Happy Halloween!

Thomas Kendel

Wakefield, Ma

c. 1680

Name of the Day

Reverend Mr. Supply Clap

d. 1747

buried in Burlington, MA

Slate on "Gravers"

Yesterday, Slate published an article on people who visit graveyards for fun. Most of the article is devoted to people who volunteer for Find A Grave, who apparently call themselves "gravers."

It's sort of a strange article. The author repeatedly supports his interview subject in the belief that visiting graveyards is something to be embarrassed about. "It's not surprising that Cara feels she needs to make excuses for hanging around a cemetery," writes Adrian Chen, though he never really digs into the cultural assumptions that might make him think that's an obvious conclusion. He has a paragraph or two about Mount Auburn and the rural cemetery movement, but is not very reflective about the place of cemeteries in 21st-century America. Chen maintains an air of good-natured bewilderment throughout and ends by implying that "gravers" should find something better to do with their time.

It's all very silly. Chen is a humor writer and I suppose that this article has some appeal from a "look at these whackos" point of view. Plus, Halloween. Still, it's weak as a humorous piece because Chen discovers that the gravers are actually pretty normal. It's weak as a news piece because it is unreflective and doesn't get to the heart of the matter. Why do people do this? Why do you think it's a weird thing to do? What does that tell you about our society?

In all, harmless, but I might turn the final question back on Chen: "You don't have anything better to do than this?"

Dramatis Personae +1

Let us add

Captain Ponsonby Molesworth

to our dramatis personae.

UPDATE:
Read more about Captain Molesworth over at Boston 1775.

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.

Enemies to Their Country*

As dusk fell on October 28, 1769, Misses Ame and Betsy Cuming hurried to lock their modest house against the gathering darkness, hoping that doors and shutters would keep them safe until morning. Alone in their flimsy fortress, the sisters huddled together, “trimbling lick Co[wa]rds,” straining to hear beyond the ordinary sounds of night. They did not wait long. The click of hobnails on cobblestones, the rattle of a cart, and groans of agony announced the arrival of unwelcome visitors. Peering through a darkened window, Betsy beheld a ghastly tableau: a sea of twinkling candles illuminated a moaning man who lay on her doorstep “in a Gore of Blood,” surrounded by a thousand men and boys. As Betsy watched, the crowd “aranged themselves befor [her] door” and positioned the broken body under her window, where they doused it with steaming tar and a flurry of feathers. Betsy did not recognize the sufferer, but feared for her friends and their families. As the armed men melted back into the night, they called “to all the inhabitance to put Candles in their Windows” to show their support for the mob. Betsy watched, helpless, as her neighbors’ windows flashed with blazing assent.

Consort of Temperance Atwood

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

This example from Plymouth, MA is not quite the same thing, but it is similar: William Atwood is identified as the "Consort of Temperance Atwood."

Since it is so rare to see an adult, white man identified in terms of his relationship with another person, I wonder whether this may say something about the position of women in maritime communities. Historians have long recognized that port towns tend to have a disproportionate number of female-headed households due to the long and frequent absences of male mariners. Is it possible that whoever commissioned this epitaph was accustomed to treating Temperance Atwood as the head of the Atwood household?

Also, I would name a hypothetical child "Temperance" if Pete would let me. It's a good twin name for "Patience."

Happy Birthday to Me!

Names of the Day

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

Milton Sampson

and

Algernon Sidney Sampson.

This gravestone may no longer exist — it was in bad shape when Benjamin Drew recorded its epitaph in the 1880s.

Dissertation Procrastination

What do I do when I'm not in a graveyard? Lately, I've been playing a lot of board games with Pete and my Am Civ friends. One of our recent favorites is Pandemic, a cooperative game in which players race to eradicate four deadly diseases. On each turn, you turn over cards to find out how the diseases have spread, then you rush all over the map trying to prevent outbreaks and contain the epidemics long enough to find a cure.

Each player in the games has a role that gives him/her special powers:

• Dispatcher: moves pawns around
• Operations Expert: builds research stations
• Scientist: can cure disease at a 1-card discount
• Medic: cures more people
• Researcher: can exchange cards with others
  

It rained today, so Pete and I stayed in and played a few rounds. I always forget what my role is and don't use it to the best advantage (especially if I'm the Dispatcher, which is of limited usefulness in a 2-player game). Part of the problem is that the pawns are not very evocative of the role they signify. To remedy this, I made my own little meeples:

Name of the Day

If you visit the Granary Burying Ground in Boston, you will find the grave of Waitstill Trott in the vicinity of the John Hancock memorial.

Name of the Day

For my novel:

Mr. Quintin Crymble

via Benjamin Drew's Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts

see also:
Miss Fanny Forward
Captain William Wanton

"Safe From British Bullets"

Many of Boston's revolutionary-era Whigs —John Hancock, Sam Adams, John Adams — are household names today. Others, like Joseph Warren and James Otis, Jr., are not national heroes, but are still well-known. Then, there is a third tier of patriots who were famous in the 1760s, but are largely forgotten by non-specialists today: William Molineux, Ebenezer Macintosh, etc.

One of those who has seen his fame diminish over time is Captain Daniel Malcom/Malcolm. In the 1760s, Malcolm was known as a rabble-rousing merchant who repeatedly defied customs officials.

In September of 1766, two officials, William Sheafe and Benjamin Hallowell, got an anonymous tip that Malcom had several casks of smuggled alcohol hidden in his cellar in Boston's North End. When Sheafe and Hallowell arrived to search the premises and confiscate the liquor, Malcom refused to unlock the cellar, saying that "if any Man attempted it, he would blow his Brains out." The customs officials retreated. When they came back with a search warrant, their access was blocked by several hundred of Malcom's closest friends. Read a more complete account of the incident here.   

Snarkfest

Much to my surprise, I have found Benjamin Drew's transcriptions of the Plymouth epitaphs to be delightful reading. Besides the epitaphs themselves, Drew adds his own snarky little comments here and there. Here is one of my favorites:

Desiah Harlow

I've been reading Benjamin Drew's transcriptions of the epitaphs from Burial Hill in Plymouth, MA. This one caught my eye:

Clearly, this person's name is "Desire Harlow." Yet, on her husband's stone, the carver spelled it Desiah. I'll check this out next time I'm in Plymouth.

"Traditional" Americans?

I suppose you could argue that America has a long history of paranoid white populism, so, in that sense, perhaps "traditional" makes sense here.

I don't think that's what Pat "White Folks Built This Country" Buchanan means, though.

You can read the whole thing here.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan takes Buchanan to task for his historical amnesia here.

Lost at Sea

It occurs to me that we don't typically use the word "lost" to describe people who die on land. A quick search of 101 Ways to Say Died turns up "Lost at Sea," "Lost on Look-Out Shoals," and "Lost His Life By a Fall From a Tree." Two are sea-related deaths and the third does not say that the person was lost, just that he lost his life. This is useful for me in thinking about the New England imagination of travel, death, and the sea.

First Person Gravestone

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:

Rachel Cotton

d. 1808

Plymouth, MA

I

am erected

by

Josiah Cotton Esqr

in remembrance

of Rachel

his pious and Virtuous

Wife,

who died Januy 17th 1808

aged 50 years.

In belief of Christianity I lived,

In hope of a glorious Resurrection I died.