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

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.

Stuff and Nonsense

Via Boston1775's Twitter feed:

Museum directors enumerate myths that "should by now be history."

"Remember Me As You Pass By"

Most people who are familiar with old American gravestones know the old verse,

Remember me as you pass by,

As you are now, so once was I,

As I am now, so you must be,

Prepare for death and follow me.

In my mind, I have always associated that verse with the oldest of New England gravestones - the ones covered with imps and hourglasses and scythe-wielding skeletons. It just seems like a Puritan-with-a-capital-P sort of sentiment. Douglas Keister, author of Stories in Stone: A Field Guide to Cemetery Symbolism and Iconography, tells us that this verse, "and its variants are the most common ones found on Colonial New England gravestones" (132). Keister is not alone in this opinion.

Yet, I have not been able to find this verse on a 17th- or early-18th-century gravestone anywhere in North America. The oldest American example I can find dates from 1772, but the transcription makes it hard to tell whether the verse appears on a joint stone erected in 1780 or two side-by-side stones erected in 1772 and 1780. A variant lacking the "prepare for death" line can be found on the Elisha Doane gravestone (1759) in Wellfleet, MA (transcription here). The Benjamin Scudder stone in Westfield, New Jersey, sometimes cited as an early example (1708), is actually from 1798 (see editor's note here and Benjamin Scudder's death record here).

How old is the "remember me" verse really? And when/how did it come to America?

An 1850 edition of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register cites the Canterbury tomb of Edward the Black Prince (1330-1376) as the source of the verse. Edward's epitaph was originally written in Norman French, but was at some point translated into English:

Whoso thou be that passeth by;
Where these corps entombed lie:
Understand what I shall say,
As at this time speak I may.
Such as thou art, sometime was I,
Such as I am, such shalt thou be.

Edward's epitaph, though it contains some of the sentiments found in the later poem, does not exhort the visitor to, "prepare for death and follow me." Variations on the "remember me" verse seem to have been known in 17th-century Scotland: I found one example of a version from Perthshire, Scotland in 1666:

As. ye. ar. nou
So. onc. vas. Ay
As. Ay. am. so. sal
Ye. be. Remembre
Man. that. thou
Mist. dei.

(transcription third-hand via Texas Graveyards)

I've been puttering around on the internet for days now, and, from what I can tell, that macabre little rhyme was not known in American mortuary culture before 1750. Preliminary research indicates that it became popular in the 1780-1830 period and was used throughout the 19th and into the 20th century. The Federal Writer's project found the verse used in Indiana between 1856 and 1914.

A sample of gravestones with the "remember me" verse:

• Jemima Killiam, Enfield, CT, 1780
• Hannah Cole, Lovettsville, VA, 1788
• Betty Gannett, Bridgewater, MA, 1803
• Cornelia Beardsley, Stratford, CT, 1818
• unnamed, Julian Creek, TX, 1863
• Mary Leyde, Eighty-Four, PA, 1888
• John Corley, Alabama, 1913

Does anyone have an example of a pre-1750 version of this poem in America? I'm not asking that snarkily - I am really interested in finding the earliest possible examples and will keep looking. At the moment, I am leaning toward thinking that this verse is NOT a Puritan-American favorite, but rather a gothic/medieval revival favorite.