"The Letter'd Stone Shall Tell"

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.

King George Killed Your Grandma

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: Abigail Sims

Abigail Sims, 1702, Little Compton, RI

Here lyeth ye

body of AbiGail

ye wife of Iohn

Sims & dauGhter

of Edward Rich

mond & Sarah his

wife dyed octobr

ye 4th in ye 19th

[year of her age]

Here is another stone with no year on it. I've said before that these stones make me think that they were erected soon after the death – certainly within a year, possibly within 3 months.

Abigail Richmond Sims died in 1702.

Gravestone of the Day: William Warland

William Warland, 1708, Cambridge, MA

WILLIAM

WARLAND SON

OF WILLIAM

& TABITHA

WARLAND WAS

BORN OCTOBR Ye

3RD 1706 & DIED

AUGUST 23RD

1708 AGED 1 YEAR 10

MO & 17 DAYES

This is not the first stone I have found that has the year added in as an afterthought. Since the year of death seems to be crucial information, I think that these stones might offer some clues about the time that elapsed between a death and the carving of a gravestone. I think that it would be easier to leave off the year if the stone were carved in the same year as the death — to the person who carved this stone, young William died in August, not August of 1708. I would venture that this thought is easiest to have between August of 1708 and the spring of 1709. It's not hard evidence, but it is suggestive.

Gravestone of the Day: Katherine and Shem Drowne

Katherine and Shem Drowne, 1774, Copp's Hill, Boston, MA

HERE LIES BURIED

THE BODY OF

Mrs. KATHERINE DROWNE

WIFE TO

DEACON SHEM DROWNE

DAUGHTER OF THE LATE

TIMOTHY CLARKE ESQr.

& SARAH HIS WIFE
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE

APRIL 21st, 1754.

AGED 67 YEARS & 4 DAYS

The REMAINS

of

Deacon SHEM DROWNE

who departed this Life

JANUARY 13th:

1774.

AGED 90 YEARS

1 month & 9 days.

For if we beleive [sic] that JESUS

died & Rose again even so

them also who Sleep in Jesus,

will GOD bring with him.

I don't know why the carver decided to go with all caps on the left and a mix of upper and lower cases on the right. Since 20 years elapsed between the deaths of Katherine and Shem, it seems possible that the two sections of this stone may have been carved at different times.

Shem Drowne was a coppersmith/tinsmith in 18th-century Boston. He is best known for making the grasshopper weathervane for Faneuil Hall (1742). He made other weathervanes, too: the Indian Archer for the Province House (1716), a rooster for the First Church of Cambridge (1721), and the swallowtail banner for Old North Church (1740).

Gravestone of the Day: Lydia Kingsbery

Sorry I don't have a better picture of this one:

Lydia Kingsbery, 1732, Wrentham, MA

HERE LIES THE

BODY OF LYDIA

KINGSBERY Who

Decd October

ye [10 d] 1732

IN 10 Year of

her Age

This is a crappy picture, but I wanted to post it anyway because the shape of the stone is intriguing. Although the stone has an irregular shape, the placement of the words shows that the stone was that shape before it was carved. Little or no effort was made to shape the stone into a regular rectangle , though the edges may have been smoothed. I have no idea why the carver decided to put the smaller edge on the bottom, rather than putting the widest side at the base. It seems reasonable to assume that the carver was not a professional working in a shop, but, at the same time, the lettering isn't all that bad. Could this have been carved by someone who was used to lettering/carving in another medium?

This gravestone is a relatively early survival for the Wrentham graveyard. The graveyard is very old, but most of the stones are post-1770. Many of the pre-1750 stones are from Boston or Providence, while this one looks local. Yet, the text follows the conventions of gravestones fairly closely, even while the form does not. The carver, whoever he was, was probably familiar with professionally cut gravestones, owing to his use of conventions such as Decd" and the order of the text. His style is old-fashioned — note the cross on the capital I — but not exactly rough. Is it possible that he may have carved wooden grave markers? That might explain the good letters and the wonky shape here.

Pompe Stevens

It occurs to me that I never actually posted my Pompe Stevens paper here. Since it's been a while since I posted anything substantial, I feel that I should post some serious content. You can read the full text (with footnotes and everything) on Google Docs: This Stone Was Cut By Pompe Stevens.

The images for this paper were too big for Google Docs, so I have reproduced them below the fold.

Gravestone of the Day: Marcy Brown

Marcy Brown, North Burial Ground, Providence, RI

In Memory of

Marcy Brown

DAUGHTR. of Phinehs bRoWN &

Phebe his Wife

Died the 10 Day of

november AD 17--

Speaking of errors of the eye, it looks like the carver was working from a written epitaph and his eye skipped a line.

Next time I'm in Providence, I'll have to clear away the debris and read the rest of this stone.

Samuel Sewall in the Graveyard

I spend a pretty deal of time in the burying place to see to the Graver of the Tombstone: Push Catterpillars off the Apple-trees; goe to the Meeting at Mistress Averyes; read out of Dr. Sibs about submitting to God's Providence, Sing the 110. Psalm.

- Diary of Samuel Sewall, May 4, 1687

From this entry, we learn that the elusive Boston stone carver (or one of his colleagues) sometimes met with clients in the graveyard itself. Since Sewall usually uses the word "tomb" to mean a family tomb and "stone" to mean a gravestone, I suspect that he was overseeing carving on the Sewall family tomb in the Granary Burying Ground on May 4, 1687.

Gravestone of the Day: Mintus Brenton

Mintus Brenton, 1774, Newport Common Burying Ground, RI

In Memory of

MINTUS BREN-

TON; he departed

this Life Augst. 4th

A.D. 1774, aged

about 52 Years

Until recently, the Mintus Brenton* stone was one of the most beautiful stones in the "God's Little Acre" section of the Newport Common Burying Ground. The carver, John Stevens III, made an exquisite portrait stone with identifiably African features such as tightly-curled hair. As late as the 1970s, Ann and Dickran Tashjian featured the undamaged stone in their writings on the African-American burying ground.

I don't know what happened to the stone between 1974 and 2008, when this photograph was taken. It does not look like a typical lawnmower incident — the damage is too high and is not linear. It is possible that a tree branch may have fallen and crushed the portrait section of the stone. It is also possible that this is an example of willful, targeted vandalism against a beautiful and important American artifact.

The Farber Collection has a picture of the Mintus Brenton stone taken when it was whole:

*In Bodies Politic, John Wood Sweet calls Mintus Brenton "a professional funeral director" and says that he was an active member of the Free African Union Society. Yet, Brenton died in 1774 and the Free African Union Society was not founded until 1780. It is possible that there was another Mintus Brenton, but I have not been able to find one. It is also possible that Brenton was indeed in charge of organizing funerals before the formal incorporation of the FAUS as a burial society. It makes sense that John Stevens III would have carved a particularly lovely stone for Brenton if they were acquainted (and perhaps even friendly?) through their common work in the mortuary industry.

Corrections

When customers ordered gravestones from far-away workshops, the stones occasionally arrived with mistakes in them. Sometimes, the customers (or local carvers) attempted to correct the mistakes:

Abigail Grosvenor

Pomfret, CT

1763

Whoever carved that "JUNR" was not a pro, but it was obviously important for him/her to make a distinction between John Grosvenor and John Grosvenor, Jr. That distinction was not as important to the Foster workshop carver in far-away Dorchester, MA.

Pre-Shaped, But Not Pre-Carved?

Yesterday, I presented some examples of gravestones made from  pre-carved blanks. It's also possible that some stones had custom-carved borders, but were made from pre-shaped blanks.

This possibility is visible when a stone looks like a standard, one-person, tripartite stone, but commemorates more than one person in both its text and its tympanum design.

In many cases, 18th-century gravestones have one lunette for each person named. Examples:

Gove Children

Cambridge, MA

Worthylake Family

Copp's Hill, Boston

Sometimes, you find stones that have the shape typical of an individual stone, but multiple soul effigies corresponding to multiple burials:

John & Mary Watson

Newport, RI

Roby Green & Child

Newport, RI

These make me think that, in some cases, customers may have chosen stones that had already been hewn into the standard shape, but were not yet embellished.

Custom-Made Gravestone?

Were 17th- and 18th-century gravestones custom carved or did customers purchase pre-carved blanks and pay for a custom epitaph? This is an important question for anyone who wishes to argue that the iconography of a particular stone is connected with the person buried under it.

The evidence seems to indicate that many stones were custom-made, but many (most?) were pre-carved.

It is easiest to argue that a stone was custom-made when it is of an unusual size/shape, when it displays a portrait of the deceased, or when the iconography is directly related to something mentioned in the text. If a stone is custom-made, there should also be consistency between the hand that carved the words and the iconography.

Thus, there little doubt that the Langley children stone and the Childs children stone are custom-made: they are too large, unusual, and specific to be pre-carved. Similarly, I would wager that the Jonathan Pierpont stone is a custom stone due to the minister-specific iconography and the correspondence between the letterforms and iconography. The stone for Desire Tripp's arm is definitely one-of-a-kind.

On the other end of the spectrum, it is easy to argue that a stone is probably pre-carved when its iconography is standard for a particular workshop, the text does not fit particularly well, or the hand carving the iconography seems different from the hand carving the text.

For example:

The Lee children stone (Phipps Street Cemetery, Charlestown, MA) looks like every other Lamson shop stone carved between 1730 and 1750 and the names of the children are squished into a space that is much too small. To me, this looks like a (rather large) blank that was intended for a single person, but purchased by the Lees for their children.

The Thomas Brown stone (NCBG, Newport, RI) is typical of William Stevens' early work, but the text does not fill the space allotted, suggesting that the border and tympanum carvings may have been done before the epitaph.

On the Sarah Rogers stone (NCBG, Newport, RI), there is a profound disconnect between the style of the borders and the style of the lettering, indicating that the work was divided between two carvers.

Next time: pre-shaped, but not pre-carved

A Prayer for the Wool Workers

"Blessed are the dead who dye in the Lord"

Groton, MA

1775 or 1794?

In my recent post about the Daniel Malcom gravestone, I argued that I could conclusively date the stone to the autumn of 1769 based on a description that appeared in the Essex Gazette in November of that year. The implication was that other stones bearing pro-Whig sentiments may also have been erected shortly after the honorees' deaths. If so, stones dedicated to people who died in 1775 would have stood as public monuments throughout the war years.

I have since discovered a gravestone that might challenge this dating: the Charles Pratt Marston stone in Burlington.

Squiggly 1

Deborah Barker

d. 1738

Men of Kent Cemetery
Scituate, MA

HERE LIES Ye

BODY OF MRS

DEBORAH BARKER

WIFE OF MR

SAMUEL BARKER

JUNR WHO DEPARTED

THIS LIFE DESEMBER

ye. 11. 1738. AGED

20 YEERS & 26

DAYES & HAD BEEN

MARRIED BUT 26 DAYES

How Much Did Gravestones Cost?

This is one of those basic factual questions that should be relatively easy to answer, but isn't. I have a few data points from different times, workshops, and styles of stone that suggest that the answer is, unsurprisingly, "it depends."

The records of the John Stevens Shop in Newport, RI provide some of the best information. During the 1730s, the Stevens shop charged £12-15 for a table-like "Tomb Stone," £1-3 for pairs of upright gravestones, and 2 pence per letter for inscriptions.

Thus, the heirs of Captain William Wanton paid £17, 5 shillings, and 6 pence for his elaborate tombstone on December 24, 1733 — £15 for the stone and the rest for 273 letters.* A year earlier, Samuel Lindon paid £3, 8 shillings, and 4 pence for a pair of gravestones with a 40-letter epitaph "for Priscilla."