 |
| Hannah and Daniel Glover, 1760, Marblehead, MA |
Hannah Glover
Who died Octob. 17
1758 Aged 1 year, &
3 days.
Daniel Glover
Who died Octob. 3.
1760 Aged 1 Year &
6 Months.
Children of Mr. John & Mrs. Han-
nah Glover.
Showing posts with label Marblehead. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marblehead. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Gravestone of the Day
 |
| Eleazer Ingalls, 1718, Marblehead, MA |
HERE LYES ye BODY
OF ELEAZER INGALLS
WHO DIED FEBUARY
ye 27 1717/18
AGED 56
YEARS
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Gravestone of the Day: James Dennis Hammond
 |
| James Dennis Hammond, 1840, Marblehead, MA |
In Memory of
JAMES DENNIS
HAMMOND
He was one of the Heroes of
the Frigate Constitution and
having been wounded in the
capture of the Java he
received a pension from his
grateful Country untill
his decease which happened
Oct. 24, 1840 at the age of
54 years 10 mos. & 14 days
Immortal honor to all those
Who bled in Freedoms Naval Fights
And vanquished all their Countrys does
To gain Free Trade & Sailors Rights
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Gravestone of the Day: Prudence Whitwell
 |
| Prudence Whitwell, 1773, Marblehead, MA |
PRUDENCE the Wife of
the Revd. WILLIAM WHIT-
WELL, departed this Life
Febry. the 7th 1773, AE 33.
This stone seems to be a late 18th-century copy of several late 17th-century stones, including the Thaddeus Ridden stone:
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Gravestone of the Day: Joseph Reddan
 |
| Joseph Reddan, 1708, Marblehead, MA |
HERE LYES
ye BODY
OF JOSEPH
REDDAN
AGED ABOUT 10 MO
DIED MAY ye
4th 1708
Friday, March 26, 2010
Gravestone of the Day
 |
| Jane Crouningshiel, 1771, Marblehead, MA |
In Memory of Mrs. JANE CROU-
NINGSHIEL the Beloved Wife of
Mr. WILLIAM CROUNINGSHIEL
& only Daur. to Mr. JONATHAN &
Mrs. JANE THOMSON, died ye 27th
Janry. 1771 in ye 37th. Year of her Age.
Naked as from the Earth we came,
And crept to Life at first
And crept to Life at first
We to the Earth Return again,
And mingel with our Dust
And mingel with our Dust
The dear Delights we here injoy
And fondly call our own
Are but short favours borrow'd now
To be Repaid anon.
And fondly call our own
Are but short favours borrow'd now
To be Repaid anon.
The epitaph is from a hymn by Isaac Watts, based on Job 1:21. I like the letters on this one — they are so clear and precise.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Gravestone of the Day
 |
| Elizabeth Russell, 1771, Marblehead, MA |
Here lies interr'd, ye Remains
of MADAM ELIZABETH RUSSELL,
who Departed this Life Feby.
the 4th. 1771. AE: 80 Years
Weep not for me my Son most dear,
I am not Dead, but Sleeping here,
My debts are paid, my grave you see,
Wait but a While, you'll follow me.
The Memory of the Just is Blessed.
The Righteous shall be had in
Everlasting Remembrence.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Dimond Fitteyplace
Also, Pete would like to recommend Mr. Dimond Fitteyplace (d. 1771) for a Puritan naming award, though we will have to look into his birthdate to see whether he qualifies for 17th-century honors.
Visiting Marblehead: Mission #4
Mission #4: Find evidence supporting or refuting the hypothesis that carvers created stockpiles of decorated blanks that were later inscribed with the name of the deceased.
Were gravestones made-to-order from start to finish? Or did stonecutters decorate stones ahead of time and add in the particulars late? I'm sure we could find a satisfactory answer somewhere in the secondary literature, but it's more fun to wander around the graveyard and look for clues.
Pete and I found several examples that seem to indicate that stones were sometimes made ahead of time.
One of the most convincing was the Mary Traill stone (1850), which is highly decorated in the neoclassical style (I apologize for the crappy picture - this stone was under a tree and we didn't bring a mirror). Many similar stones nearby have a poem carved in the blank space on the plinth, but Mary Traill's epitaph is confined to the oval in the middle of the stone. The rectangle where someone might carve poem is framed nicely, but there's nothing there. This, along with the elaborate decoration and resemblance to the other stones in the family plot, seems to indicate that the stone was decorated before the specifics were added.
Another clue comes from the Martha Hawkins stone (1761). This is an unusual stone because the side panels are elaborately and professionally decorated, but the death's head at the top is rough, unprofessional, and lightly inscribed. This particular skull and crossbones design is found nowhere else in this graveyard, and similar icons are much more skillfully rendered. The epitaph seems to be somewhere between professional and improvised — the letters are neat and well-cut, but oddly spaced between very visible guidelines. Might this be an example of an apprentice who has mastered lettering and can be trusted to inscribe pre-decorated stones trying his hand at decorating a stone? More research would be needed to make a solid case, but it's easy to make up a story that could explain this stone. Perhaps Margaret Hawkins' son or another relative cut letters for the local stonecarver and was able to obtain a half-decorated blank for his mother/aunt/cousin. Maybe the family couldn't afford a professional stone, but the letter-cutter did his best to finish the blank. This is just a guess, of course, but it is plausible.
Some stones were obviously custom-made, but I think that we found enough evidence to suggest that others were produced with stock designs and filled in later.
Were gravestones made-to-order from start to finish? Or did stonecutters decorate stones ahead of time and add in the particulars late? I'm sure we could find a satisfactory answer somewhere in the secondary literature, but it's more fun to wander around the graveyard and look for clues.
Pete and I found several examples that seem to indicate that stones were sometimes made ahead of time.
One of the most convincing was the Mary Traill stone (1850), which is highly decorated in the neoclassical style (I apologize for the crappy picture - this stone was under a tree and we didn't bring a mirror). Many similar stones nearby have a poem carved in the blank space on the plinth, but Mary Traill's epitaph is confined to the oval in the middle of the stone. The rectangle where someone might carve poem is framed nicely, but there's nothing there. This, along with the elaborate decoration and resemblance to the other stones in the family plot, seems to indicate that the stone was decorated before the specifics were added.
Another clue comes from the Martha Hawkins stone (1761). This is an unusual stone because the side panels are elaborately and professionally decorated, but the death's head at the top is rough, unprofessional, and lightly inscribed. This particular skull and crossbones design is found nowhere else in this graveyard, and similar icons are much more skillfully rendered. The epitaph seems to be somewhere between professional and improvised — the letters are neat and well-cut, but oddly spaced between very visible guidelines. Might this be an example of an apprentice who has mastered lettering and can be trusted to inscribe pre-decorated stones trying his hand at decorating a stone? More research would be needed to make a solid case, but it's easy to make up a story that could explain this stone. Perhaps Margaret Hawkins' son or another relative cut letters for the local stonecarver and was able to obtain a half-decorated blank for his mother/aunt/cousin. Maybe the family couldn't afford a professional stone, but the letter-cutter did his best to finish the blank. This is just a guess, of course, but it is plausible.
Some stones were obviously custom-made, but I think that we found enough evidence to suggest that others were produced with stock designs and filled in later.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Visiting Marblehead: Mission #3
Mission #3: Identify examples of hybrid old style/new style dating on gravestones from the pre-1752 period.
Results:
Results:
Visiting Marblehead: Mission #1
Mission #1: Find gravestones with misspellings, mistakes, and revisions that are literally carved in stone.
This turned out to be fairly straightforward, as at least a third of the pre-1800 stones had at least one identifiable error. These mistakes fell into two categories: first and most entertaining were the gaffes that contemporaries had identified as errors and tried to correct, second and less fun were the spellings that do not conform to modern standard English but were not necessarily "wrong" at the time.
A good example of the former can be found on the Elizabeth Russell stone (1771), on which the carver struggled with the words "Blessed" and "had." "Blessed was originally spelled with a long (or medial) s and a terminal s, but there is something else scratched in lightly between the letters s and e. Perhaps someone was unsatisfied with the long s and scratched in a second, lighter, terminal s. Maybe the terminal s was supposed to be carved farther to the right, but the carver adjusted the spacing. After blowing up the image and examining it more closely, I think it is possible that the carver may have begun carving the e before remembering (or being reminded) that "Blessed" needed a second s.
The other error on the Elizabeth Russell stone is the gouged-out letter (c? d? o?) that has been turned into an h at the beginning of the word "had." That part of the epitaph reads, "The Memory of the Just is Blessed. The Righteous shall be had in Everlasting Remembrence." The spelling of "Remembrence" probably didn't raise any eyebrows at the time (though the n is gouged out and recarved), but your guess is as good as mine for explaining the beginning of "had."
Other examples of mistakes include the Thaddeus Ridden stone (1690/1), on which the carver corrected a misspelling of the deceased's name and replaced the Gregorian date with a hybrid Julian/Gregorian date, and the Mary Brintnall stone (1688), where someone noticed that "Janury" was missing an a and stuck it in as best he could. We can tell that both of these mistakes were recognized as such in the seventeenth century because contemporaries attempted to correct them. The archaic spelling of "lyes" is not truly a mistake - it is merely one example of the many ways in which early modern English was not the same as modern standard English. In many cases, words (even names!) are spelled inconsistently within the same documents (or on the same gravestones). As long as the spelling was legible, it seemed not to matter too much whether it was consistent.
The Mary Brintnall stone is also a great example of how some carvers economized by using the vertical lines of some letters to serve as part of adjacent letters (click on the picture and observe the treatment of "here" and "the").
Probably my favorite mistake/misspelling example from this afternoon was the headstone for Samuel Cheever (d. 1724), the town's minister. The stone is obviously of lower quality than many of the later stones around it, but Cheever's family (or Cheever himself) seems to have wanted to commemorate his education with a Latin epitaph that was clearly beyond the stonecarver's skill. It is easy to imagine him hunched over a manuscript that made little sense to him, struggling to decipher the characters, and being forced to correct his work as he stumbled again and again. It's impossible to say whether the congregation was pleased with their minister's monument, but most of them probably couldn't read the epitaph anyway.
This turned out to be fairly straightforward, as at least a third of the pre-1800 stones had at least one identifiable error. These mistakes fell into two categories: first and most entertaining were the gaffes that contemporaries had identified as errors and tried to correct, second and less fun were the spellings that do not conform to modern standard English but were not necessarily "wrong" at the time.
A good example of the former can be found on the Elizabeth Russell stone (1771), on which the carver struggled with the words "Blessed" and "had." "Blessed was originally spelled with a long (or medial) s and a terminal s, but there is something else scratched in lightly between the letters s and e. Perhaps someone was unsatisfied with the long s and scratched in a second, lighter, terminal s. Maybe the terminal s was supposed to be carved farther to the right, but the carver adjusted the spacing. After blowing up the image and examining it more closely, I think it is possible that the carver may have begun carving the e before remembering (or being reminded) that "Blessed" needed a second s.
The other error on the Elizabeth Russell stone is the gouged-out letter (c? d? o?) that has been turned into an h at the beginning of the word "had." That part of the epitaph reads, "The Memory of the Just is Blessed. The Righteous shall be had in Everlasting Remembrence." The spelling of "Remembrence" probably didn't raise any eyebrows at the time (though the n is gouged out and recarved), but your guess is as good as mine for explaining the beginning of "had."
Other examples of mistakes include the Thaddeus Ridden stone (1690/1), on which the carver corrected a misspelling of the deceased's name and replaced the Gregorian date with a hybrid Julian/Gregorian date, and the Mary Brintnall stone (1688), where someone noticed that "Janury" was missing an a and stuck it in as best he could. We can tell that both of these mistakes were recognized as such in the seventeenth century because contemporaries attempted to correct them. The archaic spelling of "lyes" is not truly a mistake - it is merely one example of the many ways in which early modern English was not the same as modern standard English. In many cases, words (even names!) are spelled inconsistently within the same documents (or on the same gravestones). As long as the spelling was legible, it seemed not to matter too much whether it was consistent.
The Mary Brintnall stone is also a great example of how some carvers economized by using the vertical lines of some letters to serve as part of adjacent letters (click on the picture and observe the treatment of "here" and "the").
Probably my favorite mistake/misspelling example from this afternoon was the headstone for Samuel Cheever (d. 1724), the town's minister. The stone is obviously of lower quality than many of the later stones around it, but Cheever's family (or Cheever himself) seems to have wanted to commemorate his education with a Latin epitaph that was clearly beyond the stonecarver's skill. It is easy to imagine him hunched over a manuscript that made little sense to him, struggling to decipher the characters, and being forced to correct his work as he stumbled again and again. It's impossible to say whether the congregation was pleased with their minister's monument, but most of them probably couldn't read the epitaph anyway.
Visiting Marblehead
Today, my very understanding husband accompanied me to Old Burial Hill in Marblehead, where I indulged my craving for a little gravestone action. What better way to celebrate Patriots' Day?Old Burial Hill is one of the best documented colonial-era graveyards in New England (you can take a virtual tour here). That means that there is less of a chance that you will discover something truly unknown, which lessens the suspense a bit. On the other hand, you know for sure that you will run into some of the classic examples of New England gravestone art.
While wandering around an old burying ground is enough fun on its own, it's even better when you are looking for something in particular. Today, we focused on identifying examples of these common gravestone elements:
Since it's a little tricky to publish multiple photos in Blogger, I'll make a post for each of these goals individually.
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