"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.

Gravestone of the Day: Orinda Carpenter Hyde

Orinda Carpenter, 1812, East Bridgewater, MA

In Memory of 

ORINDA CARPENTER

Daught. of

Mr. Ephraim &

Mrs. Mary Hyde,

died Dec. 14, 1812;

Aged 7 Years

& 5 Months.

Orinda Carpenter Hyde was named for her maternal grandmother, Orinda (Carpenter) Dresser (b. 1738). Though little Orinda's mother bore the prosaic name of Mary, Orinda the elder had an ecclectic naming style – English, German, biblical, classical/literary, and puritan virtues. Her children were:

• Elfreda (b. 1759)
• Huldah (b. 1761)
• Serena (b. 1764)
• Esther (b. 1766)
• Thomas (b. 1767)
• Nathan (b. 1769)
• Mary (b. 1772)
• Abel (b. 1775)
• Comfort Carpenter (b. 1777) named for Orinda's father, Capt. Comfort Carpenter
• Sally (b. 1779)
• Jonathan (1782)

Orinda was the pseudonym of the 17th-century English poet Katharine Phillips. I do not know why an 18th-century New England family decided to name their daughter after a high-society, Anglican, pastoral poet whose work is best known for its celebration of passionate female friendships. Classical names were all the rage in 1800, but not so common in the 1730s.

Gravestone of the Day: John Payson

John Payson, 1804, Fitchburg, MA, photo by RJO

Regular commenter RJO sent along these pictures from his local graveyard. The verse is in the form of a pattern poem — a poem that is arranged so that the text forms an image. This poem mimics the shape of George Herbert's famous pattern poem, "Easter Wings."

The young man faileth,
his strength ceaseth,
he dieth,
and is no more;
but his hope is in God.

I haven't come across any other pattern poems on New England gravestones. Has anyone else spotted other examples?

photo by RJO

Ovid at Copp's Hill

I always enjoy finding out what early New Englanders were reading by seeing what they quote on their gravestones.

While searching through the Farber Collection recently, I happened across the Joseph Farnum stone from Copp's Hill (1678), which features a quotation from Ovid's Metamorphoses:

In English, it says something along the lines of, "But indeed, one must ever wait for the last day of a man's life, and call no one happy until he is dead and buried."

By Strangers Honored and By Strangers Mourned

In her book, This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust argues that 19th-cntury Americans spent a lot of time worrying about the disruption of the "good death" during the Civil War. One of their principal concerns was that men regularly died far from home, away from the (often female) family members who should have witnessed their last words, observed the evidence of their salvation, and performed proper mortuary rituals. In many cases, nurses, doctors, and local civilians stood in for absent family members, performing the duties that mothers, wives, and sisters could not.

This same concern occupied the minds of maritime families in earlier decades. When men died at sea or in foreign ports, their family members hoped that they had been attended in their last moments and sometimes imagined attendants into being.

A good example of this concern can be found on a cenotaph in Plymouth, MA. Isaac Wethrell was 19 years old when he died in "Martinico" in January of 1803; his brother William was 22 when he died in St. Thomas two months later. The Wethrell brothers' parents commissioned a single cenotaph for their sons, choosing to honor them with a quotation from Alexander Pope:

By foreign hands, thy dying eyes were closd

By foreign hands, thy decent limbs composd

By foreign hands, they humble grave adornd

By strangers honoured, and by strangers mournd

Erected

to perpetuate the memory

of two sons

of Thomas & Sarah Wethrell

who died in the West Indies.

William Wethrell

Decd at St Thomas

March 23d 1803

Aged 22 years.

Isaac Wethrell

Decd at Martinico

January 23d 1803

Aged 19 years.

By foreign hands, thy dying eyes were closd

By foreign hands, thy decent limbs composd

By foreign hands, they humble grave adornd

By strangers honoured, and by strangers mournd

To Act Thy Childhood O'er Again

I have only seen three gravestones that did not bear an individual's name (or identifying information). One is in Malden, MA, one is in the collection of the John Stevens Shop in Newport, RI, and one is at Copp's Hill in Boston.
The Copp's Hill stone is pictured above. The Farber Collection also has an excellent photo of this stone, taken before it sustained damage to the face and the right finial. Unfortunately, the carver remains unidentified.

I think it's the same carver. Like the Malden stone, the epitaph begins with a lowercase letter, the inscription is mostly lowercase, and the tall letters have little flourishes on the tops. In addition, the carver uses the antiquated "yt" for "that."

Mehetabel Blanchard and the Aeneid

Could the mystery gravestone in Malden be a footstone?

Footstones usually bear the deceased person's initials or name and, rarely, the year. Some footstones are a bit wordier.

Example:
Mehetable Blanchard, d. 1742, Malden, MA

According to the internet, that inscription is lines 606-610 of Book 1 the Aeneid.

In Latin:

In freta dum fluvii current, dum montibus umbrae
lustrabunt convexa, polus dum sidera pascet,
semper honos nomenque tuum laudesque manebunt,
quae me cumque vocant terrae.

In English:

While rivers run to ocean, while on the mountains shadows move over slopes, while heaven feeds the stars, ever shall your honour, your name, and your praises abide, whatever be the lands that summon me!

Joshua Blanchard, Mehetabel's husband, appears to have been a carpenter and, perhaps, a lover of Virgil.

She That's Here Interred Needs No Versifying

On Saturday's outing to Bell Rock Cemetery in Malden, Pete found this extraordinary stone. I had completely overlooked it. At Bell Rock, nearly all of the stones face South, so I had previously passed over this humble, North-facing stone, which has never been illuminated during one of my visits.

There is so much to say about this gravestone.

Three Fishers

One of the ideas I'm entertaining for my dissertation has something to do with maritime cemeteries and death at sea. As part of the initial research, I'm looking at 19th-century songs about shipwrecks and listening to modern recordings of these songs when I can find them.

My most recent discovery is a poem/song called "Three Fishers," which was written by Charles Kingsley in 1851. It is truly the most depressing song I have ever heard.

Three fishers went sailing away to the West,
Away to the West as the sun went down;
Each thought on the woman who loved him the best,
And the children stood watching them out of the town;
For men must work, and women must weep,
And there's little to earn, and many to keep,
Though the harbour bar be moaning.

Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower,
And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down;
They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,
And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and brown.
But men must work, and women must weep,
Though storms be sudden, and waters deep,
And the harbour bar be moaning.

Three corpses lay out on the shining sands
In the morning gleam as the tide went down,
And the women are weeping and wringing their hands
For those who will never come home to the town;
For men must work, and women must weep,
And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep;
And good-bye to the bar and its moaning.

The first time I heard "Three Fishers" was on Stan Rogers' For the Family. I like Stan Rogers, but his version has an annoying fiddle interlude by Garnet Rogers. In hopes that I might avoid listening to this overwrought instrumental section ever again, I bought several other versions on iTunes.

Having listened to every available recording of "Three Fishers," I am ready to render my professional opinion:

If you are looking for a song about economic privation and drowning/freezing to death in the North Atlantic, you'll never do better than Stan Rogers.

"Lend, Lend Your Wings"

Zipporah Hughes of Norwich, Connecticut has an epitaph composed by Alexander Pope. Ok, not composed specifically for her, but still. Hughes' epitaph is from Pope's "The Dying Christian to His Soul"(1712). The poem was set to music and sung in many Christian churches during the 19th century, but I don't know whether it was a hymn in the late 18th century. The final two lines are quite popular for New England epitaphs, but the four-verse quotation is rarer.

Sacred to the memory

of Mrs. Zipporah

Hughes, consort of

Capt, John Hughes, she

departed this life Janr.

3d 1799. in ye 75th

year of her age.

Lend, lend your wings!

I mount! I fly!

O Grave! where is thy victory?

O death! where is thy sting?

The Graveyard Rabbit

Thanks to commenter VJESCI for pointing me toward this poem.

The Graveyard Rabbit (1898)

by Frank Lebby Stanton

In the white moonlight, where the willow waves,
He halfway gallops among the graves—
A tiny ghost in the gloom and gleam,
Content to dwell where the dead men dream,

But wary still!        
For they plot him ill;
For the graveyard rabbit hath a charm
(May God defend us!) to shield from harm.

Over the shimmering slabs he goes—
Every grave in the dark he knows;        
But his nest is hidden from human eye
Where headstones broken on old graves lie.

Wary still!
For they plot him ill;
For the graveyard rabbit, though sceptics scoff,        
Charmeth the witch and the wizard off!

The black man creeps, when the night is dim,
Fearful, still, on the track of him;
Or fleetly follows the way he runs,
For he heals the hurts of the conjured ones.        

Wary still!
For they plot him ill;
The soul’s bewitched that would find release,—
To the graveyard rabbit go for peace!

He holds their secret—he brings a boon        
Where winds moan wild in the dark o’ the moon;
And gold shall glitter and love smile sweet
To whoever shall sever his furry feet!

Wary still!
For they plot him ill;        
For the graveyard rabbit hath a charm
(May God defend us!) to shield from harm. 

"Night Etarnal Seals His Eyes"

This Newport gravestone has a verse from Catullus, translated by Joseph Addison. Whoever requested it may have encountered the verse in the works of Samuel Johnson.

In Memory of

John, Son of Will

iam & Susanna

Bourk died July

ye 29th. 1777 aged

14 Months.

When once the short

Liv'd Mortal dies,

A Night Etarnal 

Seals his Eyes.

John Bourk, Newport, RI, 1777

"Happie are the Youth"

This John Stevens I stone has a verse that appears to be an original. At least, I can't find another example of the poem (or any part of it) on the internet. The awkward grammar and smug rhyme support the idea that it may have been composed for the occasion.

HERE LIETH Ye BODY

OF JANE CUTLER WHO

DEPARTED THIS LIFE

SEPTEMR Ye 26th 1720

AND Ye BODY OF WILLM

HALL WHO DIED

JUNE Ye 21 1721

Happie are the youth

That dy in ye truth

And establishes righteousness

Another interesting thing about this stone is that the two people commemorated are not obviously related. Jane Cutler and William Hall are not called siblings and they are buried in the white section of the Newport Common Burying Ground, so it is unlikely that they were spouses in an unrecognized marriage. Were they cousins? Neighbors? The verse suggests that the deceased were children, and I've seen one or two stones where young friends or cousins are buried together, but it's very unusual.

Jane Cutler and William Hall

Newport, RI, 1721

carved by John Stevens I

Adieu, Vain World

I'm always interested to learn what Americans were reading in the 17th and 18th centuries. This Stevens Shop stone in Newport displays a verse from Lady Mary Chudleigh's 1703 collection of poems, Poems on Several Occasions:

Adieu, Vain World, Vain World Adieu

I come, Ye Blest, I come to you.

This stone is dated 1728, indicating that someone in Newport was reading feminist poetry that had been published (relatively) recently. Not just reading it — embracing it enthusiastically enough to put it on a gravestone.

I wonder who decided on this verse. Was it from a poem beloved by Abigail Clarke? By her family? Did John Stevens enjoy Lady Mary Chudleigh's work? I'll be on the lookout for other examples of her work in the Newport Common Burying Ground.

Abigail Clarke, Newport, RI, 1728

"When God ye Fatal Dart He Sends"

When I plug Mary Brown's epitaph into Google, the only hits are references to her gravestone in Providence's North Burial Ground. That doesn't necessarily mean that this is an original verse, composed especially for Mary Brown, but it may be. It's certainly clumsy enough.

Here lies Inter'd ye

Body of Mary Brown

Widow & Relict of James

Brown, Decd. August ye 18th

1736. in ye 66th Year of her Age

Old Age being come her race here ends

When God ye fatal Dart he sends.

I always thought that "widow" and "relict" were synonyms, but apparently, you can be both a widow and a relict at the same time.

Also, isn't it usually Death who sends the dart, not God?

Combine! Ye Sons of Freedom

A poem from the commonplace book of John Stevens, gravestone carver:

The nation free, dispotic rule that craves,

And gives up Liberty to sink to slaves,

When cruel Kings and harde decrees oppress,

In vain shall mourn, and hope in vain redress.

Combine! ye sons of freedom, ah, combine!

The people are invincile who join:

Factions and feuds will overturn the state,

Which union renders flourishing and gereate.

Treat not a foreigner with pride barb'rous pride,

Mock not his accent, or his garb deride:

For peace at home that people ne'er shall find,

Who wage a war all with all mankind.

I spent some time with a reproduction of this commonplace book at Houghton Library yesterday. It contains notes and accounts from the first two John Stevens showing how much they charged for gravestones and other work (building chimneys, laying hearths, whitewashing walls, reinforcing wells, etc.). These entries end sometime in the 1730s. In the 1760s, the third John Stevens used the book as his own, copying poetry and lists of the books he read into every unusued inch of paper. He also sketched some truly beautiful border designs into the margins, one of which I have never seen on an actual gravestone. This poem appears on a page marked "1728," but I suspect it was actually recorded in the late 1760s.

I was looking for some trace of Zingo Stevens, but he seems to have entered the picture after the systematic entries ended. There may be another book at the Newport historical society containing John Stevens III's accounts - at least, I hope so. If this book is all I have to go on, I would conclude that John III was a free spirit with little concern for the business end of things.

Zingo is absent, but there are two men who I think are slaves mentioned: Phillip Stevens and "Sypeo." Since John II records how often he worked alongside these two men and how much they were paid, it will be good evidence for how members of a shop may have worked together on projects.