Gravestone of the Day: James Russell

James Russel, 1773, Concord, MA

Memento mori

Here lies Buried

the Body of Mr:

James Russel, who

departed this Life

May the 5th: AD.

1773 Aged 77

Years 3 months

and 29 days.

No house of pleasure here 'bove ground

Do I expect to have;

My bed of rest for sleeping sound

I've made the silent grave.

I love the birds and baskets in the border.

Gravestone of the Day: Joseph Barrett

Joseph Barrett, 1763, South Burying Ground, Concord, MA

Here lies buried the Body

of CAPT: JOSEPH BARRETT

Son of Deacon Humphry and

Mrs: Mary Barrett, who died

the 4th Day of April, Anno

Dom: one Thousand Seven

Hundred and Sixty three,

in the Eighty fifith Year of 

his Age.

Did the Park workshop charge by the letter as the Stevens workshop did? If so, spelling out the year seems like an extravagant waste of space and money.

Gravestone of the Day: Rebecca Barrett

Rebecca Barrett, 1738, South Burying Ground, Concord, MA

Here lyes Interred ye Remains

of Mrs REBECCA BARRETT late

Consort of Capt. JOSEPH BARRETT

Who Departed this life June 23d: 1738 AE 54

A person of true piety & excellent vertue

Exemplary in her religious Conversation &

Conduct being a diligent instructer & faithfull

guide to her Children kind & Charitable

to her neighbours truly virtuous & desirable

in her life & much lamented at her Death.

The Memory of the Just is Blessed.

Gravestone of the Day: Ruth Conant

Ruth Conant, 1760, South Burying Ground, Concord, MA

Here Lies Buried

The Body of

Ruth Conant Dafter

of Mr Andrew &

Mrs Elisabeth Conant

Who Died March

ye 14 1760

In ye 15 year

of Her Age

Gravestone of the Day: Lot Conant

Lot Conant, 1767, South Burying Ground, Concord, MA

Here lies

Interred the Remains

of Mr: Lot Conant, who

departed this Life

September. 20th: 1767.

In the 90th: year of

his age.

The sin of Adam's laid me low,

For sin hath wrought an overthrow;

From dust I came to dust am come,

And now the dust's become my home;

When Christ comes down with saints to rign

Then dust me no more shall detain.

The Park workshop carvers used this verse more than once. I think it's fairly awkward, but someone must have liked it.

Gravestone of the Day

Elizabeth Munroe, 1750, Concord, MA

Mrs. ELIZABETH MUNROE, Wife to

Mr. THOMAS MUNROE, Who depar-

ted this Life Febry. ye 12th 1750 in ye 39th

Year of her Age, left a Sorrowfull Hus-

band & Ten Children, was Emenently

Meek in her behaviour, Virtuous &

Examplary in her Conversation in

ye Various Relations which she Sus-

tained, & hath left a Testimony that

She is indeed blessed as are ye dead

which Die in ye Lord, who rest from

their Labours & their works Do follow them

Gravestone of the Day

Jonathan Melven, 1737, Concord, MA

Here lies the Body of

Mr. Jonathan Melven

who died February 13th

1737 In the 49th Year

of his Age

Job, XIV. 12.

So man lieth down and riseth not

till the heavens be no more;

they shall not awake, nor be raised

out of their sleep.

Heraldry in Concord

It is a well-established fact that I know nothing about heraldry. It is frequently pretty, but that is the extent of my informed commentary on the subject. This coat of arms can be found on the Colonel Nathan Barrett gravestone (1791) in Concord, MA. I suppose that those are supposed to by lions rampant in the middle there, though they look more like horse-rat hybrids.

If anyone would like to offer some informed commentary in the comments, I will elevate it to guest post status.

Literacy in Concord, MA

Concord, MA is known for its illustrious literary history. But what can gravestones tell us about literacy in Concord in the 17th and 18th centuries? Because it is so close to Boston, Concord's burying grounds boast a large number of professionally carved gravestones. The quality of these stones is generally very high, and they rarely exhibit the creative spelling and awkward line breaks often found in rural cemeteries.

But these gravestones do occasionally contain misspellings that shed light on the limits of literacy in Concord (at least among stone carvers). The John and Anna Howard stone (1718) in the South Quarter Burying Place is somewhat crudely carved (both the lunette design and the letters are amateur) and contains the interesting misspelling "wife fo." It is unlikely that a literate person would misspell the word "of." It's even stranger that no one gouged out the mistake and amended it. Perhaps the carver was copying an epitaph written by a more talented artisan and most of the people who saw the stone couldn't read it well enough to correct him.

The Mary Meriam stone (1731) at Old Burial Hill has two interesting mistakes: the misspelling of "relict" as "reliks" and the division of the word "anno" into "an" and "no." The former mistake is unique to this stone, but the latter appears on several other stones by the same carver. This suggests that the carver may have been literate in English but did not recognize Latin. When presented with a Latin word, he transformed it into English homophones.


Another curious misspelling can be found on the Joseph Hubburd stone (1768): "Here lies Burred . . ." This is a strange mistake, especially since any gravestone carver must have carved the word "buried" hundreds of times. Perhaps this is just a mistake — the carver's mind wandered and the "r" looked enough like an "i" that his eye just skipped over it. Then again, perhaps the misspelling reflects a regional pronunciation (like the "depated" stones).


I'm also going to assume that this person's name was "Humphrey Barret," and not "Humprey Barret." 

UPDATE: Cranky Yankee's comment made me reflect on this a bit, so I want to make it clear that I'm not arguing that phonetic spelling is evidence of a lack of literacy. The most educated men and women in America often spelled as the spirit moved them until the end of the 18th century (and beyond). Rather, I'm saying that some of these mistakes ("fo") hint at a low level of literacy while others ("an no") merely reflect a lack of familiarity with Latin.

Update:

Thanks to commenter RJO for supplying some details about the carver of this stone: John Worster. 

I'm posting a photo of the John Meriam stone (1724) for a couple of reasons. First, Worster (or a letterer in his shop) misspelled the month ("Feruary"). I also think that it supplies evidence that the letterer thought that "AN" and "NO" were separate words. It looks like he likes to put big spaces between words when he needs to take up room, rather than splitting words into syllables (see lines 1, 4, 8, and 9). 

The space between AN and NO might be a spacing issue rather than a Latin issue. I'm not sure I'm right, but I think I can make a good case for the latter.