geography section (no Wikipedia!):

Birding Bleg

2011-04-09T13:09:00.001-04:00

Can any birders out there help me identify this little guy/gal?

He/she lives in my new back yard in Cambridge, approx. half a mile from the Charles River. I took these pics around 6 in the evening in early April. I first noticed her when she was on the ground, picking through some scattered feathers. Then, she flew into this little tree and perched about 6 ft off the ground. After a while, she flew up into the bigger tree next door, about 20 ft up.

I haven't seen any songbirds in the new yard yet – just little puffs of feathers where they once were:

I know nothing about birds, but my impression was that she was small (bigger than a dove, but not by much), drab, and had giant claws relative to the rest of her body. In my very inexpert opinion, she looked too small and drab to be a red-tailed hawk like these. She has dark bands on her tail. Even with the birding book Pete gave me, I am hopeless.

The Reinterrment of Joseph Warren

2011-04-08T07:54:00.000-04:00

On this day in 1776, Joseph Warren was re-interred at the Granary Burying Ground in Boston. Warren had been killed by a bullet to the head at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, and buried in a shallow grave with several other American dead. After British troops evacuated from Boston in March of 1776, Warren's friends exhumed his remains and transferred them to the Granary Burying Ground.

In 1824, Warren's bones were moved again, to St. Paul's Church. In 1855, they were moved again, to Forest Hill Cemetery.

Obscure Biblical Names: Ruhamah

2011-04-02T09:07:00.000-04:00

Ruhamah Wood

d. 8 March 1791

Brooklyn, CT

Ruhamah Wood, 1791, Brooklyn, CT

Ruhamah Wood's gravestone in Brooklyn, CT reads,

In Memory of Mrs

Ruhama, wife of

Mr Be(n)jamin Wood

who died March

8th 1791 in the 28th

year of her age.

Behold me here

you splended youth

The tale I tell

is all the truth

Tho you are young

you may die soon

My morning sun

went down at noon

In the Bible, Ruhamah is a symbolic name given to the daughter(s?) of Hosea (Hosea 2:1).

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Obscure Biblical Names: Quartus

2011-04-01T09:01:00.000-04:00

Quartus Miles

b. 17 June 1810

Huntington, MA

This is not the best entry. There are only two Q names in the Bible, Quartus and Quirinius, but Quirinius is rendered as Cyrenius in the Geneva and KJV Bibles. Quartus could be named for the Biblical Quartus, I suppose, but it's probably only used for fourth sons. Boo.

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Obscure Biblical Names: Parshandatha

2011-03-31T07:06:00.000-04:00

Parshandatha (Ray) Sanborn Ferrin

of Plymouth, NH

m. Jonathan Ferrin c. 1850

This is a strange one. In the Bible, Parshandatha was a man, and not a very nice one. He was one of the ten sons of Haman killed in the Book of Esther. Why would a New Englander choose this name for any child, let alone a daughter?

Sometimes I think that some New Englanders weren't all that Biblically literate, even if they were familiar with the Bible.

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Obscure Biblical Names: Onesiphorus

2011-03-30T06:37:00.002-04:00

Onesiphorus Tileston

d. 27 November 1771

Boston, MA

Onesiphorus Tileston, 1771, Granary Burying Ground, Boston

The Biblical Onesiphorus was an early Christian and friend of Paul (2 Tim. 1:16-18; 4:19).

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Obscure Biblical Names: Nehushta

2011-03-29T06:36:00.002-04:00

Nehusta Moore Wells

m. 6 November 1794

Spencer, MA

In the Bible, Nehushta was the mother of a king of Judah (2 Kings 24:8).

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Obscure Biblical Names: M

2011-03-28T10:36:00.000-04:00

The letter M is a real challenge. How can you choose just one?

Mahalaleel: Melhalaleel Munnings of Boston

Mehuman: Mehuman Hinsdell of Deerfield

Mephibosheth: Mephibosheth Adams of Groton

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Obscure Biblical Names: Lamech

2011-03-27T10:46:00.001-04:00

Lamech Blandin

soldier in the American Revolution

Lemech/Lamech/Lemek was the son of Methuselah and the father of Noah.

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Obscure Biblical Names: Kenaz

2011-03-26T10:18:00.002-04:00

Kenaz Pixley

married Apphia Meachum, 19 February 1809

Chester, MA

There are actually three men named Kenaz in the Bible.

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Obscure Biblical Names: Jehosheba

2011-03-25T08:48:00.002-04:00

Jehosheba Taft

b. 11 May 1755

Uxbridge, MA

I actually kind of like this name.

In the Bible, Jehosheba was the daughter of Jehoram (2 Chr. 22:11).

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Obscure Biblical Names: Imla

2011-03-24T08:33:00.006-04:00

Imla Keyes

b. 30 October 1793

Westford, MA

I get sucked into these records. I just go in looking for Imla, but my eye wanders down a line or two and I notice Ivory. That's right — Ivory Keyes. Then I see that Imla was the father of Emerline and twins named Liberty and Lydia. I could read these records all day long.

In the Bible, Imla was the father of the prophet Micaiah.

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Obscure Biblical Names: Hazelelponi

2011-03-23T07:59:00.002-04:00

Hazelelponi Gee

b. 27 May 1662

Boston

Hazelelponi Gee was named after her mother, Hazelelponi Willix.

The Biblical Hazelelponi shows up in a genealogy of the line of Judah (1 Chron 4:3) and is never mentioned again.

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Obscure Biblical Names: Genubath

2011-03-22T06:45:00.000-04:00

Genubath Strong

b. 22 Oct 1791

Bolton, CT

Genubath was the third of six sons born to Ebenezer and Lucy Strong. His brothers were Ebenezer, Solomon, Daniel, Eli, and Samuel.

Also of note: the genealogy says that the youngest son, Samuel, was adopted in infancy. I don't know why — his mother was still alive and lived another 30 years after his birth (though she did not have any more children, so perhaps there was some sort of problem). Anyway, his adoptive parents were named John and Cleopatra Skinner.

In the Bible, Genubath is an Edomite brought up by an Egyptian queen (1 Kings 11:20).

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Obscure Biblical Names: Fortunatus

2011-03-21T09:07:00.000-04:00

Fortunatus Bassett

b. 1742

Chilmark, Marthas Vineyard, MA

One of the nice things about Christians is that they really, really want you to know about the Bible. In service of that goal, they have created bajillions of websites that cover the minutia Bible in exhaustive detail. The Christian website I use for names is good for my purposes because it has lots of useful glossaries and tends to quote the King James Version (KJV), which would have been familiar to the residents of colonial New England (they also used the Geneva Bible, but that one isn't really so popular on the internet and it's similar to the KJV). Wikipedia also has an impressive list of Biblical names, but the spellings are not always taken from the KJV, so they seem less likely to show up in colonial New England.

The detail-oriented people at christiananswers.net assure me that there are only 3 names beginning with F in the whole Bible: Felix, Festus, and Fortunatus. The first two were certainly Romans and the third probably was — in any event, they are all in the New Testament. Colonial New Englanders liked to use Old Testament names — you won't find many Pauls or Lukes in this crowd — and none of these three names seemed particularly outlandish to me. I picked Fortunatus because he seems to be a relatively obscure character (1 Cor. 16:17).

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Obscure Biblical Names: Eliashib

2011-03-20T07:55:00.001-04:00

Eliashib Adams

b. 18 Feb 1659

Medfield, MA

Actually, the Adams family tree is lousy with Eliashibs.

There were two Eliashibs in the Bible, both priests (1 Chr. 24:12; Neh. 12:22).

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Obscure Biblical Names: Dumah

2011-03-19T14:07:00.002-04:00

Dumah Tuttle

Ok, I cheated. Dumah Tuttle is from New York. He was elected to the New York State Legislature in 1831.

In the Bible, Dumah is the fourth son of Ishmael (Genesis 25:14).

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Obscure Biblical Names: Cozbi

2011-03-18T10:09:00.001-04:00

Cozbi Hayden

b. 26 November 1749

In the Bible, Cozbi is the daughter of a Midianite king. According to the Christian encyclopedia I use to find exhaustive lists of Biblical names, she was notable because she "seduced Israelite men into sexual sin and idolatry." She was killed with a javelin. Lovely. Why would you want to name your godfearing New England daughter Cozbi? I don't know, but I don't understand the Jezebels either.

Cozbi Hayden was the daughter of the staidly named Richard and Mary Hayden of Braintree, MA. Richard and Mary had an unusual naming style — their children were:

Aminadah (b. 1746, boy)
Cozbi (b. 1749, girl)
Asenath (b. 1751, girl)
Ziba (b. 1754, boy)
Cyrus (b. 1756, boy)
twin girls: Sage and Molly (b. 1759)
Lewis (b. 1763, boy)

It's like they ran out of steam toward the end. Who starts out with Aminadah and ends up at Lewis?

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Gravestone of the Day: Bezer Hill

2011-03-17T08:06:00.002-04:00

Bezer Hill, 1821, East Bridgewater, MA

In Memory of

MR. BEZER HILL,

Who was killed by the

upsetting of a cart,

Sep. 20, 1821.

AEt. 29.

Adieu my friends, a long & sad farewell!

A scen more solemn than the passing bell:

I hope with God in glory I shall bloom,

Where sorrow, sickness, death, can never come.

Consoling thought! dear partner dry your tears,

Your friend has gone beyond your anxious fears;

Weep not for me, prepare without delay,

To meet that debt, you all must shortly pay.

B.L.

Can't blame this one on David Blood.

I thought that this might be an example of Beza + accent = Bezer, but there is actually an obscure Bezer in the Bible. Maybe it's even the other way around — there's no Beza in the Bible, so maybe someone like Beza Soule is really Bezer + accent = Beza? There is a Bezaleel, though, so who knows.

In any event, the biblical Bezer appears only once. Some of his brothers and cousins listed in adjacent verses would also make great additions to my Alphabet: Jephunneh, Pispah, Ulla, Zophah, Imna, etc.

A New Names Series

2011-03-16T09:39:00.005-04:00

I propose a new series for VPI:

Scraping the Bottom of the Biblical Names Barrell:

an Alphabet

In this series, I will highlight obscure Biblical names given to New Englanders. I may not be able to find examples for all 26 letters, but I will try.

See today's name of the day for the first installment and check back for updates in the future.

A: Abihail

B: Bezer

C: Cozbi
D: Dumah
E: Eliashib
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

Gravestone of the Day: Abihail King

2011-03-16T08:54:00.003-04:00

Abihail King, 1755, Wrentham, MA

In Memory of

Abihail King

who Died Octbr.

the 5th 1755

in ye 16th Year

of Her

Age.

Not a typo. There were several Abihails in the Bible.

Obscure Bible Names Alphabet

Gravestone of the Day: Mary Willington

2011-03-15T07:40:00.001-04:00

Mary Willington, 1799, Arlington, MA

SACRED

to the memory of

Miss MARY WILLINGTON,

dau. of Coln.

JEDUTHAN and Mrs.

SUSANNAH WILLINGTON,

who died 26 Aug. 1799;

AEt. 16.

Blessed are the pure in heart,

for they shall see God.

Neglecting This Blog

2011-03-12T19:52:00.000-05:00

Hello, everyone.

I just wanted to apologize for neglecting this blog over the last week. It was quite a week for us — midterm papers to grade, daycare centers to visit, and, most importantly, a new house to move into!

I'll be back with new content on Monday.

More Press for Tangible Things!

2011-03-06T18:27:00.000-05:00

More press for Tangible Things (the exhibit half of the course I helped develop and am teaching for this semester): Boston Globe.

"The Letter'd Stone Shall Tell"

2011-03-05T12:50:00.001-05:00

Boston Evening-Post, 12 March 1770 via Archive of Americana

Today is the 241st anniversary of the Boston Massacre. In honor of the day, I present the following poem, printed in the Boston Evening-Post a week after the event:

With Fire enwrapt, surcharg'd with Death,
Lo, the pois'd Tube convolves it's fatal Breath!
The flying Ball with heav'n-directed Force,
Rids the free Spirit of it's fallen Corse.
Well fated Shades! let no unmanly Tear
From Pit'y Eye, distain your honour'd Bier:
Lost to their view, surviving Friends may mourn,
Yet o'er thy Pile shall Flames celestial burn;
Long as in Freedom's Cause the Wise contend,
Dear to your Country shall your Fame extend;
While to the World, the letter'd Stone shall tell,
How Caldwell, Attucks, Gray, and Mav'rick fell.

A few notes on this poem:

Though unsigned in this form, this poem is generally attributed to Phillis Wheatley.
I have seen the poem reprinted many times, but somehow, nobody bothered to mention the little soul effigy border! The gravestone imagery used in this little woodcut really strengthens the "letter'd Stone" reference.
Did the Boston Massacre victims have a gravestone before the current marker (1906)? The Boston cemetery commission had no knowledge of an earlier stone when they published this pamphlet in 1902, and this book from 1853 says the same thing: if there ever was a stone, it was destroyed during the siege winter of 1775-6. Does anyone know of a reference to a gravestone for the Massacre victims from 1770-1775?
Let's go back to those little soul effigies in the border for a moment. The Boston Evening-Post was established in 1735 by Thomas Fleet. In 1770, it was published by his son, Thomas Fleet, Jr. The Fleets owned at least three slaves: Peter Fleet (d. circa 1758), Pompey and Caesar Fleet (Peter's sons, still alive in 1770). We know for sure that Peter Fleet made woodcuts — there is a book from the 1730s called The Prodigal Daughter that is illustrated with his signed woodcuts. We also know that Pompey and Caesar were trained as printers and worked in the Fleets' printing business before the war (I'm not sure about Caesar, but Pompey escaped to Nova Scotia and spent the rest of his life in Sierra Leone). Could Pompey or Caesar have carved this border? Is it possible that this is a poem by a black poet, illustrated by a black engraver, eulogizing, among others, a black/Indian sailor?
I feel a sense of calm knowing that people were messing up its and it's in the 18th century. It's the same calm I feel knowing that 18th-century Americans had ridiculous names like Belcher Noyes and Cotton Tufts. The world is not going to hell in a handbasket, or, at least, it is not a recent development.

Names of the Day

2011-03-02T13:34:00.000-05:00

Jabez Rice of Marlborough, Massachusetts and his wife, Miriam, bore names appropriate for members of the new Israel. When Miriam gave birth to twins on June 27, 1775, she named them John Hancock and Dorothy Quincy Rice, names for the new republic.

source: Boston Gazette, 10 July 1775

Gravestone of the Day: Hephzibah Dickinson

2011-02-28T07:20:00.002-05:00

Hephzibah Dickinson, 1795, Hatfield, MA

In Memory of

Miss Hephzibah Dickinson

Daughter of Colo Lemuel

and Mrs Molly Dickin

son, who died Decr 29th

1795. in the 21st Year

of hir Age.

Gravestone of the Day: Jerusha Pond Fisher

2011-02-23T10:46:00.000-05:00

Jerusha Pond Fisher, 1812, Wrentham, MA

In memory of

Jerusha Pond,

Daughter of

Mr. Paul Fisher &

Mrs. Artemissa his wife

who died April 21st,

1812 In the 6th

Year of her Age.

If I ever write any Redwall fanfic, I'll know what to name my otters.

Gravestone of the Day: Abigail Carlile

2011-02-22T06:32:00.002-05:00

Abigail Carlile, 1797, York, ME

SACRED

to the memory of

MRS. ABIGAIL CARLILE,

wife of

Mr. John Carlile, &

daur of Mr. Henry Sewall,

born Jan. 11, 1758,

died July 17, 1797,

AEt. 40.

without issue.

A lively christian.

Near this stone are deposited the re-

mains of BENJAMIN and DANIEL,

infants, and children of

Daniel Sewall Esq.

"Of such is the kingdom of Heaven."

Daniel Sewall (1755-1842) was Abigail's older brother. He married Dorcas Bartlett (1759-1843) in 1780. Their sons, Benjamin (b. 9 Nov 1785, d. 15 Dec 1785) and Daniel (b. 1 Feb 1794, d. 21 Feb 1794) were buried in a family plot with their Aunt Abigail.

Gravestone of the Day: William Burrough

2011-02-21T08:32:00.002-05:00

William Burrough, 1772, Newburyport, MA

HERE IS INTERRD

WILLIAM THE

SON OF Mr GEORGE

& Mrs BRIDGET

BURROUGH

WHO DCSt. NOVr.

Ye 28th 1772

AGED 6 DAYS

Happy Birthday, Mom!

2011-02-20T15:38:00.002-05:00

Another Tough Name

2011-02-19T07:59:00.002-05:00

Here's another perfectly fine 18th-century name that would cause problems on a modern American playground: Gayer Coffin.

From the Boston Birth Records.

Too Late to Apologize

2011-02-18T17:33:00.001-05:00

Am I late to the party posting this video?

Thanks, Dad.

King George Killed Your Grandma

2011-02-18T16:54:00.000-05:00

I am noticing a pattern as I write about the gravestones of exiled civilians who died during the siege of Boston. Many of these gravestones inflate the ages of the deceased.

For example, Solomon Kneeland, born in Boston on September 23, 1698, is listed as 80 years old in 1775, when he was 77. Lydia Dyar was 79 when she died in 1776, but her stone gives her credit for an extra six months.

Is this just a fluke-y thing? Or are people inflating the ages of the elderly exiles to make King George look like an ogre? Considering that some of these stones count down the age in years, months, and days, I think an imprecise age is interesting. On the other hand, these people were in exile — perhaps no one knew their precise ages because the church records were still in Boston and the survivors weren't sure, so they took a guess and landed on 80.

What say you? Trolling for sympathy, or legitimate mistake?

Gravestone of the Day: Sam

2011-02-18T15:57:00.000-05:00

Sam, 1739, NCBG, Newport, RI

Here lieth Sa[m]

a Negro Servan[t]

to Wm: Barker,

aged aout 50

Years & died

Septmr: – 1739.

The fact that Sam's age was imprecisely known probably means that he was born in Africa or the West Indies and brought to Rhode Island by a slave trader.

Gravestone of the Day: Joel and Mary Lyman

2011-02-17T18:10:00.000-05:00

Joel and Mary Lyman, 1778, Northampton, MA

Joel, Son of Mr. Joel & Mrs.

Mrs. Mary Lyman died

Sept. 5. 1778. aged 13

Years 1 Month.

And their Dautr Mary

died Sept. 11. 1778.

aged 10 Months.

Michele Bachmann Strikes Again

2011-02-16T10:51:00.000-05:00

Michele Bachmann's opposition to a proposal that would make breast pumps tax-deductible leads me to believe that she hates babies. Well, specifically, she hates black babies and the babies of mothers who work. Either that, or she hates tax deductions.

My breast pump cost $249 and was not covered by insurance. It's a good pump, but it isn't a hospital-grade pump or anything fancy. For someone who needs a pump either because she is working, or because her baby is in the NICU, or because she needs to regulate her supply, or because she just prefers pumping to direct breast feeding or formula feeding, a tax deduction could help out a lot. Especially if she needs an expensive pump, not a cheap(!) one like mine.

But Michele Bachmann is so virulently anti-Obama that she has actually come out against a proposal that is specifically designed to help infants and new parents by reducing their tax burden. My head, it spins.

Molly disapproves.

Not history-related, but I'm afraid you'll have to put up with some occasional mommyblogging from now on.

Gravestone of the Day: Phebe Seabury

2011-02-16T08:11:00.002-05:00

Phebe Seabury, 1715, Little Compton, RI

Here lyeth ye body

of Phebe the wife

of Ioseph Seabury

who deceast in ye

36t year of her

aGe April ye 21t 1715

Gravestone of the Day: Thomas Bancroft

2011-02-15T05:23:00.000-05:00

Thomas Bancroft, 1718, Wakefield, MA

Here Lyes the Body

of Deacon THOMAS

BANCROFT Who Sarved

The Curch of Reding

in the Office of a Dec

Aged 69 Years Who

Deceased June ye 12th, 1718

One Earth He Purchised a good Degre

Grte Boldness in ye faith & liberty

And Now Poseseth Imortality

The Memory of the Just is Blssed.

This epitaph is kind of a mess. It's squished into the available space, the lines are all different sizes, the spelling is funky, and the composition is inelegant. That's somewhat unusual for the Lamson shop — their epitaphs are usually planned out pretty well. Compare to this stone, which has similar iconography, carved by the Lamson shop in 1717.

"He Firmly Believed in Cats as an Article of Diet"

2011-02-14T14:55:00.001-05:00

In honor of the day, I have an update to a story I tried to tell here nearly two years ago. I am much indebted to commenter Randy Nonenmacher for bringing this new information to my attention.

Some of you may remember Elizabeth Palmer of Little Compton, Rhode Island. Her gravestone proclaims that she "Should have been the Wife of Mr. Simeon Palmer."

Elizabeth Mortimer Palmer, 1776, Little Compton, RI

What an intriguing stone! What happened in this person's life to prompt such an epitaph?

The curious thing is that records show that Elizabeth Mortimer did marry Simeon Palmer in 1755. Back in 2009, I wrote:

So what on earth is that epitaph supposed to mean? Even if Elizabeth and Simeon were in love/engaged before he married Lidia, why would it still matter in 1776, after Elizabeth and Simeon had been married for over 20 years? It seems a strange grudge to hold. Perhaps Simeon, who outlived both his wives, was responsible for the epitaph and used the opportunity to apologize to Elizabeth for wronging her.

The whole thing is very strange. Among other things that raise red flags, Elizabeth Mortimer was 11 years older than Simeon Palmer, which certainly isn't outside of the realm of possibility, but would be unusual. Since Simeon married Lidia in 1744, when he was 21 years old, it would mean that any preexisting relationship between Simeon and Elizabeth would be between a very young man and a woman in her 30s. Again, not impossible, but strange for 18th-century New England.

Well, apparently, I did not know the half of it. In 1901, a reader named M.L.T. Alden wrote to the Newport Mercury to tell the editor about some local history he had picked up in the 1880s. It is hard to do his letter justice without quoting it at some length:

Twenty years ago this summer, I came first to Little Compton. I was much interested in this stone and made inquiries and also consulted the Town records. Aunt Sarah Charles Wilbur, the antiquarian of the village, and also Mrs. Angelina (Palmer) Griswold were then alive and they supplied the details that did not appear on the records of the Town.

The first church of Little Compton, R. I. was organized in 1704 under Rev. Richard Billings, a man of prominence and ability, much beloved, and exerted a strong influence over his charge. He had one idiosyncrasy, however; he firmly believed in cats as an article of diet, and fatted them for the purpose. Amongst his parishioners was a man, Simeon Palmer, of the fine old family resident in Little Compton. He was wealthy married first Lydia Dennis, Aug. 25, 1745, and had Susannah, Gideon, Humphrey, Sarah, Walter and Patience. At some time between 1745 and 1752 he had sunstroke which left him mildly insane and he adopted the views of his minister on cats and insisted on his family using them for food.

Lydia is represented as a mild spirited little woman and much against her wishes, complied with her lord's demands. Whether it had anything to do with his death or not I cannot say, but she died in 1753 and Simeon Palmer promptly courted and married Elizabeth Mortimer. Her parents were in humble circumstances, and the old ladies could not say whether she knew of his peculiarities. But they were certainly married as the record says: "Simeon Palmer and Elizabeth Mortimer, mar. by Rev. Jonathan Ellis Sept. 5, 1755." They had one child "Lydia, born Sept. 23, 1757," who married John Pearce. The record reads "John Pearce of James, dec'd and Sarah, and Lydia Palmer of Simeon and Elizabeth married by the Rev. Jonathan Ellis, Feb. 13, 1776." This family left town. After the birth of this child, Elizabeth rebelled against the cat diet, took her child and went home. The old ladies said he kept up her kindly interest in the old man and every Saturday evening he took his mending to her and she mended his clothes and gave him goodly advice. She was taken suddenly sick and died of a fever, and when the old people, her parents were told by Simeon Palmer that he would defray all expenses they gladly availed themselves of his offer. And there he put up this stone. No one put a stone at his grave however.

As far as I can tell, "Aunt Sarah Charles Wilbur" was Sarah Soule Wilbour, wife of Charles Wilbour, and called "Aunt Sarah Charles" by the locals. She was instrumental in erecting the monument to Elizabeth Pabodie in Little Compton graveyard. I have not found Angelina (Palmer) Griswold, but I did find an Angelina (Palmer) Grinnell (1805-1899) who would be about the right age to tell Alden about town history in 1881. She was the daughter of Thomas Palmer and Susanna (Palmer) Palmer, making her a likely repository for Palmer family lore. She was probably a few generations removed from Simeon, Lydia, and Elizabeth Palmer, whose children were all born in the 1740s and 1750s.

We must always approach non-contemporaneous sources with a skeptical eye. The late Victorians dearly loved quirky stories about their ancestors, so much so that many were embellished or completely fabricated. Still, I don't think that we can ignore this story completely. We already knew that something funny was up with this stone and the records surrounding it. Perhaps the story was invented by 19th-century residents of Little Compton to explain the strange gravestone. Perhaps it had a grain of truth. Perhaps it was even mostly true. It's hard to say, but if there are any budding archaeologists who want to excavate Revd Billings' trash pile, I'd be interested to know if there are any cat bones there!

Thanks again to Randy Nonenmacher!

Gravestone of the Day: Sarah Long

2011-02-14T06:42:00.002-05:00

Sarah Long, 1674, Phipps St. Charlestown, MA

SARAH LONG

WIFE TO ZECHARIAH

LONG, AGED 38 YEARS

DECEASED JULY

THE 3

1674

A heart-shaped stone for Valentine's Day.

Gravestone of the Day: John Butterfield

2011-02-13T15:35:00.001-05:00

John Butterfield, 1766, Chelmsford, MA

Here lies the Body of

Capt: John Butterfield, who

departed this Life Janur:

8th 1766 Aged 67 Years

11 months, and 26 days.

The sin of Adam's laid me lo,

For sin hath wrought an overthrow,

From dust I came, to dust I'm come,

And now the dust's bcome my home;

Then Christ comes down with saints to Reign

Then dust me nomore shall detain.

Gravestone of the Day: Isabella Wildrage

2011-02-11T06:59:00.000-05:00

Isabella Wildrage, 1789, Portland, ME

In Memory of

Mrs Isabella Wildrage

Consort of

Capt. James Wildrage,

who was born at the Island

of South Ronaldsha North Britain,

in the Year 1740,

& departed this Life

Septr. 23d 1789,

Aged 49 Years.

I think that the island is South Ronaldsay, pop. 854.

Isabella Wildrage would be a good name for Fanny Forward's rancorous friend.

Gravestone of the Day: Ruth Eastman

2011-02-10T07:23:00.002-05:00

Ruth Eastman, 1739, Hadley, MA

RVTH

EASTMAN

DYED MARCH

30 1739 AGED

8 YEAR 4 MON

Gravestone of the Day: John Westcarre

2011-02-09T05:29:00.002-05:00

John Westcarre, backdated 1675, Hadley, MA

DOCR IOHN

WESTCARRE DYED

IN SEPR 1675 IN YE

XXXI YEAR OFS AGE

This stone, carved by Joseph Nash, is almost certainly backdated. There are a few Nash stones with dates in the 17teens, but most are from the 1720s and 1730s. It would be very unusual for a carver to go 40 years between carving stones, but not very unusual for a carver to commemorate an important citizen who died before the town had a carver. As I have argued before, Nash probably moved west after the 1690s because he was familiar with Boston stones from that era. Perhaps Dr. Westcarre had a wooden marker that was decaying in the 1720s, or perhaps an elderly widow requested a stone for the husband of her youth when Nash came to town.

Gravestone of the Day: Titus Wells Tuttle

2011-02-08T08:01:00.002-05:00

In Memory of

Mr. TITUS

WELLS TUTTLE

who died

Sepr. 18 1795

In the 29 year

of his age.

Death is a debt

To nature due

Which I have paid

And so must you

Titus Wells Tuttle, 1795, Holyoke, MA

Gravestone of the Day: Molley Ames

2011-02-07T07:34:00.002-05:00

Molley Ames, 1775, Groton, MA

Mrs. Sarah

Ames

Here lies the Body

of Molley Ames the

Daughter of Mr. Robert

& Mrs. Sarah Ames, who died

Augt. 6th 1775. In the

3d Year of her age.

This child's epitaph is carved on her mother's footstone.

Gravestone of the Day: Edward Thurber

2011-02-06T06:14:00.002-05:00

Edward Thurber, 1795, NBG, Providence, RI

In Memory of

Mr. EDWARD THURBER,

Son of Mr. Samuel

and Mrs. Hopestill Thurber;

who died July 6, 1795,

aged 34 Years, 4 Months,

and 15 Days.

He was honest, industrious & humane,

Early in life, he by accident

lost his left hand in military service.

Being a Manufacturer & Tr[adesman?]

he was on to the Carolinas, where, p-----ly,

he inhaled the cause of his exit:

on his return passage, was taken sick,

& in six days after his arrival home

fell a victim to Death,

leaving a Wife & Six Children to lament

the premature loss of an esteemed Husband

& affectionate Father.

Gravestone of the Day: Juber Tillinghast

2011-02-05T06:34:00.002-05:00

Juber Tillinghast, 1773, God's Little Acre, NCBG, Newport, RI

In Memory of

JUBER TILLING-

HAST who

died May 16th

1773 Aged

about 50 Years.

Juba Tillinghast was probably brought to Newport from Africa or the West Indies as a child or young man. If he had been born in New England, his age probably would have been known.

The rendering of Juba as "Juber" is an artifact of the New England accent. See: Marther, Annar, Prissilar, etc.

Gravestone of the Day: Catherine Greene

2011-02-04T06:05:00.000-05:00

Catherine Greene, NBG, Providence, RI

Hear in hope of the

resurrection of the just

are deposited, the

mortal remains of

Mrs. CATHERINE

GREENE, wife of

Mr. JABESH

GREENE who

departed this Life

May the 9 AD 1793, in

the 39 Year of her age.

The Children of Elizabeth DePeyster and Charles Willson Peale

2011-02-03T19:35:00.000-05:00

The Peale Family, c. 1773, Charles Willson Peale*

Professor Ulrich spoke briefly about the family of Charles Willson Peale in a lecture this week. Here is a list of the 17 children born to Charles Willson Peale and Elizabeth DePeyster Peale:

Margaret Jane, b. 1763 (they start out tame)
James Willson, b. 1765
Eleanor, b. 1770 (names for Charles' mother)
Margaret Van Bordley, b. 1772 (ideas?)
Raphaelle, b. 1774 (named for Raphael)
Angelica Kauffmann, b.1775 (named for Angelica Kauffmann, painter)
Rembrandt, b. 1778 (named for Rembrandt van Rijn, painter)
Titian Ramsay, b. 1780 (named for Titian and [maybe?] Allan Ramsay, painters)
Rubens, b. 1784 (named for Peter Paul Rubens, painter)
Sophonisba Augusciola, b. 1786 (named for Sophonisba Augusciola, painter)
Rosalba Carriera, b. 1788 (named for Rosalba Carriera, painter)
Vandyke, b. 1792 (named for Anthony van Dyke, painter)
Charles Linnaeus, b. 1794 (named for Carl Linnaeus, naturalist)
Benjamin Franklin, b. 1795 (Franklin merits inclusion among the great scientists and artists)
Sybilla Miriam, b. 1797 (named for Maria Sibylla Merian, illustrator and naturalist)
Titian Ramsay, b. 1799 (the older brother of the same name died in 1798)
Elizabeth DePeyster, b. 1802 (Elizabeth DePeyster Peale died soon after the birth of her youngest daughter).

Gravestone of the Day: Ellin Marion

2011-02-03T07:51:00.000-05:00

Ellin Marion, 1744, Granary Burying Ground, Boston

Here lyes the Remains

of Mrs. ELLIN MARION wife

to Mr. JOSEPH MARION

who departed this life

on the 20th. of Ianuary

A:D 1744.

aged 56 Years 3

Months & 12 Days.

Ellen Bridge Marion was the daughter of Rev. Thomas Bridge. Her husband, Joseph Marion, was a notary public and sold fire insurance.

More Press for Tangible Things!

2011-02-02T19:27:00.000-05:00

Now our course/exhibit is on Radio Boston!

Gravestone of the Day: Benjamin Peirce

2011-02-02T07:55:00.000-05:00

Benjamin Peirce, 1735, Phipps Street Cemetery, Charlestown, MA

Benjamin Peirce

Son of Jerathmil

& Rebeckah Peirce

Died Febry 2nd

1735. Aged 7

Months & 5 Days

Happy febuary!

2011-02-01T06:41:00.002-05:00

Bartholomew Hunt, 1718, Little Compton, RI

Here lyeth Mr

Bartholomew

Hunt, who Dyed

febuary ye 20th.

1717/8 in the 64th

year of his

age.

Gravestone of the Day: Emim How

2011-01-31T06:28:00.000-05:00

Emim How, 1705, Little Compton, RI

HERE LYETH Ye BODY

OF EMIM Ye DAVGHTER

OF NICHOLAS & ELINOR

HOW, SHE LIVED 6

YEARS & DYED IVLY

Ye 18TH 1705

Emim is a new one for me. It is the name of an obscure tribe mentioned briefly in the Bible.

Here is another example of colonial Americans using a collective name from the Bible as a personal name.

More Press for Our Course!

2011-01-30T21:17:00.000-05:00

From the Harvard Gazette.