Vast Public Indifference

Dyer Family, 1786-1837, Plymouth, MA Cap. CHARLES DYER, died at Sea, March 1786; aged 46 yr.s. BETHIAH, his wife died June 8, 1837; aged ...

It's common knowledge that children under the age of 5 suffered terrible mortality rates in the 18th and 19th centuries. Recently, I hav...

In 1790, 84 of the 573 households in Plymouth, MA were headed by women. That's 14.66%. Three households (.52%) were headed by black me...

While perusing the Plymouth epitaphs, I found several gravestones dedicated to women who outlived their husbands by several decades. I suppo...

I apologize for the dearth of substantive posts lately — it's that time of the semester. Between commenting on drafts for increasingly p...

Over the past few weeks, I've been compiling a database based on Benjamin Drew's transcriptions of Plymouth epitaphs. Hopefully, whe...

A while back, I highlighted the epitaphs carved by Obadiah Wheeler in which he identifies men as husbands to their wives . This example fr...

Zabdiel and Ruth Sampson of Plymouth, MA were admirers of 17th-century republican philosophy. I know this because they named their sons Mi...

For my novel: Mr. Quintin Crymble via Benjamin Drew's Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts see also: Miss Fanny Forward Captain ...

Much to my surprise, I have found Benjamin Drew's transcriptions of the Plymouth epitaphs to be delightful reading. Besides the epitaph...

No, I don't mean that the epitaph speaks in the voice of the deceased. In this case, the gravestone itself speaks in the first person: ...

In her book, This Republic of Suffering , Drew Gilpin Faust argues that 19th-cntury Americans spent a lot of time worrying about the disrupt...

As I stood on Burial Hill in Plymouth the other day, it occurred to me that this hill would have offered the best vantage point for viewing...

Sometimes, the urns on 19th-century gravestones are embellished with delicate details — initials, fronds, garlands, and, very rarely, soul ...

Cross-posted from American Creation . Reprinted here lest I be accused of being soft on New England's cherished mythologies. I wanted...

Honorable mention in the 17th-century naming Olympics goes to: Godbert Godbertson! Godbertson, a hatter, died in Plymouth Colony in 1633. s...

This is fun. I can't resist adding one of my books from last week: The Times of Their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in Plymouth Colony by...