The Saddest Grave in Menotomy

The Old Menotomy Burying Ground in Arlington, MA is not my favorite graveyard around here. It is very well maintained and manicured, which is fine, but it's not as much fun as going into the overgrown, neglected burying grounds. It's the difference between going into a junk shop and going into an antique store where everything is labeled and locked away in cases. You'll see some great stuff in the glass cases, but it's more fun to go into the junk shop and there's a better chance you'll find a great deal. That said, Menotomy isn't a bad little graveyard.

I try not to get too caught up in the tragedies behind gravestones, preferring to focus on their value as material objects and concrete expressions of cultural values. Each stone represents a terrible loss for someone, so there isn't much point in ascribing special value to some over others because they are especially tragic. Still, every once in a while, a stone tells such a sad story that I can't help but be drawn to it, even if it isn't stylistically or linguistically interesting.

Which brings me to the saddest grave in Menotomy. Along the back wall of the burying ground, there is a small British flag stuck into the ground, marking the approximate gravesite of some of the 40 British Regulars who were killed at the Battle of Menotomy. A small, laminated card on the front reads,

In Memory
of the British Soldiers
who gave their lives
in the service of
their King and Country
April 19, 1775
Unnamed
and seldom remembered,
they have lain here over 230 years.
Rest in Peace.

I don't know who put up this little memorial, but I found it very touching. It stands very near the grand obelisk dedicated to the slain Minute Men and the juxtaposition is stark. There's a little stone dedicated to an unnamed Regular in the Lexington graveyard that didn't strike me as too sad, so I think that maybe the lack of a stone is what makes this ephemeral tribute particularly pathetic and poignant.

I'll join Lori in remembering the American dead, but would humbly ask that we also include a thought for these unnamed dead.

Deliverance Wakefield

Deliverance Wakefield is not a particularly unusual name for a 17th-century Bostonian. What is somewhat remarkable is that Deliverance was a boy, but was named for his mother. His entry in the Boston birth records reads,

Deliverance son of John and Deliverance Wakefield born Sept. 8 [1664]

It's possible that this is an error in the records, but there are other boys named Deliverance, so I have no real reason to suspect that it is a mistake.

While modern virtue names are usually girls' names (Faith, Grace, Joy), seventeenth-century Bostonians gave virtue names to children of both sexes. In some cases, names were not gender-specific (Return, Experience, Constance, Wait, Hope, Hopestill).

Here are some examples of male virtue names from the Boston records:

• Hope Allen, husband of Rachel Allen; their son Joseph b. October 4, 1655
• Hope, son of "Mingo, a neger," b. May 19, 1641
• Faithful Bartlett, husband of Margaret Bartlett; their child Faithful was born September 30, 1671
• Waite-still Winthrop, son of John and Elizabeth Winthrop, b. February 27, 1641
• Return Wayt, husband of Martha Wayt; their daughter Martha b. August 4, 1681
• Experience Willis, husband of Elizabeth Willis; their son Samuel b. August 31, 1682
• Fearnott Shaw, husband of Bethiah Shaw; their son William b. November 4, 1684
• Constance Sams, husband of Elizabeth Sams; their daughter Mary b. December 2, 1684
• Increase Nowell, son of Increase Nowell, baptized at the First Church, November 21, 1630
• Free Grace Bendall, son of Edward and Anne Bendall, b. September 30, 1636
• Beleeve Gridley, son of Richard and Grace Gridley, b. May 1, 1640
• Hopefor Bendall, son of Edward and Marah Bendall, b. October 7, 1641
• Strong Furnell, husband of Ellenor Furnell; their daughter Elizabeth b. May 7, 1643
• Rich-Grace Simons, son of Henry Simons, baptized at First Church, April 21, 1644
• Newgrace Wilson, son of William Wilson, died August, 1645
• Vigilant Oliver, son of Samuel Oliver, baptized at First Church, June 27, 1647
• Clement Critchet, servant of John Sunderland, d. May 29, 1653
• Hopestil Bridgham, son of Henry and Elisabeth Bridgham, b. July 29, 1658
• Mr. Comfort Starr died January 2, 1659/1660

And some girls' names:

• Hope Hawkins, daughter of Thomas and Hannah Hawkins, b. April 2, 1643
• Hopestill Vyall, daughter of John and Mary Vyall, b. August 14, 1639
• Return Gridley, daughter of Richard and Elizabeth Gridley, b. April 8, 1639
• Constance Wooster, wife of William Wooster; their son Joseph b. June 22, 1681
• Thankful Griggs, wife of Thomas Griggs; their daughter Hannah b. May 30, 1682
• Experience Roberts, wife of John Roberts; their son John born June 13, 1684
• Wayte Coggeshall, daughter of John Coggeshall, b. September 11, 1636
• Deliverance Potter, daughter of Robert Potter of Roxbury, baptized at First Church, March 5, 1637
• (female virtue names also include Prudence, Grace, Mercy, Temperance, Patience, Joy, Recompense, Honour, Pittie, Restored, Faith, Submit, Charity)

Other names that have no indication of gender in the records:

• Vertue Orchard, baptized at the First Church of Boston, September, 1681
• Wates, child of John Fayerweather, baptized at the First Church of Boston, December 11, 1681
• Reforme Bendall, child of Edward and Marah Bendall, b. October 18, 1638 is identified as a son in one section of the records and a daughter in another
• More-Mercie Bell, child of Thomas and Anne Bell, baptized at First Church, January 17, 1646
• Restore Bendall, child of Edward Bendall, baptized at First Church, December 10, 1649

These are not exhaustive lists — they're just a taste.

Also noteworthy: "Christian" was almost exclusively a female name in colonial New England, while "Pilgrim" was usually a male name.

Six Percent

What do you think when you hear "6%"?

Chances are, if you're interested in the Civil War or Civil War memory, you may recognize 6% as the number of white Southerners who owned slaves in 1860 (some say 5%. Whatever). In many apologetic texts, this number magically morphs into 6% of Confederate soldiers (or fewer!). Nevermind that recent scholarship puts the number of Confederate soldiers who lived in slaveowning families at well over a third.

This statistic is always dragged out to "prove" that the average Confederate soldier was absolutely not fighting to preserve slavery. It's not just the crazies who argue that very few Confederate soldiers were slaveowners — this stat is pretty well accepted by people who are not inveterate Lost Causers. "[T]he vast bulk of Confederate soldiers did not own a single slave," writes Robert Mackey of the Huffington Post "and many from the most rural areas had never even seen a black man or woman in their lives."

Where did everybody get this number?

It seems that the argument that minuscule numbers of Southerners were slave owners come from sophisticated mathematical formulas that divide the number of slaveowners on the 1860 Census (316,632 in the 11 Confederate states) by the total population of white Southerners (5,447,220 in the CSA). That gets you 5.8%.

I am no math genius, but there seems to be a problem here. The 1860 Slave Schedule lists slaves under the name of the legal owner, who is generally a man and the head of a household. The women and children living in the household were not legal slaveowners, but their inclusion in the data dilutes the percentage of white Southerners who owned slaves to the point of absurdity. Using similar logic, you could "prove" that fewer than half of Americans own cars.

I spent some time looking over the 1860 census data at UVA's wonderful census website and on the library edition of Ancestry.com. Here are some of my preliminary findings:

1. Over half of all white Southerners were under the age of 20.

Of the 5.4 million white Southerners in 1860, 30% were under the age of 10 and another 23% were between 10 and 19 years of age. Very few of these children owned slaves. Those who did were generally under the protection of a guardian who would have been listed in the census as the slave owner.

2. Over 30% of Southern households had slaves.*

*Maybe. I came up with these percentages by dividing the number of slaveowners by the number of households in each state. It is entirely possible that a household could have more than one slaveowner listed in the Slave Schedule, but my preliminary readings of that document indicate that that's pretty rare. These percentages should not be interpreted as a random sample of households, but as rough numbers. My real point here is not that these numbers are perfect, but that 6% is way, way off.

3. The 1860 slave census both overcounts and undercounts slave owners.
The 1860 Slave Schedule overcounts some slaveowners (those with many slaves in more than one county). Yet, it also undercounts slaveowners and those living in slaveowning households. For example, a woman who brings personal attendants with her to her husband's home at marriage is a slaveowner, but she is unlikely to be listed as one on the census. Similarly, the guardians of slaveowning minors (or unrelated women) are often listed as the owners on the census, as in the case of William G. Allen of Clarke Co., Alabama:

When the people indexing the census counted this entry, did they count it as one slaveowner? Two? Three?

4. The 6% figure obscures the number of white Southerners who lived in slaveowning families. Duh.
Let's take the case of William C. Riddle of Washington Co., Georgia. Riddle owned 92 slaves. On the 1860 Slave Schedule, he is the only member of his household listed as an "owner." This household also included Riddle's wife, their five children, and two 26-year-old male tutors.

It may be technically true that only 11% of the whites in the Riddle household were slaveowners, but that number does not reflect the historical reality. Little John Riddle, age 10, owned no slaves, but he expected to inherit them when he grew up, as did his four sisters. Thomas Evans and James Griffen, the two tutors, owned no slaves, but their jobs depended on the Riddle family's continued prosperity. I doubt that they made their own beds or saddled their own horses. Should they be counted as people who did not have a direct connection to slavery? What about David Clark, the 21-year-old who owned no slaves, but whose occupation is listed as "overseer" in the household of Rufus King of Haywood, Tennessee? What about Robert Martin's five non-slaveowning sons (ages 17, 15, 13, 10, and 8) of Abbeville, South Carolina?

In 1901, Samuel French wrote, "let it be known that the Confederate army was not an army of slave owners." Confederate apologists near and far have taken that tidbit and run with it. It turns out not to be entirely true. Some will say that the 37% quoted by Joseph Glatthaar in General Lee's Army is still small, but I would point out to them that Glatthaar is only talking about soldiers who "either owned slaves themselves, or the parents or family members with whom they resided in 1860 owned slaves" (Glatthaar, 468). I'm not sure whether he includes those tutors and overseers, who were not family members in their 1860 households. In any event, it is a logical fallacy to conclude that just because someone didn't own slaves he neither aspired to ownership nor supported the slave system. For more on that, see Masters of Small Worlds on the importance of white male mastery over the private household and dependents. The slave system upheld the independence of all white men, whether they owned slaves or not, and all had a vested interest in keeping it up and running.

P.S. Also, I know that this is going to come up, so I'll nip it in the bud. Yes, some women and some free African-Americans owned slaves. Their numbers don't change my conclusions. Since women who are listed as slaveowners are likely to be heads of households, their inclusion doesn't change the percentages listed in part 2. The number of black slaveowners is very small, certainly too small for it to make sense that 2 of the first 4 Google hits for "Confederate slave owner" are dedicated to the subject. From these preliminary forays into the records, I'd say women make up fewer than 10% of slaveowners (that's an educated guess, not a quote-worthy number) and the largest estimate of black slaveowners I've ever seen is 5,000. Maybe for my next project I'll investigate those numbers. After all, there were fewer than 150 black slaveowners in Charleston in 1860. I've seen the number 3,000 quoted for Louisiana, but the slave schedule makes me a little skeptical. 

Look at this page from Bernard Co., Louisiana (click to enlarge). There are two names in the "Name of Slave Owner" column that belong to black men — "Big James slave" and "Charles slave." They are both listed as being 100+-year-old fugitives who are listed on the last line along with the total number of slave houses on the plantation. I don't think they were really slaveowners, but that's how they're listed. How were these two men counted by the indexers? It's obvious that there were some black slaveowners, but I wonder about the numbers when the census contains ambiguous entries such as these.

Desire ye Truth Akors

Elizabeth Akors was born in Boston on May 18, 1664. Her parents were John and

Desire ye Truth Akors.

The couple named a subsequent daughter (b. March 9, 1666) after her mother.

If the inhabitants of Boston gave their children such impressive names, I can only imagine what must have been going on in Rhode Island.

The Depated

I found another "depated" stone. This one is in Harvard, MA.

I must say, the phonetic misspelling of "departed" is among my favorite New England graveyard Easter eggs. Finding a new one always makes my day.

Also, Moses Worster wasn't too clear on ordinal numbers. According to this stone, Manassah Fairbank died on "October 3th 1767."

Wayte-a-while Makepeace

On September 13, 1661, Josiah Cooper married

Wayte-a-while Makepeace.

The couple were married in Boston by Governor John Endecott.

Guide Us, Zombie George Mason

"In April, the Senate approved a nonbinding resolution declaring that Mr. McCain is eligible to be president. Its sponsors said the nation’s founders would have never intended to deny the presidency to the offspring of military personnel stationed out of the country."

The "Founding Fathers," notoriously wary of standing armies of any size, never imagined an army large or powerful enough to maintain hundreds of permanent overseas bases. Therefore, any speculation about their intentions regarding overseas military bases is pulled out of someone's ass.

Discuss.

N.B. Any inference drawn from the framers' intentions regarding diplomats to divine their intentions regarding military personnel is an insufficiently strict construction.

William Park

The gravestone for the six Childs Children was carved by the William Park shop in Groton (thx, RJO). This workshop's designs are characterized by deep-set "portraits" of the deceased, which are often framed by small arched or round windows (see the Jonas Stone stone (1790), Lexington, MA, above). The portraits are stylized and are not necessarily faithful to the person's countenance, but they do seem to approximate the person's gender and age.

One interesting thing the Park workshop is that it produced some double stones with unusual, asymmetrical designs. Usually, when two people are buried under the same stone, the stone will bear either a single design or two similar designs. The John and Leanard Locke stone (1791) is an example of this. Other examples include the Williams brothers stone, the John and Mary Pitman stone, and the Wait and William Tripp stone.

The Park workshop bucked convention on at least two occasions. The Benjamin and Mary Cutler stone (1776) in Lexington has two different tympanum designs. Benjamin's side of the stone features a winged soul effigy, while Mary's side has a portrait similar to those of the Childs daughters'.

There is a similar stone from the same year in Fitchburg (photo credit RJO). This one is dedicated to infant siblings, Israel and Molly Garfield.

As on the Cutler stone, the boy/man is commemorated with a winged soul effigy, while the girl/woman has an un-winged portrait under an arch. I don't know whether there's any ideological significance to this, but it strikes me as odd. Looking back over my photographs, I couldn't find any examples from this workshop in which a woman's or girl's stone features a winged figure. That may just be because I wasn't looking for those stones when I was in the field. I'll keep an eye open for them next time.

Antipas

In the past, I have drawn attention to a few examples of 17th-century New Englanders named Jezebel. This name puzzles me. Why would an intensely religious person name his or her daughter after a Biblical woman who is chiefly remembered as being "representative of all that is designing, craftty, malicious, and cruel" and for being eaten by dogs? I am similarly puzzled by New Englanders named Bathsheba (Bathsheba Lee of Concord, MA d. 1791 @ age 70). It's not as bad as Jezebel, but Bathsheba doesn't have very positive associations either.

I would like to add a new name to this discussion:

Antipas.

There are several men named Antipas in the Boston records, including Antipas Boyce (b. Feb. 8, 1661/2), Antipas Edwards (b. Nov. 23, 1698), and Antipas Marshall (b. May 3, 1699).

Antipas is a Biblical name, but not one with generally positive associations. There is a minor martyr named Antipas of Pergamum who is mentioned in the Book of Revelation, but very little is known about him. The more famous Antipas is Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, executioner of John the Baptist, and instrumental in the crucifixion of Jesus.

Herod Antipas was not a good role model for little boys in Puritan Massachusetts. In a 1738 catechism printed in Boston (title page at right), the section on Herod Antipas goes like this:

M: By whom and for what was [John the Baptist] made a Prisoner?

C: By Herod, viz. Herod-Antipas, Son to that Herod, who sought Christ's Life. And the Reason of it was because John said to Herod, It is not lawful for thee to have thy Brother's Wife: And well he might, for Herod in that one Act, was guilty of Violence, Adultery, & Incest.

If Puritan parents named their children Thankful and Prudence because they hoped that they would exhibit those virtues, how can we explain names like Jezebel and Antipas?

The Childs Children

In the burying ground in Lexington, MA, there is a stone dedicated to the six children of Abijah and Sarah Childs who died in August and September of 1778. The Childs family had a seventh child who either survived or was not born until after the epidemic. 

The stone does not specify the children's cause of death, but it was probably an infectious disease such as smallpox or dysentery. These illnesses were rampant in Massachusetts in the 1770s, due in part to the poor sanitation and cramped quarters in army camps. In the summer of 1778, an outbreak of smallpox in nearby Cambridge forced the cancellation of commencement ceremonies at Harvard and inspired frightened citizens to build a new smallpox hospital near Fresh Pond. I can't say for sure that smallpox killed these children, but it isn't a bad guess.

Other bloggers have commented on this stone and on the epidemics that swept the Boston area during the 1770s. I don't have much to add — I haven't been able to identify the disease that killed these children and their story is tragic, but not unique. I just wanted to call attention to the individual portraits of the children, which are beautifully detailed.

Sarah Childs, age 13

d. August 28, 1778

Eunice Childs, age 12

d. August 23, 1778

Abijah Childs, age 11

d. September 6, 1778

Abigail Childs, age 7

d. August 29, 1778

Benjamin Childs, age 4

d. August 24, 1778

Moses Childs, age 2

d. August 19, 1778

Exercise Blackleech

If someone out there is writing a work of historical fiction set in 17th-century Massachusetts, I humbly suggest the following character name:

Exercise Blackleech.

Exercise, daughter of John Blackleech of Boston, married Richard Raser on August 24, 1660.

The Plot Thickens . . .

In two previous posts, I have discussed efforts to identify the carvers of some gravestones in Brooklyn, CT. I went to the library this morning to read up on John Dwight, and have found some helpful information, but also uncovered a few new mysteries.

First, some background info:
John Dwight was born in Boston c. 1740 to Capt. John Dwight (d. 1744) and a mother whose maiden name was Foster. In her article, "The John Dwight Workshop in Shirley, MA, 1770-1816," Eloise Sibley West suggests that Dwight's mother may have been related to the stonecutting Foster family of Dorchester and that John may have learned to carve in their shop. By 1770, Dwight was living on a farm in Shirley with his wife, Susanna Harris Moors Dwight, and their growing family (they eventually had 8 children plus Susanna's kids from a previous marriage).

West says this of the earliest stone attributed to Dwight:

The earliest stone I have found that can be attributed to John Dwight is that of William Simonds (1758) in the Shirley Center Burial Ground. It is probably back-dated by several years since it displays the skill of an experienced carver. This stone is not documented but does have many of the elements typical of Dwight's early patterns. The Simonds stone has a round skull with narrow chin, round eyes, pointed nose, and visible teeth. The high wings begin at the side of the face, along with the palm fronds. Hollowed lobes droop from the top. The outside feathers of the wings are ribbed — a good element for identifying Dwight's work. Pinwheel and teardrop finials were chosen often. The scroll and leaf border and lettering are typical of the carver's work. His peculiar mark is barely visible in the corners of the stone's tablet.

Dwight's "peculiar mark" is a tiny lozenge-shaped gouge that can be found in the upper corners of the stone, near the finials. They are clearly visible on the Hannah Stickney stone. West says that she has "not seen this exact identification used by any other carver."

Happily, these distinctive marks can also be observed on three of the five stones I mentioned in yesterday's post (Scarborough, Perrin, and Grosvenor). There may also be marks on the Penelope Williams stone, but I can't see them in the pics and I didn't know I was looking for them when I visited that particular stone.

But, the plot thickens.

There are other stones in Pomfret, CT that bear Dwight's distinctive mark and a share some elements of his signature style, but which predate his earliest known stone by more than a decade. These may be cases of drastic backdating. Then again, they are a little different from Dwight's other designs.

Stone #1:

Martha Cotton, Pomfret, CT, 1744

This stone shows many signs that point to Dwight (lozenge marks, slate, border scrolls, visible teeth, narrow chin, etc.). The Martha Cotton stone actually reminds me more of the Thomas Williston stone (1783) in Copp's Hill in Boston more than it reminds me of other Dwight stones. Notice the wing design:

Of course, Dwight may have carved the Williston stone too, but it looks very different from the other work he was turning out in the 1780s.

Stone #2:
Anna Cotton, Pomfret, CT, 1746
This stone has no tic marks in the corners, but it is very similar to Anna's mother's stone.

Stone #3:
Thomas Cotton, Pomfret, CT, 1770
This stone definitely bears Dwight's signature marks. Perhaps the Cotton family contracted Dwight to make Cotton's stone in 1770 and asked him to make some backdated stones for Martha and Anna while he was at it. I'm sorry that these pics are so awful — I didn't realize I'd be using them.

Stone #4:
Zechariah Waldo, Pomfret, CT, 1761
Is that a Dwight mark in the left corner? Hard to say. But the style looks right. Those three-lobed leaves in the border look like Dwight's work to me.

Stone #5:
David Howe, Pomfret, CT, 1768
Bingo. Tic marks in the corners, whorls in the finials, parentheses in the epitaph. This is the only one of these stones that really looks like the Simonds stone in West's article.

Stone #6:

Jehosophat Holmes, Pomfret, CT, 1745

The Dwight marks are clearly visible on this one. The face looks very different from the David Howe stone, but similar to the Martha Cotton stone, except that the wings are stunted. What gives? 

Stone #7:
Abigail Grosvenor, Pomfret, CT, 1763
There's a hint of a corner mark on the right, but I can't be sure. The wings look right, though. Someone was obviously dissatisfied with the epitaph and carved the addendum "JUNR" in the stonecutter's equivalent to crayon marks.

And really, all of these stones look very much like the Williams brothers' stone in Brooklyn, CT:

So why would a successful Massachusetts carver take up the project of backdating lots of stones for a community 60 miles away? Was there another carver in Dwight's shop who came from the Pomfret area and brought this style with him? Or did someone move to Pomfret from Boston, bringing that Copp's Hill style along with him?

Mehallalnell Munnings

On January 20, 1659/1660, Hannah Munnings of Boston had a daughter named Mehitabel. Hannah's husband was named

Mehallalnell Munnings.

Not a particularly unusual name, but I'm a sucker for alliteration. As far as I can tell, "Mehallalnell" is the clerk's rendering of Mahalaleel, who is mentioned in Genesis 5:12-17. The Biblical Mahalaleel was the great-grandfather of Methuselah and lived to be 895 years old. 

Despite his name, Munnings did not enjoy remarkable longevity. He drowned on February 27, 1659/1660.

Carver ID

Commenter RJO is very knowledgeable about Massachusetts gravestone carvers, so I'm posting a few pics so that he (or anyone else) can determine whether this carver is indeed John Dwight of Shirley, MA (see an example of Dwight's work here).

I think that these four/five stones were carved by the same person. That opinion is based on the distinctive eye capsules, similarities in border design, and the fact they are made of slate, a material that was not often used in eastern CT. I'm not sure that the Thankfull Payson stone (#5) fits in this group, particularly since it is so much earlier than the others, but there are stylistic similarities.

Another theory is that only the Scarborough stone was carved by Dwight, while the others were carved by someone else. There is a Markers article called "The John Dwight Workshop in Shirley, MA, 1770-1816," but I haven't read it, so I don't know whether those were its active years or only the years covered in the article. I can check at the library tomorrow. Most of these stones are pre-1770, so it's unlikely that they came out of the shop in Shirley.

Stone #1:
Joseph Scarborough, Brooklyn, CT, 1771

Stone #2:
Abigail Perrin, Brooklyn, CT, 1767

Stone #3:
Penelope Williams, Pomfret, CT, 1764

Stone #4:
Mary Grosvenor, Pomfret, CT, 1770

Stone #5:
Thankfull Payson, Pomfret, CT, 1758

I'm also open to theories as to why stones from a Shirley, MA carver are turning up in eastern CT. This sometimes happens when a carver moves away from his birthplace and continues to send stones back home (as when Zerubabel Collins moved to Vermont from CT) or when people moved away and continued to buy gravestones from their hometown carvers. Distinctive stones can also turn up in far-off places when two carvers developed similar styles under the tutelage of a single master and set up their own shops in different towns. I don't know what the case is here. In order to formulate a good guess, I'd have to know whether Dwight stones are common in other towns south of Worcester but closer to Shirley (Auburn, Oxford, Webster).

Bunnies!

My visits to rural graveyards often turn into nature walks. Beyond the ubiquitous robins and chickadees, I've encountered other types of birds (often cardinals), deer, skunks, rabbits, and the occasional snake.

Today, I spent some time with a couple of fearless bunnies in Lexington. As long as I didn't move suddenly or crouch down, they allowed me to get within five or six feet as they went about their business. Adorable.

I took way too many pictures of them.