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MARKERS II

The Journal o f the
Association for
Gravestone Studies

UNIVERSITY
PRESSOF
AMERICA

MARKERS II

The Journal of the
Association for
Gravestone Studies

David Watters, Editor

UNIVERSITY
PRESS OF
AMERICA

)RK

University Press of America,™ Inc.

4720 Boston Way
Lanham, MD 20706

3 Henrietta Street
London WC2E 8LU England

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN (Perfect): 0-8191-3464-3
ISBN (Cloth): 0-8191-3463-5

Co-published by arrangement with
the Association for Gravestone Studies

Dedicated to

Jessie Lie Farber
Daniel Farber

111

ASSOCIATION FOR GRAVESTONE STUDIES
EDITORIAL BOARD

David Watters, Editor

F. Joanne Baker Jessie Lie Farber

Peter Benes James A. Slater

Manuscripts may be submitted for review for future
volumes to the editor, Department of English, University
of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824. Manuscripts should
conform to the MLA Stylesheet and be accompanied by
glossy black and white prints or black ink drawings.
Copies of MARKERS I may be ordered from Betty Slater,
373 Bassettes Bridge Rd., Mansfield Center, CT 06250.
Please include payment of $15. For information about
the Association for Gravestone Studies, write Eloise
West, 199 Fisher Rd . , Fitchburg, MA 01420.

The editor wishes to thank Professor Lennard A.
Fisk, Jr., Director of Research, University of New
Hampshire, for a Research Initiation Fund grant to sup-
port the preparation of this volume. The editor also
thanks Carol L. Demeritt for her expert and patient
work in preparing the typescript.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v

"AND THE MEN WHO MADE THEM":

THE SIGNED GRAVESTONES OF NEW ENGLAND

Sue Kelly and Anne Williams 1

SCOTTISH GRAVESTONES AND THE
NEW ENGLAND WINGED SKULL

Betty Willshire 105

THE JN CARVER

David Watters 115

JOSEPH BARBUR, JR. :

THE FROND CARVER OF WEST MEDWAY

Michael Cornish 133

STONECARVERS OF THE NARRAGANSETT BASIN:
STEPHEN AND CHARLES HARTSHORN OF PROVIDENCE

Vincent F. Luti 149

FOLK ART ON GRAVESTONES:
THE GLORIOUS CONTRAST

Charles Bergengren 171

THE CARVERS OF PORTAGE COUNTY, WISCONSIN,
1850-1900

Phil Kallas 187

THE EXAMPLE OF D. ALDO PITASSI :
EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT AND PRACTICE IN
CONTEMPORARY MEMORIAL DESIGN

Robert Prestiano 203

INDEX 221

CONTRIBUTORS 226

"AND THE MEN WHO MADE THEM":
THE SIGNED GRAVESTONES OF NEW ENGLAND

Sue Kelly and Anne Williams

For centuries people have been examining mint
marks, the bench marks of silversmiths, or turning over
chairs in hopes of finding a Hitchcock signature. In
the field of gravestone carving, however, comparable
interest and research dates back a mere 50 years, to
Harriette Merrifield Forbes. Her extensive research
and excellent photography of more than 1400 gravestones,
now at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester,
Massachusetts, are a gift not only of record, but of a
standard of investigation. By tedious combing of pro-
bate records, Mrs. Forbes, and, later, Dr. Ernest Caul-
field in Connecticut, identified perhaps a hundred of
the major pre-1800 New England gravestone cutters. The
kind of authentication revealed by probate records is
usually recorded as payment received by or paid to an
individual for gravestones. A single reference to money
paid for gravestones is not conclusive evidence that the
named individual was a stonecutter. Similar payments
recorded in other estate papers might strengthen the
evidence. Conversely, many payments received for grave-
stones would substantiate a theory that this individual
was in the business of making gravestones. Such infor-
mation is generally accepted as proof of a carver's
identity .

Another way of identifying the maker of a particu-
lar image or inscription is by searching out the rare
stone that bears the signature of the carver. The dis-
covery of a signature is very compelling in its direct-
ness: One can see and touch the written record of not
only the stone maker, but also his design. This list
included here documents gravestone carvers working be-
tween 1670 and 1800, and it includes some 346 signatures
representing 85 carvers. The geographical range is
essentially limited to New England, although stones from
South Carolina, Nova Scotia, New York and New Jersey are
included when cut by a man known for his work in New
England .

There is a wealth of information that can be
gleaned from signatures. Numerous signatures include
the town of residence of the carvers; the Ebenezer Cox
stone, 1760, Hardwick Massachusetts, is signed, "Samuel
Fisher of Wrentham;" the Booz Stearns stone, 1796, in
Mansfield Center, Connecticut, is signed "S. Spaulding
Killingly." A few stones have been helpful in verifying

the movement of an individual cutter. Zerubbabel
Collins was born in 1733 in Lebanon Crank, Connecticut,
and took up his father's carving trade there, and many
stones are probated to him. But a stone for Rachael
Burton, 1790, Manchester Center, Vermont, is signed
"Z. Collins of Shaftsbury," confirming that sometime
before this date Collins had moved to Vermont.

Other personal information occasionally included
with a signature is the age of the carver. Abigail
Manning's wonderful marker in Scotland, Connecticut, is
signed, "Made by Rockwell Manning Aged 13 years."
Rockwell's father, Josiah, a prolific and preeminent
Connecticut carver, felt his age worth noting, too,
when he carved on the back of his own stone, "This monu-
ment I made in the year 1800; in my 76th year." The
long career enjoyed by Beza Soule is noted on the stone
of Ebezer Clark, 1830, Chaplain, Connecticut, "engrav'd
by Beza Soule Aged 81 years."

Signatures also help to define the nature of the
stone cutting business as a family trade. The prepon-
derance of Manning style stones in Connecticut is
explained by the fact that Josiah had two sons who
shared and carried on his carving trade, Frederick and
Rockwell. That the Collins shop was also a family bus-
iness is attested to by the signatures of its members:
Benjamin, Julius, Zerubbabel, and Edward.

In addition to the literal information given by the
signers of gravestones, a good deal more can be inferred
from the signatures. There can be little doubt as to
the sophistication, training and general competency of
carvers as G. Allen, Jr., or Samuel Tingley or Cyrus
Deane, among others, whose names were carved precisely,
delicately and stylishly. In contrast, from the signa-
ture of a carver such as James Hovey , it is strikingly
implied that this carver lacked formal training and
sophistication. His signature and indeed his images and
inscriptions indicate the background and workmanship of
the rural tradition. Seldom did the rural carver attach
any epithet to his name, while the sophisticated carver
often labelled himself professionally as "George Allen
Sculps, it.," "Engrav'd by Abel Webster," or "J. New
sculpt . "

There are relatively few prominent signatures be-
fore 1750 as initials are tucked inconspicuously into
the design, and names are placed on the footstones or
back of the headstones. Certainly these signatures do
not compete with the central images and messages of

foreboding death. After 1750, the percentage of signed
stones is much higher. Signatures appear in a greater
variety of styles, sizes and locations on the stones.
This trend may signify the increasing secularization of
the society. The signatures of Stephen and Abel Web-
ster, John Walden, Richard and Lebbeus Kimball, John
Marble, and especially Peter Buckland, are hardly incon-
spicuous, being found on the face of the stones, usually
within the inscription tablet. One can hardly not
interpret these signatures as invitations for recogni-
tion .

Nevertheless, it is difficult to know why indi-
vidual carvers signed stones. Why did David Lamb sign
one and only one stone? Why did Benjamin Collins sign
over 20? Why did Moses Worcester not sign one? A few
reasons are apparent. When a carver had an opportunity
to send a stone beyond the area in which he usually did
business, he might sign it, including his home town,
as an advertisement or to indicate pride in his commis-
sion. There can be little mistaking the commercial
solicitation in Abraham Codner ' s addendum to the Mary
Hilton stone in Chebogue , Nova Scotia, "Abraham Codner,
Next the Draw-Bridge Boston." In the Saint Phillip
Cemetery in Charleston, South Carolina, there are three
prominent, finely carved stones signed "Wm. Codner,
Boston N.E.," "H. Emmes Boston" and "H. Emmes Boston,
Feet." Boston and Charleston were linked by the busy
Atlantic trade route, so Charleston residents might
order another such fine stone from either of the named
carvers. There are many other examples of this kind of
signing.

Although there are commercial overtones in these
examples, there is at least one carver whose signatures
are unmistakably commercial. John Stevens III of New-
port is said to have signed every stone he cut , from the
imaginative and technically superior portrait stones of
Nathaniel Waldron and Johnathan Wyatt to the flat, mass-
produced images on most of his stones.

It is hard to draw such clear conclusions about the
meaning of the signatures of men who signed perhaps a
dozen or two works — neither the single stone nor every
stone. Josiah Manning, G. Allen, Jr., John Walden,
Benjamin Collins, the New family, Beza Soule were all
prolific and influential carvers. The signatures they
left undoubtedly spread their recognition and market
area. The large number of towns with at least one
signed Manning stone suggest a keen awareness of adver-
tising. On the other hand, of the twenty-five or so

legible B. Collins signatures, eight are in one cemetery
in Pachaug, Connecticut. Certainly Benjamin Collins did
not hold the same advertising principles that Josiah
Manning did.

In addition to commercial motives, carvers may have
felt stones erected to a town's prominent figures war-
ranted the signatures of their makers. Both financial
power and social status were facets of an individual's
prominence; important roles in the church, military dis-
tinction, educational achievements or key positions in
the town's development all accorded social status.
Thomas Gold's one signed stone is to "Mr. Caleb Hotch-
kiss a reputable citizen and a man of Religion . . .;"
one of Samuel Fisher's two signed works is to Capt .
Ebenezer Cox, "a noble Captain." The inscription
recounts his military heroism in highly laudatory terms.
Col. John Goulding's impressive stone, cut by James New,
Jr., boasts an elaborate coat of arms and, a bit osten-
tatiously, a portrait of the portly Goulding on the
footstone. Nathaniel Hodgkins, Jr.'s two signed markers
are to officers of the church. The signed works of
George Allen, Sr. and Samuel Tingley are all to men of
military rank. Signed stones by both Frederick Manning
and G. Allen, Jr. lament the deaths of promising young
men whose educational accomplishments at Dartmouth and
an "English School" are touted in verse. This particu-
lar body of signed stones to important personages con-
stitutes by virtue of customized images and/or involved
epitaphs a unique reflection of social and personal
values of eighteenth-century New England life.

Rooted within these 18th century values was a
strong family bond. This loyalty and familial duty seem
to be another explanation for a number of family sign-
ings. Richard Kimball's signed work to his mother-in-
law, Abigail Holt, is, in fact, one of Kimball's earli-
est known works. It is small, crudely cut and plain,
but it bears his signature seemingly as an expression of
dutiful affection. There is no mistaking the love and
grief of Thomas Johnson who lost his young wife "ere one
year revolved" and cut a large stone to her which he
signed, "And to mourn the Loss of so dear a Partner was
the unhappy Lot of her bereaved Husband Thomas Johnson."
One of the more poignant indications of family affection
occurs on a stone bearing the typical bald effigy of
John Stevens II, but the stone does not bear a Stevens
signature. The inscription reads, "This Stone was cut
by Pompe Stevens in Memory of his Brother Gusse Gibbs."
Pompe was the Negro servant and shop apprentice to
John II, and while Stevens never signed one of his own

works, Pompe ' s unique signature was placed on the stone.

One of the most challenging and perplexing avenues
of pursuit in this matter of signed stones leads one
into the web of inter-relationships of some carving
shops through apprentices, shared quarries and business
relationships. On the stone of Mrs. Eun Loveland, 1751,
Glastonbury, Connecticut, a prominent "H" is carved near
ground line. The image and lettering are decidedly the
work of Joseph Johnson of Middletown, Connecticut.
Johnson employed at least two apprentices whose last
names began with "H," Hale and Holland, and this mark
was put on the stone by one of them as Dr. Ernest
Caulfield suggests. Harriette Forbes refers to several
Massachusetts stones on which an "S" appears below the
inscription tablet. All are images of the Park family
of carvers. Forbes notes that the "S" was probably cut
by Daniel Shays, an apprentice in the shop of William
and John Park. Such works raise the question of what
was the role of the shop apprentice.

It is generally acknowledged that the Rev. Jona-
than Pierpont stone, 1709, Wakefield, Massachusetts, is
the work of Joseph Lamson . However, neatly set in the
tympanum are the initials "N.L." for Joseph's sixteen-
year-old son, Nathaniel. It is one of the finest stones
produced by the Lamson shop, and it is unlikely that
Nathaniel would have had competence to produce such a
masterpiece. How authentic, then, is Nathaniel's signa-
ture? Thus the signature hunter must be wary: "S" or
"EC" or "NL" or "Pompe Stevens" are true signatures, but
do not always mean that the work was designed and exe-
cuted solely by the signer.

One group of "signed" stones merits special con-
sideration, for the marks on them are apparently not
real signatures. All these stones are the work of
Daniel Hastings of Newton, Massachusetts. More than two
hundred stones are marked with "dh," "H" or "DH." There
is no consistency in the placement of the letters on the
stones; they appear in every location and every con-
ceivable position. Yet none of the marks seems an
appropriate signature for Hastings. The majority of his
stones demonstrate a capacity for very skillful design
and execution. They were also expensive at the time,
and had Hastings wanted to sign stones, there seems
little reason why he would not have done so clearly and
prominently. A probable explanation for these marks is
that they are quarry marks. Hastings apparently ob-
tained much of his fine slate from the Pin Hill quarries
in Harvard, Massachusetts. Members of the Park and

Worcester and Dwight families are also known to have
bought slate from these quarries. Hastings may have
been an aggressive businessman; perhaps he went into the
quarry and carefully selected slabs of slate that he
wanted. Whether it was Hastings himself or a quarry
worker who marked certain slabs with "H" or "dh" or "DH"
is unknown. Certainly there is a difference between
marks such as "H" or "dh" on the backs of stones and a
distinct statement of the carver's hand in a full sig-
nature.

The stones illustrated have been chosen to present
the most representative design of each carver. The
illustrations are photographs by Dan Farber of rub-
bings by the authors, whose rubbing techniques retrieve
design features often lost on the stones themselves.
This list is just a beginning; many sources, including
written records and field notes. The authors wish to
thank the many Association for Gravestone Studies
friends and associates who have carried pen and paper
into many a burying ground, especially: Michael Cornish.,
Francis Duval, Daniel and Jessie Lie Farber, Alfred
Fredette, Laurel Gabel, Daniel Hearn, Vincent Luti,
Avon Neal , Ann Parker, Ivan Rigby, James Slater, James
Tibensky, Ralph Tucker and David Watters.

I Erected w mernor?/ of
*Ca&. GEORGE EAKLF
I 'who Died j/uhf-
* 2* I806. in
the j2-'ifecur
of his

More (offing than thi.sJlone)o)/c! nmrn/jhall k

yp fen)). L

\lli\ boHeJhj oj heart. his friend/hip and his J

mime. ^

\Qf uniuerfitf hue. he fnn° injlrfihn his b

\ - man. fk

^//7 humble faith ' bleft (ruth *all mm in fhrtjf ^

air one. ^

r/e ^/*V/M/r//,»j8o8

Figure 1. Capt . George Earle, 1806, Chester, Vt

Figure 2. Capt . Samuel Peck, 1736, Rehoboth, Mass

In Memory o
NFBENJAMIN CADYJ'
Son of MrJo hnfr M!s Hannah1'
Cady, who di ed May qi? .
1783, aged^Year^, f
■ rr Months, &c 31 .Days.

His moral Character was good,
was early placed at the head
of anEnglifh School, where
(by his exeelfent abilities) hef
gained honor to himfelf, 1
and gave intire fatisfaction tot
all who employed him. \

Figure 3. Benjamin Cady, 1783, Putnam, Ct

Sacred To The Memory

Or; Deacon

fSON^ HAN HUNT

Who Died March 2^f^u

^T^CInThe 70*% ah'

^ if "Of ;Hrs Age.

w4 gfoW Tnarf idn<iu4n Jln^el1 tfie/e between
ifaw f frfrr -fji ebearrizr! ~Uthai divides their fa
{Perhaps qrnomemi^or perhapi a year.
tH\\zr\ bei~hat oricetheu lucre uho nou are (jodi
Ciue arh& Uucd ihcd <jou way < laim {hi sh >e r.

FLBOOTH, Sculp* 33enviwp(on.

Figure 4. Jonathan Hunt, 1796, Northampton, Mass.

P.BUCKLAVUi

•The Remains of M.
Sffl Eefls. the amiab|
IConfor^ of the Rey^-M
Joim Eelfc, who; ;.|
Departed i&is Life ^
on the ao^Day of

MovJb.r A.D.J7 7 3,
intfica^^arofher ;

Age. ■^■■^:p-m

\Heavh gives us Fnettds
tohkfsf prefent Scene*
fJ[Rcfumes them to prepare
us for the nexf".

Figure 5. Sibil Eells, 1773, Glastonbury, Ct

Figure 6. West Children, 1755, Tolland, Ct

Sacred
• to the Memory of,
tfMY LAWTON VINSON

wife of I

M!" JAMES VINSON,
wh o die d Feb y. \y i 797
in the 2 6 fc^year of her age

She was in Faith unshaken,
And in Virtue unfeigned.

Figure 7.

Honry Hull

Mary Lawton Vinson, 1797, Portsmouth, R.I.
13

Ill Memory of

j ob, son of jynuoHN:

i HOWLAND, and
MARY his Wife.

he died Ocftober^ -

r 78^ in the 2Jft year

j his Age. |

Cuttbv.JBuII.'

Figure 8. Job Rowland, 1785, Jamestown, R.I

Figure 9. Nicholas and Ann Webster, 1750, Berkley,
Mass .

Figure 10

Samuel and Abigail Andrews, 1786, Meriden,

Ct.

of T'lrs Tlary Bruftejj
-Xwl;^ to Nr Jonathan
Brxifter, who- Died .
September "the 7 th
A. D. 774^3 injthe ."
iTO/: v/ear of her age.

^aiTare. not asr \x/e,

as- -wg are fo muftyou be

*,««

Benj* Collins Fecit

.■jdMCTyfrq^g

^^^

,^.?{^s§ea

Figure 11. Mary Bruster, 1743, Scotland, Ct

N FIEMOKY OF

^well-beloved ri;*

rit? obs^iends* railed
Jiaps "Were i^on mantled
in DaHcnefs (\^ grate

Pitchey arid Gloonr
Ihads) V fe felling n^ieep
in the Cradle of Death. v
on the 22,- clay of NovernN
y^ J74C, aged oJ years
7 rra riTtlis and 6 days

Vfadd-by J" lbs Collins Lebanon

Figure 12. Robert White, Jr., 1746, Stafford Springs,
Ct .

THIS MONUMENTAL Stone
is facred to the Memory,' of
Mr. Jacob Galusha who
died February the 13th 1791,
"in the 71ft year of his Agfe.

All you that read with little care,

V/ho walk away and. leave me hcTe;
Should, not ^forget that you muft die.
And. be intnrn^j'd as well as I-

Z. Collins Sculp. Shaftfbury.

Figure 13. Jacob Galusha, 1792, Salisbury, Ct

\klU\T memory of Mr?
Mindwell Grant who depart-
ed this life, Oeiber i8*.h 1800
mine /(Sth year of her age.

Relentlefs Death v/hofe ironfwa^
Reluctant mortals mufi obey-.

Then be prepared to give up all.
And meet your fate when death

fhall call.

Figure 14. Mindwell Grant, 1800, East Poultney, Vt

$&(

FERE tTESfBOD

JOSEPH PHIPPEWE
AGED ABOUT <l6
YEARS DIED £ 10

Figure 15. Joseph Phippene, 1712, Fairfield, Ct

In memory of
MIS Lois, wife of W,
D atiiel Pon d , wh o
died March 17 th,

7, in y 57

Year of her acre.

She fong\I the day Jo go the
Where aft the living ^1{/Z;P ,
And ui/b^d the hour of Sou reqri
To turn to native duff-.

dyd
£yj'airhj7je liv'd in faith Jhe

Left much behind to teach
Her hufh and near, if daughter dear
Such things as none can preach.

Figure 16. Lois Pond, 1787, West Medway , Mass

l^miatjT? Confort of Docf r

■ ,A -i« i "Ail* '■■• v» I K Jt'

ifefie 1 7;th' J3) i736a$eef<i3.

$nt>Wf/eetino'v,/asHer short I (yd pnfnfc
Cut of in lifer ^ay and vernal trftie^
Ja^ljabtti iqf beao^; a*vrl of YomJic"t5

vvhen Hied so fai p :sa-*w£et aRoI

Figure 17. Desire Allis, 1796, Manchester, Vt

Here ties Buried
EZL Hie Body of

IS! Sarah Sm fek,

r T ' r

:who cired Oct.p hrie ^

I 7 ^ 6'

in hRe^c)^ Year oF Her Age.

Figure 18. Sarah Sloss, 1756, Fairfield, Ct

Figure 19. James Paine, 1711, Barnstable, Mass

AMS.

Figure 20. Ludovicus D ' Allleboust , 1803, Walpole, Mass

In memory of
Mr. Lbenezer Lawrence,
who died October j/ 4.*1]
. j 9 6. in y -16th, Year ,
of his A?e.

Some hearty friend mnv drop a rear, \

On my dry bones and fay : j \

Tli"|.- mice were ftrong as mine appear. J
And mine mull be as they."

S" may my moulilrin;; body learli , ^ /^ |

Wlm all have need to loam;
Tor ihrfl and iflirs londeft prearh ,

t^ifoT: ~"rr:

Figure 21. Ebenezer Lawrence, 1796, Franklin, Mass

in Memory: of C^pi
EBENEZEK^OX who Died
March ^2^1 76 &:m f
fj£k^ffie& of his A gie ;.

Beneath this Stone a noble Captain"? laid
Which for his Kin*/^ Country. wvisDii'p lay •(]

I his Courage that no Terr ors Cot rl c\ Dilarm -
Nor when he fae'd; f, Foe .his fear Alarm

[BuLnowhe,s Conquer d^ % filent \.grx/e ■", ■:
Can boaft that power ^.French could never have
Under his care his Soldiers '.we're Secure
Equal with them all hardfUips he'd Endure
In SixCampains Intrepid trod p1. Field
Nor to f. Gal 1 i c Power wou Id _pv er Yield
At: lait he 's V6ne\ve. hope. where Wars do ceafe
To fpend a whale Eternity in Peace . .

1^^^^^^^®^^^^^^^^

^^^esaasss^.

' Nfocf<> By /■'
Samuel Tiflie

.3fflr3^asseffife ^^**®S!

•?(..

Figure 22. Ebenezer Cox, 1768, Hardwick, Mass

Here {ies Buried. the Body: of

My Seth Sltmtster, "

who .cficdA&vrir^ 1 7 T F.
rathe 6[st Year of. Hrs A^e. :,

Lament me/not as yompais by,
• Aisyoir are no\r,.so once vras t^ ... . _ .. .■•',
As lam now, Cormixft yoii he;.. .':-i . : ;.- -
AIt:Flettxis"MuT't:aI you may "To . ;^-__; .

ill

Figure 23. Seth Sumner, 1771, Milton, Mass

I ABOUT 40 YEARS WHO
""'DEPARTED THIS LIFE
V a4U OF JULY ANNO DOMINI
17 10

Figure 24. Lt . John Mackintoshe, 1710, Boston, Mass

Figure 25. Mary Marshall, 1718, Quincy, Mass

emot^qfc,
'Mr€ALEB;vJ'

ftnrHp£^,

a reputable Citizen; and: i
a man of Religion.whoj
was (lain by trie eneity
when they inyefied |£
and plundered theTowri
of NewHavenJuly' ^
the 5^/0 177^). in the 68
Year of his- age^;\:

MfbyTbofCbid

Figure 26. Caleb Hotchkiss, 1779, New Haven, Ct

Figure 27. Rhoda Chaf ee , 1786, Providence, R.I

In Me m o r y of }]
MrSAMUELf

WATS ON:
wh o dep ar te dps<
>:;•■ ..tins -Life- W'A
Dec enber

Year of his

a £ e

UARVSHOHV f/R?

Figure 28. Samuel Watson, 1781, West Thompson, Ct

Louifa Bianchard

Laughter of M? John k
MTsDorcas Bianchard

died March 3o,i8or.
TEtatis 4.

JVeJcfirce enjoy the balmy p (ft
But mourn tie fileafure gone.

Figure 29. Louisa Bianchard, 1801, Boston, Mass

In Memory of Mrs.
Efther. Confort of.
C apt. Rofwel Bumham

Who died Sep/' 27*1
175)4. in. the ag.'1
Aear of her age: j

. Farewell 'my vfi-;ends^ -.
Dry up Kyour teaEs: ' " ;.■••■■'!
Ny drift :' , lies here l* . "'
Till ,'", Clirifi appears; ; ;

Cut Jby N. ilvd^nsr/^^tm

Figure 30. Esther Burnham, 1794, Ashford, Ct

; frrr\?S : V: -nOVPU - -{?. 1

Figure 31. Margaret Toplift, 1740, West Willington, Ct

I?©®ffi^t2E

In Memory of

ij Sarah Johns oK [J

v>bo departed this Lif% May jg, Jjgop k

Altai 24.. L

^/4t7 ajniableDifpofiiiori^friendfyf/ecrt, g

a vir tuousBch aulcu r, filia I Pie ty ^
and conjuga/ Tendevvefs
made all bar Friends IcmentherDeath
with in <? xprefiihle Grief
M fhort and vain are our f once ft /topes i(j
of jublunary Blifsi

-in the connubial ftate,
ere one i/ear revolved

Figure 32. Sarah Johnson, 1799, Durham, Ct

Iri Memory of5
^JofmRilIer^
Who Departed
This Life :Axigus

[77 iear of his*

Is kuirfecl in ihc didl
Prepare for clea^h

Cut. by LehbeLuK/niball

Figure 33. John Fuller, 1777, Hampton, Ct .

fe Memory- of ^

Decon Samuel ^
StmmerWho ^
0kd -Pecirf Jr 8*

t^8t in J?' 8a year

Richard

Kim

1 K*r&

Figure 34. Samuel Sumner, 1781, Pomf ret , Ct

H&e ; t- yes Bunea

liritHe ^{h^earof

'jc#r

made W — David L ambl

Figure 35. Hopstill Tyler, 1762, Preston City, Ct

Here Lyes ikei

hod-

khi7i<;'lnf ail

Figure 36. Joseph Grimes, 1716, Stratford, Ct

Figure 37. Ephraim Beach, 1716, Stratford, Ct.

Figure 38. Benjamin Kimball, 1716, Ipswich, Mass

Mr. Daniel Field,
died April 10* 1795,
in f 6s!-l&sj: of
his a£e.

rn Gtilby A L beams Coventry jft*

Figure 39. Daniel Field, 1795, Vernon, Ct

In memory of* Timothy
A Cuffcman }S^M^M
Mkxtm 8cMrstJd^motiy
jCtirffiman Me was educatec

at DartmbatJiGoHedg?.he was
ofan amiabk-difpofition&La
very pronrifing geniu^. fie^
:died^ itpSI 72^ AJifcp. _±

Though i uiytucT charwef all z:i
center in one mmd;~zr i:
4nd gemif drightdcforn the.
6fooimng youth,
77V no defence from Death ;
the arrow flics, . ~ i.

Young Cufhman tcrf/V, ana_-
nature mourns, the I off. ...._"":

F MannmS

Figure 40. Timothy Cushman , 1792, Coventry, Ct

Mlnffircff&Hi

Bf-year&f-iiTs age.

VtiYevself • \Va tit World
& frrencfs thaT" \&r<? ep
for me, Drift Sea
uiiidow'th efe I 7<?avg»
'wrtliThG ^ __ _

Figure 41a. Josiah Manning, 1806, Windham, Ct

Figure 41b. Josiah Manning, 1806, Windham, Ct

'Her Lyes y Body i
ofM^fcigailWife
\o Gap * JoJfai Man-
ning wJioDeparf-;

,ed this Life July
30, 1770 iny 75f

year of JxerAge^

The Darme tl-urt Sleeps
Beneath mis Tombjfiad
(Rachels face anctLeahs
iFrutefuH WamhAhxgaih
Wifdom L,yd rasjenirus I
Mart Marthas Tuft Care. [
A Marys Beater par* .

IViadc by Rockwell

Figure 42. Abigail Manning, 1770, Scotland, Ct

krneii-to:\-' man

J n ^demory \ of .,

'&)]'/i&n*ENOCbi Colby

" °--: .' ■ .'

:;7P»bo deportee] this J/fe.

* W JQ

wMM:MM

Figure 43. Ens. Enoch Colby, 1780, Bradford, Mass

meinori

ames ^lark juri'P
wKo died jjjemrv y

19^

of hi

?«#».'

8 6;

Year

Figure 44. James Clark, 1786, West Medway, Mass.

£s&£^*^

|E. XYES BUIUE.D

x body; of

MEHTTABU. HAMMQN)
WIFE TO THOMAS
HAMMOND -AGED

39 ^ars mm

CwWr

Figure 45. Mehetabel Hammond, 1704, Newton, Mass

■t ^ -- ■ is.

ton tkv7<Jncfa»-mtf T Fa71; {£-

Figure 46. Marcy New, 1788, Attleboro, Mass

In Memory of*
D1' Richard J
TempleDie d

Mov,/j ai? 17 $(
in jF. 83 ':'

tear of liis

Figure 47. Dr. Richard Temple, 1756, Concord, Mass

*£&m^3&

Sacrtd to fr? Me-
mory of Mrs. Sarah
the Amiable Confort
cfLiaiCALEBSjwrrH
WJ>o diedjime$6i7j9
mjt x/yyearefberog

01 wbatajwed ktnpcr,

(and mild;
Wfren grim death appro -
(acb'd JbeJmUd.

tffiot too 'fboH thy date, ,
tfrtuemol rolling fans
T/jc mind, matures.

Figure 48. Sarah Smith, 1779, Lanesboro, Mass

Ill HERE iieth Interdy "Bodyof jk%
j||theRev? PERU! YHOWEb/
'9 Sometime paftor of y*Churchof
j|iChrrfHhDudley.butlaftofy?fidl &=
& ! Church of Chi-ift in Kill.ibtci.y. | /
E] WhoctiedMarchio^S3.itiy^r«
M |4^? Year of his Age. «5 io*h of p
m his Mitllftl-V. <^^ M

.7«l'.' lidbcTix.

Figure 49. Rev. Perley Howe, 1753, Putnam, Ct

A Memory of M.
Hannah wife of Cap*
mt Dwight who died
Dedaf 1792 In the 84
year of her age.

With heartfelt joy [yield my breath
And quit a life if pain and woei?

■

I
I

Id live where joys forever flow.

New trq/ports now inpin my frai^
With joys Cclcfial and fib lime
0 may you catch that heavehjflam
Andfocr beyond the reach of time

e. s.

□npnr

Figure 50. Hannah Dwight, 1792, Belchertown, Mass.

: nS ■ ■ ■-••/■• •«• • ' V-'- ■..•-■.-.;..

W /D-en Chrtjt appear r isJGt\f

\M*. fc?pjctt of bij~ ouuj%

■ ">y r -ad

Jngt'''»T>W 6 :>.&;/*<? ft (ti

Figure 51. Mary Wickham, 1797, West Thompson, Ct .

J t op reader here a ml •.ontaiwla,
Hotey short is life, bmo, sure, tin.-, it ate.
In time he iviJe.sr.rUCocl mnst just-
Ere you are, mi.ngl.cd with the dust.
Lojmm the. grave their.'* no return*
Till Christ in 'Amy sound*: the. alarm,
At. the. div.ad sound \he. n7l'*/>fv lU'.t-n
And grants xhallcleanefi those.that sleep
Straight shall ascend from their ah ode
In judgment. stand before their COD

dhy-C..S„ul,JVu..,Jsto<

-18 Off-

Figure 52. Hannah Kingsbury, 1806, Pomf ret , Ct

In memory ofDeacoi

Boos Stearns, cnoe

pf superior natural aLiIi
ties; .&r a perfon, Who exl
erted. himself foryi>eni_
.fit of civel fy religious io_

ciety He was taoniDed
iharn, State of Maffacli-'

fy deceafed intlns^own

Sep- 15'- 1796 intlie^-

y- of In 5 JE .

Entirav'd by J? J/zaldino'

Killindly

Figure 53. Booz Stearns, 1796, Mansfield, Ct

// n ff fr

rose

^ In Memory of
j ... Mrs.
MARTHA MORAVIA,
rtj who departed this

ife (2.6.Tami iz 554 7)
I**! July 1787.

Figure 54. Martha Moravia, 1787, Newport, R.I.

Figure 55. Gusse Gibbs, 1768, Newport, R.I

J of M7 Elif»be*y

.': wife .of \\Js

Mi 5 c Months ft 12. -i

pxJ|Rem«riibci-.ine as joiaPk.
j^jas Ianx now, soyo^r inu^,
I pre pa. r e f o r D e at h a ™Jp>.

R '■■ L r follow me r ft

Figure 56. Elisabeth Bullock, 1786, Rehoboth, Mass.

Here Iiev littered the
Body of Lieut)!

JOSIAH PlDGE

wiiu ut'Udi icu. rui» n.ii~?

April 24^ I 733^
in the 6% w Year of
his As*e .

. - - . . o

Stop here &. read (urviving fried
Before mausag ray life did end;
The aeed & the youth not free.
Prepare {*ov Death. & follow me

. z&Tri&iT dc/ulr*

Figure 57

Lt. Josiah Pidge, 1793, Attleboro, Mass.
64

iiiiiragMiiii

Figure 58. Mary Pearl, 1790, Hampton, Ct .

In Memory ojt.

I WUX&VDM who J

rir)fr\ trite Tr(v . A-

! •■'■" ' c/£t. 87 years.

■■ ^

\jIJoul pre par'd) tlCi c/r no ifcycyst

1 /7ie f1.arrma7.is iomcJl\c hunt ',■ J>cf

[SiJjl'ftcuas his fhpM K fhortc/it rond

hu itiijixuas his fliohi ic fhortc/it -rad^
yicciol'dlns eyes tf, Jena his Cod.

lour fh 1 n&s rcn \ c m her well* \ ,
f ■ :. : J. Warren So,? ft jl

Figure 59. Alexander Miller, 1798, Plainfield, Ct .

Figure 60. Thomas Prentice, 1760, Lexington, Mass.

v-Here, lies .'Buried, the- -

the wife of Mr. John Webtten
who 'departed this L.ife,the
20. day of November 1760.
in the 45 • Year "of her Age.

Hah paflenger, as you go-. by;
P\emcmber man that you rnuiT die:
Confider time is runing- fait.
And Death w'lll Purely come at lafi.

Figure 61. Hannah Webster, 1760, Chester, N.H,

SACRED

To the memory of

the Honourable
JOHN TAYLOR Ef9T
bo departed this life
April 2 7 * 1794,
e 6o'h year

A/i/- Children dear this place drtzK' nenr,

A lathers (irciue to '><= ;

- - ° '.•■•■

1 / urns with you

And fool J vail, be :ritb li.v.

■J$ '

'igure 62. John Taylor, 1794, Douglas, Mass.

Mite livs bmynd the gravr

yJhr $}(ifc

& rmm

wf^¥»;:;;.7*v^\vtf*u^^^

Figure 63. Ebenezer Tinney , 1813, Grafton, Vt

Figure 64. Xenophon Earle, 1799, Chester, Vt

'firecfcd in "'memory oj

MjxBIlTwmessence

jtfjb-INI'ANT fk Amiable
wrrti child of Mr.

.(JTHERMESSENGEi

|«r/» departed ttif life July j
^ 1808. in the 21?
year of Ixr

ace:

►♦1

►♦^

►♦<
►♦4
►♦<

►♦«
►♦
►♦

►♦

Figure 65. Betsy Messenger, 1808, Rockingham, Vt

mmwM

:z. ^Jri^kxxic^l "

Life De c^th m% : l^yxh^ &X)

i lohrr Zuridircr &oner €uStmS'M^

«-*= — *. :-». i-.

Figure 66. Sarah Hawley, 1772, Wilton, Ct

CARVER GUIDE

The carver's full name, dates, and primary location
are listed when known. The individual stones are listed]
by name, date, location, material, condition, and dis-
tinctive style features. An asterisk indicates the
signed stone selected for illustration, and, when veri-
fied, the style of signature is given.

B. ADAMS

Samuel Bent, 1797, Milton, Mass. (Milton Cemetery)

SAMPSON B. ADAMS (1779-c. 1815), Rockingham, Vt .

♦George Earle, 1806, Chester, Vt . (Chester Cemetery);
slate; excellent; Masonic emblems. "Made by S . B.
Adams, 1808"

GEORGE ALLEN, SR. (1696-1774), Rehoboth, Mass.

Lt. John Hunt, 1716, Rumford, R.I. (City Hall Vault);
slate. "G. Allen Sculptor"

*Capt. Samuel Peck, 1736, Rehoboth, Mass. (Peck Ceme-
tery); slate; surface good, interior crumbling; foot-
stone signed, but removed from cemetery. "G. Allen
Sculp"

Rev. M. David Turner, 1757, Rehoboth, Mass. (Rehoboth
Congregational Church); slate; good.

GEORGE ALLEN. JR. (1743-?), Rehoboth, Mass.

Mary Munro, 1770, New London, Ct . (Ancient Burying
Ground); slate; good. "G. Allen Providence"

Hannah Spalding, 1771, South Killingly, Ct . ; slate;
good.

Nathaniel and Joanna Sessions, 1771, Pomf ret , Ct ; slate
fair. "G. Allen, sculp"

Thomas Clifford and Esther Wayne, 1778, Charleston, S.C
(St. Philips Cemetery); slate. "G. Allen"

Deacon Ebenezer Larned, 1779, Putnam, Ct . (Aspinwall
Cemetery); slate; good.

Elizabeth Angell, 1780, Providence, R.I. (North Burial
Ground); slate. "G*A Sculp"

Rosabellah Chace, 1781, Providence, R.I. (St. John
Cemetery); slate; fair. "G. Allen Sculps it"

Mary Dagget , 1781, Edgartown, Mass. (Tower Hill Burying
Ground); slate; excellent. "G-Allen Sc"

Mary Parker, 1781, Providence, R.I. (St. John Cemetery);
slate; good. "G+Allen, Scup . "

Anne Hopkins, 1782, Providence, R.I. (North Burial
Ground); slate. "G. Allen"

Benjamin Cady, 1783, Putnam, Ct. (Aspinwall Cemetery);
slate; good. "G. Allen, sculpt"

Jane Postell, 1786, Charleston, S.C. (St. Philip Ceme-
tery); slate. "G. Allen"

Seth Paine, 1792, Brooklyn, Ct . ; slate; excellent. "G.
Allen Sculp*"

Daniel Trowbridge, 1795, Abington, Ct.(01d Abington
Burying Ground); slate; good. "G. Allen Sculp"

Mary Smith, 1795, Charleston, S.C. (Congregational
Church Cemetery); slate. "G. Allen"

Sarah Hunt, 1799, Rumford, R.I.; slate; excellent. "G.
Allen , sc."

ROGER BOOTH (? - 1849), Bennington, Vt .

'Deacon, Jonathan Hunt, 1796, Northampton, Mass. (Bridge
St. Cemetery); marble; poor. "R. Booth, Sculp*. Ben-
nington"

SETH BREWER (1738-?)

John Beech, 1785, Cheshire, Ct . ; sandstone; tympanum
image completely eroded, stone cracked and sunk, signa-
ture not visible.

PETER BUCKLAND (1736-1816), East Hartford, Ct.

Deacon Daniel House, 1762, East Glastonbury, Ct . (East-
bury Cemetery); sandstone; good. "MAD: BY" PETER: BUCK-
LAND"

"Sibil Eells, 1773, Glastonbury, Ct . (Green Cemetery);
schist; fair. "P. BUCKLAND"

Abigail Merick, 1773, Glastonbury, Ct . (Green Cemetery);
schist ; fair .

Isaac Moseley, 1773, Glastonbury, Ct . (Green Cemetery);
schist; fair.

WILLIAM BUCKLAND, JR. (1727-95), East Hartford, Ct .

Rachel Lothrop, 1754, Tolland, Ct . (Tolland Cemetery);
sandstone; good. "W.m Buckln^"

♦West Children, 1755, Tolland, Ct . (Tolland Cemetery);
sandstone; good. "Made by Wm- Buckland Jur Harford"

HENRY BULL. Newport, R.I.

♦Mary Vinson, 1797, Portsmouth, R.I. (St. Mary Cemetery)
slate; excellent. "Henry Bull"

John Howland, 1798, Jamestown, R.I. (Cedar Cemetery);
slate; poor. "H. Bull"

Mary Carr, 1800, Jamestown, R.I. (Cedar Cemetery);
slate; poor. "H. Bull"

Damaris Hopkins, 1800, Jamestown, R.I. (Cedar Cemetery)
slate; poor; no image. "H. bull"

JOHN BULL (1734-1808), Newport, R.I.

Charles Bardin, 1773, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; good. "J.B."

Elizabeth Sisson, 1774, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; good. "J. Bull"

Simon Ray Littlefield, 1780, Block Island, R.I. (Block
Island Cemetery); slate; excellent; no image. "J.B."

John, William and Dandridge Savage, 1784, Charleston,
S.C. (Congregational Church Cemetery).

Langley Children, 1785, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; good. "cutt by J. Bull"

♦Job Howland, 1785, Jamestown, R.I. (Cedar Cemetery);
slate; excellent. "cutt by J. Bull"

John Hilliard, 1786, Stonington, Ct . (Hilliard Ceme-
tery); slate; good. "Jn° Bull Sculptn

William Coggeshall, 1792, Taunton, Mass.; slate. "J.
Bull, Newport"

J.B.

♦Nicolas and Ann Webster, 1750, Berkley, Mass. (Fox Ceme
tery); slate; fair. "J.B."

James Briggs, 1753, Dighton, Mass. (Elm St. Cemetery);
slate; fair. "J.B."

Cornealius White, 1754, Taunton, Mass. (Blake Cemetery)
slate; poor. "J.B."

ABEL BURP ITT

Maria Wright, 1810, Grafton, Vt . ; slate.

*Ebenzer Tinney, 1813, Grafton, Vt . (Town Cemetery);
slate; good; urn. "Made by A. Wright, & A. Burditt, B.
Falls, AD, 1813"

ABRAHAM CODNER ( ?-c . 1750), Boston, Mass.

Mary Hilton, 1774, Chebogue, Nova Scotia; slate.
"Abraham Codner. Next the Drawbridge Boston"

WILLIAM CODNER (1709-69), Boston, Mass.

Nathan Bassett, 1738, Charlestown , S.C. (St. Philip
Cemetery); slate; poor. "wm- Codner Boston NE"

ISAAC COLES (1762-1802), Meriden, Ct .

*Samuel and Abigail Andrews, 1786, Meriden Center, Ct . ;
sandstone; fair. "I. Coles Sculp"

BENJAMIN COLLINS (1691-1759), Columbia Ct .

Hannah Tyler, 1726, Pachaug, Ct .

Stephen Tucker, 1726, Pachaug, Ct .

James Danielson, 1729, Danielson, Ct .

Elizabeth Gager, 1730, Columbia Ct . ; schist; poor,
cracked. "B. Collins. Fecit"

?, 1737 or 1739, Lebanon, Ct . (Trumbull Cemetery); very
poor. "B. Collins. Lebanon Crank, fecit."

Simeon Mearritt, 1739, Columbia, Ct . ; schist; fair. "B
Collins. Fecit"

Joseph Coit, 1741, Pachaug, Ct .

Obadiah Hosford, 1741, Hebron, Ct .

Jacob Baker, 1742, Tolland, Ct .

Mary Tyler, 1742, Pachaug, Ct .

♦Mary Bruster, 1743, Scotland, Ct . ; schist; poor.
"Benj?- Collins Fecit"

Timothy Peirce, 1744, Plainfield, Ct .

Deacon Nathaniel (or Thankful) Wales, 1744, Windham,
Ct.

Capt . Joshua Huntington, 1745, Norwichtown, Ct . (Old
Norwichtown Burying Ground); schist; good. "Made by
Benjamin Collins, Lebanon"

Hannah Belcher, 1745, Pachaug, Ct .

Hannah Tucker, 1746, Pachaug, Ct .

Samuell Post, Jr., 1746, Norwichtown, Ct . (Old Norwich-
town Burying Ground); granite/schist; good. "B. Collins
Lebanon fecit"

Mary Fober, 1749, Preston, Ct .

Humphrey Davenport, 1751, Coventry, Ct . (Nathan Hale
Cemetery); schist; fair. "B. Collins. Sculp."

Ruth Thomas, 1753, Scotland, Ct .

Abigail Griswold, 1754, Norwichtown, Ct .

Jonathan Brewster, 1753, Scotland, Ct .

Ebenzer Peck, 1755, Franklin, Ct .

Sarah Wales, c. 1757, Lebanon, Ct .

? Marsh, Plainfield, Ct.

John Tyler, Pachaug, Ct.

Eleazer Fitch, 1748, Lebanon, Ct . (Trumbull Cemetery);
schist; very poor. "B. Collins. Sculpt"

JULIUS COLLINS (1728-58), Lebanon, Ct.

Richard Curtice, 1739, Hebron, Ct . (Church of England
Cemetery) .

♦Robert White, Jr., 1746, Stafford Springs, Ct . ; schist;
poor. "Made by Julius Collins Lebanon"

ZERUBBABEL COLLINS (1733-1797), Lebanon, Ct . and
Shaftsbury, Vt .

Mehetabel Hubbel, 1770, Bennington, Vt . (Old Bennington
Cemetery); marble; excellent. "Z. Collins fecit"

Mary Cochran, 1777, Bennington, Vt . (Old Bennington
Cemetery); marble; good, anchored in cement, signature
barely visible.

Rachel Burton, 1790, Manchester Center, Vt . (Factory
Point Cemetery), marble; good. "Z. Collins Sculp.
Shaftsbury. "

♦Jacob Galusha, 1792, Salisbury, Ct . (Chapinville Ceme-
tery); marble; good. "Z. Collins Sculp. Shaftsbury,
Vt."

ROSWELL COWLES (1780-?)

♦Abigail and Rebecca Andrews, 1796, Meriden Center, Ct . ;
sandstone; good; abstract scroll design. "R. Cowles"

I.e.

♦Mindwell Grant, 1800, East Poultney, Vt . (East Poultney
Cemetery); marble; good. "E.C."

I.e.

Elizabeth Sande, 1711, Marblehead, Mass. (Old Burial
Hill); slate; good. "W.C."

Richard Gross, 1711, Marblehead, Mass. (Old Burial
Hill); slate; good. "W.C."

Thomas Lanyon, 1711, Boston, Mass. (Granary); slate;
good. "W.C."

Mary Rickard, 1712, Plymouth, Mass. (Old Burial Hill);
slate; fair. "W.C."

♦Joseph Phippene, 1712, Fairfield, Ct . (Old Burying
Ground); slate; good. "W.C."

William Hanes, 1712, East Norwalk, Ct . (East Norwalk
Historical Cemetery); slate; good. "W.C."

William Thomas, 1714, Plymouth, Mass. (Old Burial Hill);
slate; fair. "W.C."

James Allen, 1714, West Tisbury, Mass. (West Tisbury
Burying Ground); slate; fair. "W.C."

John Edey, 1715, West Tisbury, Mass. (West Tisbury
Burying Ground); slate; fair. "W.C."

CYRUS DEAN ( E )

Christopher Paul, 1761, Berkley, Mass. (Center Ceme-
tery); slate; poor. "By Cyrus Deane"

Eunice Dean, 1785, Mansfield, Mass. (Center Cemetery);
slate, good. "Cyrus Dean"

♦Lois Pond, 1787, West Medway , Mass. (Evergreen Ceme-
tery); slate; good. "Cyrus Deane Sculpt"

SAMUEL DWIGHT (1743-c. 1810), Bennington, Vt .

♦Desire Allis, 1796, Manchester, Vt . (Dellwood Cemetery);
marble; good. "Samuel Dwight , Sculp."

HENRY EMMES , Boston, Mass. and Newport, R.I.

Elizabeth Simmons, 1740, Charleston, S.C. (St. Philip
Cemetery); slate; excellent. "H. EMMES Boston"

John Neusville, 1749, Charleston, S.C. (Huguenot Church-
yard) ; slate .

Elizabeth Rowland, 1753, Fairfield, Ct . (Old Burying
Ground); slate; excellent. "HEm's Boston"

Isaac Holmes, Esq., 1751, Charleston, S.C. (Congrega-
tional Churchyard); slate.

♦Sarah Sloss, 1756, Fairfield, Ct . (Old Burying Ground);
slate; excellent. "HEm's Boston, sculpt"

Col. Benjamin Marston, 1754, Manchester, Mass. (Washing-
ton St. Cemetery); slate; excellent. "HEmm's Boston"

Sarah Lewis, 175?, Fairfield, Ct . (Old Burying Ground);
slate; poor, cracked in half. "HY Em's Boston"

Solomon Milner, 1757, Charleston, S.C. (St. Philip
Cemetery); slate; excellent. "HEmmes, Boston Feet"

Thomas Sturgis, 1763, Barnstable, Mass. (Lothrop
Cemetery); slate; good. "Henry Emmes , Newport"

NATHANIEL EMMES (1690-1750), Boston, Mass.

Arthur Mason, 1708, Boston, Mass. (Granary); slate;
poor. "N.E."

♦James Paine, 1711, Barnstable, Mass. (Lothrop Cemetery);
slate; good. "NE"

Mary Morse, 1780, Norwood, Mass. (Washington St. Ceme-
tery); slate; good. "DF"

Joseph Grant, 1783, Wrentham, Mass.

♦Ludovicus D'Allleboust , 1803, Walpole, Mass. (The Old
Burial Place); slate; good. "DF"

L.F.

♦Ebenezer Lawrence, 1796, Franklin, Mass. (Center Ceme-
tery); slate; excellent. "L.F."

SAMUEL FISHER. Wrentham, Mass.

Samuel Pond, 1746, Millis, Mass. (Bare Hill and Prospect
Hill Cemetery); slate; fair. "Samuel Fisher Wrentham"

♦Ebenezer Cox, 1768, Hardwick, Mass.; slate; good. "Made
by Samuel Fisher in Wrentham"

HENRY CHRISTIAN GEYER ( ?-c . 1793), Boston, Mass.

♦Seth Sumner, 1771, Milton, Mass.; slate; excellent.
"H. Geyer Fecit"

JOHN JUST GEYER, Boston, Mass.

Annah Lyon, 1791, West Woodstock, Ct . (Bungay Hill
Cemetery); slate; good. "J.G."

Mrs. Mary Duggan , 1795, Boston, Mass. (Granary); slate;
good; urn. "Geyer, Fecit."

J.G.

Rev. Edward Thompson, 1705, Marshfield, Mass. (Winslow
Burying Ground); slate footstone, location unknown.
"J.G."

Zacheus Barton, 1707, Salem, Mass. (Burying Point);
slate; good. "J.G."

Thomas Kellon, 1708, Boston, Mass. (Copps Hill); slate;
fair. "J.G."

Benjamin Pickman, 1708, Salem, Mass. (Burying Point);
slate; good. "J.G."

Mary Green, 1709, Boston, Mass. (Granary); slate; fair.
"J.G. 1708"

*Lt. John Mackintoshe, 1710, Boston, Mass. (Granary);
slate; fair. "J.G."

Abigail Allen, 1710, West Tisbury, Mass. (West Tisbury
Cemetery); slate; good. "J.G."

Samuell Russell, 1711, Marblehead, Mass. (Old Burial
Hill); slate; excellent. "J.G. 1711"

Samuel Holbrook, 1712, Boston, Mass. (Granary); slate.

W.G^

♦Mary Marshall, 1718, Quincy, Mass. (Hancock Cemetery);
slate; excellent. "W.G."

THOMAS GOLD (1733-1800), New Haven, Ct.

♦Caleb Hotchkiss, 1779, New Haven, Ct . (Grove St. Ceme-
tery, Superintendent's office); sandstone; good. "M^
by Tho? Gold"

CHARLES HARTSHORN (1765-1832), Providence, R.I.

♦Rhoda Chafee, 1786, Providence, R.I. (North Burial
Ground); slate; in fragments on ground. "C. Hartshorn"

STEPHEN HARTSHORN (1737-1812), Providence, R.I.

♦Samuel Watson, 1781, West Thompson, Ct . ; slate; good.
"S. Hartshorn"

John Kinnicut, 1783, Warren, R.I. (Kickemuit Historical
Cemetery 3); slate; fair. "S--HARTSHORN"

Elizabeth Ballou, 1783, Providence, R.I.

NATHAN HASTINGS (1782-?), Newton, Mass.

Capt . John Guliker, 1789, Marlborough, Mass. (Spring
Hill Cemetery); slate; good; urn. "N. Hastings, stone-
cutter, Newton"

♦Louisa Blanchard, 1801, Boston, Mass. (Boston Common);
slate; good. "N. Hastings. Newton"

Rev. Josiah Bridge, 1801, Wayland, Mass. (North Burying
Ground); slate, good; urn. "Nathan Hastings, Stone
Cutter. Newton. 1803"

NATHANIEL HODGKINS (1761-1839), Hampton, Ct .

♦Mrs. Esther Burnham, 1794, Ashford, Ct . ; schist; excel-
lent. "Cut by N. Hodgkins, Hampton"

Samuel Dorrance, 1799, Hampton, Ct . (North Cemetery).

Dorothy Sumner, 1800, Abington, Ct . (Old Abington Burial
Ground); marble; fair; urn. "Cut by Nathaniel Hodgkins,
Hampton"

Daniel Tyler, 1802, Brooklyn, Ct . ; marble; good; urn.
"N. Hodgkins"

Jonathan Kingsbury, 1802, Hampton, Ct . (North Cemetery).

Joseph Baker, 1804, Brooklyn, Ct . ; marble; good; urn.
"N.H."

Benjamin Clark, 1804, ashford, Ct . ; marble; urn.

Eli Kenal, 1808, Ashford, Ct . ; marble; urn.

NATHANIEL HODGKINS. JR.

Deacon Roger Williams, 1821, Brooklyn, Ct .

Samuel Huntington Lyon, 1823, Abington, Ct . (Old
Abington Burying Ground); marble; fair; urn. "N.H."

Rev. Josiah Whitney, 1824, Brooklyn, Ct . ; marble; fair;
no image. "N. Hodgkins Jr. Engraver"

Samuel Kies, 1824, Brooklyn, Ct.; marble; poor; urn.
"N. Hodgkins Jr. Engraver"

JAMES HOVEY

♦Margaret Toplift, 1740, West Willington, Ct . ; schist;
very poor. "James Hovey"

Thomas Marsh, 1753, Mansfield Center, Ct . ; schist; very
poor. "James Hovey"

Eleanor (?) Cummins, 1754, Ashford, Ct . ; schist; very
poor. "James Hovey"

THOMAS JOHNSON

♦Sarah Johnson, 1790, Durham, Ct . ; sandstone; good.
"Thomas Johnson"

CHESTER KIMBALL (1763-1824), Lebanon and New London, Ct

Anna Lord, ?, Old Lyme, Ct . (Duck River Cemetery).

?, ?, Brooklyn, Ct . ; marble.

Dan Webster, 1785, Chipman's Corner, Nova Scotia; sand-
stone. "Chester Kimball, N. London"

LEBBEUS KIMBALL (1751-1832), Pomf ret , Ct .

♦John Fuller, 1777, Hampton, Ct . ; iron slate; good.
"Cut by Lebbeus Kimball"

Elisabeth Arnold, 1783, Lebanon, Ct . (Trumbull Ceme-
tery); iron slate. "L. Kimball"

Peter Robinson, 1785, Scotland, Ct . ; slate; good.

RICHARD KIMBALL (1722-1810), Pomf ret , Ct .

Abigail Holt, 1752, Hampton, Ct . ; schist; poor. "Maid
by Richard Kimll"

Hannah Fuller, 1780, Hampton, Ct . (North Cemetery);
schist; fair. "Richard Kimball"

Solomon Griggs, 1781, Pomf ret , Ct . ; schist; poor.
"Richard Kimball"

♦Deacon Samuel Sumner, 1781, Pomf ret , Ct . ; schist; fair.
"Richard Kimball"

B.L.

Frances Treat, 1703, Milford, Ct . (Milford Cemetery);
iron slate; poor. "B.L."

DAVID LAMB (1724-73), Norwich, Ct .

*Hopstill Tyler, 1762, Preston City, Ct . (Preston City
Cemetery); sandstone; fair, encased in glass. "made by-
David Lamb"

CALEB LAMSON (1697-1767), Charlestown , Mass.

Mary Reed, 1713, Marblehead, Mass. (Old Burial Ground);
slate; good. "CL"

♦Joseph Grimes, 1716, Stratford, Ct . (Cemetery behind
library); slate; excellent. "M. By Caleb Lamson"

Prudence Turner, 1717, Marblehead, Mass. (Old Burial
Ground); slate; good. "CL"

John Mitchell, 1717, Maiden, Mass. (Bell Rock Cemetery);
slate; good. "CL"

John Rogers, 1719, Portsmouth, N.H. (Point of Graves);
slate; good. "CL"

Benjamin Allcock, 1720, Portsmouth, N.H. (Point of
Graves); slate; fair. "CL"

Joseph Small, 1720, Portsmouth, N.H. (Point of Graves);
slate; good. "CL"

Richard and Lydia Webber, 1721, Portsmouth, N.H. (Point
of Graves); slate; good. "CL"

Margaret Gardner, 1725, Portsmouth, N.H. (Point of
Graves); slate; good. "CL"

William Grimes, 1766, Lexington, Mass. (Old Burying
Ground); slate; excellent, recut .

NATHANIEL LAMSON (1693-1755), Charlestown, Mass.

Samuel Blanchard, 1707, Andover, Mass. (West Parish
Burial Ground); slate; excellent.

Rev. Jonathan Pierpont, 1709, Wakefield, Mass.; slate;
good. "NL"

Hannah and Mary Shutt, 1709, Boston, Mass. (Copps Hill);
slate; good. "NL"

Capt. and Mrs. Pyam Blower, 1709, Cambridge, Mass. (Old
Town Burying Ground); slate; excellent.

Mercy Oliver, 1710, Cambridge, Mass. (Old Town Burying
Ground); slate; excellent. "NL"

Mary Rous, 1715, Charlestown , Mass. (Phipps St. Burial
Ground); slate; excellent.

Thomas Sewall, 1716, Cambridge, Mass. (Old Town Burial
Ground); slate; excellent.

♦Ephraim Beach, 1716, Stratford, Ct . ; slate; good. "NL"

EZEKIEL LEIGHTON (1657-1723), Rowley, Mass.

♦Benjamin Kimball, 1716, Ipswich, Mass. (Old Burying
Ground); shale slate; poor. "M by EL"

Richard Kimball, 1716, Ipswich, Mass. (Old Burying
Ground); shale slate; poor. "M by EL"

Martha Nason , 1716, Ipswich, Mass. (Old Burying Ground)
shale slate; "M by EL"

Sarah Glasiar, 1716, Ipswich, Mass. (Old Burying
Ground); shale slate; poor. "M by EL"

Elisebeth Smith, 1717, Ipswich, Mass. (Old Burying
Ground); shale slate; poor. "M by EL"

AMASA LOOM IS (1773-1840), Coventry, Ct .

Mrs. Ester Loomis, 1742, and Mrs. Mary Loomis, 1744,
Lebanon, Ct . (Trumbull Cemetery); schist; poor. "Cut
by Amasa Loomis Coventry"

Mary Wheeler, 1792, Andover, Ct .

Hannah Rich, 1794, West Stafford, Ct . (Boyer Rd . Ceme-
tery); schist; fair. "Cut by A. Loomis, Coventry"

♦Daniel Field, 1795, Vernon, Ct . ; schist; good. "Cut by
A. Loomis Coventry"

FREDERICK MANNING (1758-1810), Windham, Ct .

Ephraim Trowbridge, 1773, Abington, Ct .

♦Timothy Cushman, 1792, Coventry, Ct . (Nathan Hale
Cemetery); marble; good. "F. Manning"

Daniel Talcott, 1807, West Willington, Ct . , schist;
good; urn. "Made by F. Manning Windham"

JOS I AH MANNING (1725-1806), Windham, Ct .

John Cates, 1697, Windham, Ct . (Old Burying Ground);
granite; good, reproduction.

Jane Tyler, 1741, Brooklyn, Ct . ; sandstone; excellent.
"J. Manning"

Hannah Scripture, 1760, West Willington, Ct . ; schist;
poor .

Hannah Enas, 1760, Union, Ct . (Union Cemetery); schist;
poor. "J.M."

Deliverance Edgerton, 1762, Franklin, Ct .

Elijah Hurlbutt, 1763, West Woodstock, Ct . (Bungay Hill
Cemetery); schist; fair. "Josiah Manning"

Tabitha Hall, 1764, Mansfield Center, Ct . (Old Mansfield
Cemetery); schist; good. "Josiah Manning"

Mrs. Simeon Waterman and child, 1764, Norwichtown , Ct .
(Old Burying Ground); schist; fair. "J. Manning"

James Luce, 1765, Scotland, Ct . ; schist; good.

Stephen Fuller, 1767, Hampton, Ct . (Old Litchfield
Burial Ground); "J.M."

Ebenezer Smith, 1767, West Woodstock, Ct . (Bungay Hill
Cemetery); schist; fair. "Josiah M."

Ebenezer Backus, 1768, Norwichtown, Ct . (Old Burying
Ground); schist; good. "J.M."

Stephen Durkee , 1769, Hampton, Ct . (South Cemetery);
schist; fair. "J.M."

Jonathan Knight, 1770, Hanover, Ct . "J.M."

Jedediah Dewey, 1776, Bennington, Vt . (Old Bennington
Cemetery); marble; good; signature obscured by cement.

* Josiah Manning, 1806, Windham, Ct . (Old Burying Ground);
schist; fair. "This Monument I made in ye year 1800:
in my 76th year. JM"

ROCKWELL MANNING (1760-1806), Norwich, Ct .

♦Abigail Manning, 1770, Scotland, Ct . ; schist; poor.
"Made by Rockwell Manning Aged, 13 years"

Sarah Gardiner, 1777, North Kingston, R.I. (Historic
Cemetery 36); marble; good. "Made by R. Manning in
Norwich"

John Hurlburt, 1778, East Hartford, Ct . (Center Burying
Ground); schist; fair.

John Johnson, 1804, Canterbury, Ct . (Cleveland Cemetery);
marble; fair. "Made by R. Manning"

JOSEPH MARBLE (1726-1805), Bradford, Mass.
JOHN MARBLE ( 1746[ 9?]-1844) , Bradford, Mass.

♦Enoch Colby, 1780, Bradford, Mass.; slate; excellent.
"Engrav'd by John Marble Bradford"

Rebecca Hills, 1795, West Newbury, Mass.; slate; excel-
lent. "J. Marble sculptor Bradford"

Eunice Webster, 1822, Plaistow, N.H.

Sarah Thurlow, 1825, West Newbury, Mass.

Joseph Hills, 1829, West Newbury, Mass. (Walnut Hill
Cemetery); slate; good; urn. "J. Marble, Bradford"

Annah Noyes , 1830, Atkinson, N.H.

Mary Ann Stickney, 1830, Merrimack, Mass.

Judith Sargent, 1831, Merrimack, Mass.

LEVI MAXCY. Attleborough, Mass.

* James Clark, Jr., 1786, West Medway , Mass.; slate; stone
split in half. "Maxcy ' s Sculpt"

Stephen Collins, 1793, Liverpool, Nova Scotia; slate;
good. "L. Maxcy, Sc, Salem, Massachusetts"

J.N.

Rev. Ichabod Wiswall, 1700, Duxbury, Mass. (Miles
Standish Burying Ground); slate; excellent. "JN"

Sarah Dolbeare, 1701, Boston, Mass. (Copps Hill); slate;
now lost .

Martha Hall, 1701, Roxbury, Mass. "JN"

John Cleverly, 1703, Quincy , Mass. (Hancock Street
Cemetery); slate; excellent. "JN"

*Mehitabel Hammond, 1704, Newton, Mass.; slate; good.

"JN"

Rev. Edward Thompson, 1705, Marshfield, Mass. (Winslow
Burying Ground); slate; excellent. "JN"

John Woodcock, 1718, Dedham, Mass. (Old Parish Burying
Ground); slate; good. "JN"

JAMES NEW II (1751-1835), Wrentham, Mass.

Ralph Pope, 1750, Stoughton, Mass. "J. New sculp"
Robert Lathe, 1774, Grafton, Mass. "J.N."
Edward Goddard, 1777, Shrewsbury, Mass. "J. New"

Mary Monk, 1784, Stoughton, Mass. "J. New"

Eunice Willis, 1787, Brockton, Mass. "J. New"

♦Marcy New, 1788, Attleborough , Mass.; slate; fair.
"James N"

Col. John Goulding, 1791, Grafton, Mass.; slate; good.
"J.N."

Edy Clark, 1792, Bellingham, Mass. "J.N."

Gardner Waters, 1793, Sutton, Mass.; slate; excellent.
"James New Sc. 1796"

?, ?, Upton, Mass.; stone smashed.

Joseph Bacheller, 1797 (?), Grafton, Mass.; slate; good
urn. "J.N."

John Drury , ?, Grafton, Mass.; slate; slate; poor.
"J.N."

James McClallan, 1794, Sutton, Mass. (Dodge Cemetery);
slate; excellent; urn. "James New Sc . 1796"

JOHN NEW (1722-?), Wrentham, Mass.

♦Richard Temple, 1756, Concord, Mass. (Hillside Burying
Ground); slate; good. "John New, Wrentham"

Jeremiah Millard, 1776, Attleborough, Mass.; slate;
good. "J* New Ingraver 44 shillings"

PAUL NOYES, Newburyport, Mass.

Deacon Parker Noyes, 1787, Newburyport, Mass.; marble;
poor. "Paul Noyes fectn

ENOCH NOYES . Newburyport, Mass.

Ann Pearne, 1788, Portsmouth, N.H. (North Cemetery);
slate; good. "Enoch Noyes S9 NPort"

Mary Pearne, 1788, Portsmouth, N.H. (North Cemetery);
slate; good. "E. Noyes Sc , NPort"

ELIJAH PHELPS (1761-1842), Lanesborough , Mass.

♦Sarah Smith, 1779, Lanesborough, Mass.; marble; fair.
"EP"

Elisabeth Garlick, 1783, Hoosick, N.Y.; marble; poor.
"EP"

DANIEL RITTER (1746-1828), East Hartford, Ct .

Chloe Meigs, 1788, Hammonassett , Ct .

Samuel Munson, 1791, Northford, Ct .

Thomas Gold, 1800, New Haven, Ct . (Grove Street Ceme-
tery; urn.

JONATHAN ROBERTS

*Rev. Perly Howe, 1753, Putnam, Ct . (Aspinwall Cemetery);
slate; good. "Jo1? Roberts. Sculpt"

Mary Cady , 1767, South Killingly, Ct .

Sgt . Joseph Parker, 1771, Oneco, Ct . (Stirling Ceme-
tery); slate; fair. "Jn Roberts, Sculpt"

Rev. Samuel Dorrance, 1775, Oneco, Ct . ; slate; fair.
"Roberts Sculpt"

C. and/or E. SIXES , Belchertown, Mass.

Margaret Shepard, 1769, Westfield, Mass. (Old Burying
Ground); schist; excellent. "E(C). S."

♦Hannah Dwight, 1792, Belchertown, Mass.; marble; fair.
"E.S."

Joshua Dickinson, 1793, Belchertown, Mass.; marble;
fair. "E(C) Sikes Sculptr-

Theodosthia Bard, 179?, Belchertown, Mass.; slate; good.

BEZA SOULE (1750-1835), Middleborough , Mass. and
Brooklyn Ct.

Sybil Allen, 1773, Brooklyn, Ct . (Trinity Cemetery);
marble; excellent; urn.

Thomas Bates, 1777, West Thompson, Ct . ; slate; good.
"Engrav'd by B. Soule"

Seth Dean, 1782, Putnam, Ct .

Betsy Dorrance, 1782, Brooklyn, Ct . (Trinity Cemetery);
slate; good. "Engrav'd by B. Soule"

Deacon Williams, 1766, and Mrs. Sarah Williams, 1786,
Brooklyn Ct . (Trinity Cemetery); slate; good; urn.
"B. Soule fecit"

James Dorrance, 1786, Brooklyn, Ct . ; slate; good.
"Ingrav'd by B. Soule"

Lucia Sharpe, 1790, Pomf ret , Ct . ; slate; good; urn.
"Made by Soule"

Pearley Grosvenor, 1791, Pomf ret , Ct . ; slate; excellent.
"Made by B. Soule"

Simeon Dean, 1791, Eastford, Ct.; slate; good. "B.
Soule Sculpt"

Sarah Grosvenor, 1793, Pomf ret , Ct . ; slate; good.
"B.S. "

James Adams, 1795, Brooklyn, Ct . (Trinity Cemetery);
slate; excellent, "B. Soule fecit."

Abilena Grosvenor, 1796, Putnam, Ct . ; urn.

*Mary Wickham, 1797, West Thompson, Ct . (West Thompson
Rd. Cemetery); slate; poor. "Ingrav'd by B. Soule"

Arba Adams, 1798, Brooklyn, Ct .

Prudence Cady , 1798, Putnam, Ct . (Old Killingly Burial
Ground); slate; good. "B. Soule Fecit"

Anne Hutchens, 1798, South Killingly, Ct . ; slate; good.
"Ingrav'd by B. Soule of Brooky"

Isaac Sharpe, 1798, Pomf ret , Ct . ; slate; good.
"Ingrav'd by B. Soule"

James Barrett, 1799, Brooklyn, Ct . ; slate; good. "B.
Soule Sculptor"

Phileanea Barrett, 1799, Brooklyn, Ct . ; slate; poor.
"B. Soule Sculptor"

Luenda Goodell, 1799, Abington, Ct . (Old Abington
Burying Ground); slate; fair. "B. Soule Sculptor"

Lt . Zechariah Goodell, 1799, Abington, Ct . (Old Abington
Burying Ground); urn. "Engrav'd by B. Soule"

Amos Grosvenor, 1799, Pomf ret , Ct . ; slate; poor.
"Ingrav'd by B. Soule"

Joshua Grosvenor, 1799, Abington, Ct . (Old Abington
Burying ground); slate; fair. "B. Soule Sculptor"

Pinsent Coles, 1799, Pomf ret , Ct . "B. Soule Sculptor"

Eunice Dean, 1800, Eastford, Ct . ; slate; good. "B.
Soule Sculpt"

Jonathan Sabin, 1800, Pomf ret , Ct . ; urn. "Ingrav'd by
B. Soule"

Ebenezer Clark, 1830, Chaplin, Ct . ; slate; good.
"Engrav'd by Beza Soule Aged 81 Years"

Ezra Clark, 1830, Chaplin, Ct .

C. SOULE

♦Hannah Kingsbury, 1806, Pomf ret , Ct.; slate; good; urn.
"Engrav'd by C - soule. Woodstock 1806"

Capt . Stephen Tucker, ?, East Woodstock, Ct . (East
Woodstock Cemetery); slate; excellent. "By. C. Soule"

STEPHEN SPALDING. Killingly, Ct .

Sarah Copp, 1790, Putnam, Ct . (Aspinwall Cemetery).

Asa Day, 1795, South Killingly, Ct . ; slate; poor.
"S. Spalding, Sculpt"

♦Booz Stearns, 1796, Mansfield Center, Ct . ; slate; good.
"Engrav'd by S. Spalding Killingly"

Timothy Prince, 1798, Brooklyn, Ct . (Trinity Cemetery);
slate; fair. "Engrav'd by S. Spalding Killingly"

Susannah Sabin, 1801, Pomf ret , Ct . ; slate; good. "by S.
Spalding"

Lemuel Holmes, 1803, Pomf ret , Ct . (South Cemetery);
slate; good. "Engraved by Stephen Spalding Killingly"

Joseph Sabin, 1803, Pomf ret , Ct . ; slate; fair. "Stephen
Spalding Sculpt"

Zeruviah Pierce, 1808, Plainfield, Ct . ; slate; good.

JOHN STEVENS III (JR.) (1753-?), Newport, R.I.

George Downer, 1760, New London, Ct . (Ancient Burying
Ground); slate; good. "Cut by John Stevens, Junr."

Norbert Felicien Wigneron, 1764, Newport, R.I. (Common
Burying Ground); slate; good. "Cut by John Stevens Jr."

Samuel Rhodes, 1769, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; good. "Cut by John Stevens, junr."

Capt. Nathaniel Waldron, 1769, Newport, R.I. (Common
Burying Ground); slate; good. "Cut by J. Stevens Jr."

John Cass, 1770, Wickford, R.I.; slate; fair.

Hannah Byles, 1771, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; good. "Cut by John Stevens junr."

Mercy Buliod, 1771, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; fair; now missing. "Cut by John Stevens
Jr."

Sarah Hammond, 1771, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; excellent. "J. Stevens Junr."

William Rogers, 1772, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; excellent. "Cut by John Stevens junr."

Violet Hammond, 1772, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground) ; slate .

Pompey Brenton, 1772, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; fair. "Cut by J. Stevens, junr."

Thomas Brenton, 1772, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; fair. "Cut by J. Stevens, junr."

Abraham Cooper, 1773, Southampton, N.Y. (North End
Cemetery); slate; poor. "Cut by John Stevens JunT"

Esther Haliock, 1773, Mattituck, N.Y.

Ruth Wanton, 1773, Newport, R.I. (Trinity Cemetery);
slate; fair. "Cut by J. Stevens, Junr."

Joyce Rhodes, 1773, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; good. "Cut by J. Stevens"

Abigail Otis, 1774, Storrs , Ct . ; slate; fair. "Cut by
Jh°. Stevens, junr."

Mehetable Coit, 1774, Pachaug, Ct .

Johnathan Wyatt, 1775, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; good. "J.S."

Thomas Carr, 1776, Jamestown, R.I. (Cedar Cemetery);
slate; poor. "Jn°. Stevens"

Phebe Shackmaple, 1776, New London, Ct. (Ancient Burying
Ground); slate; good. "Jn°. Stevens"

Martin Howard, Esq., 1776, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; fair. "Cut by John Stevens, junr."

Sarah Rogers, 1776, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; fair. "J.S."

Mary Cooper, 1779, Southampton, N.Y. (North End Ceme-
tery); slate; poor. "J.S."

Capt . William Burke, 1780, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; excellent. "J. Stevens"

Elias Foster, 1780, Southampton, N.Y. (North End Ceme-
tery); slate; fair. "J. Stevens"

Col. William Ledyard, 1781, Groton, Ct . (Col. Ledyard
Cemetery) .

Robert Casson, 1783, Newport, R.I. (Trinity Churchyard);
slate; fair. "J. Stevens"

Betty Pearce, 1783, Warren, R.I. (Historical Cemetery 3);
slate; poor. "J. Stevens"

Mary Wall, 1783, North Kingston, R.I. (Historical Ceme-
tery 36) ; slate.

Elizabeth Allen, 1783, New London, Ct . (Ancient Burying
Ground); slate; poor. "Jn°. Stevens"

Isaac Post, Esq., 1785, Southampton, N.Y. (North End
Cemetery); slate; poor. "J. Stevens"

John Tanner, Esq., 1785, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; very poor. "J. Stevens"

Ebenezer Richardson, Esq., 1785, Newport, R.I. (Common
Burying Ground); slate, poor. "J. Stevens"

Robert Porter, 1786, Stonington, Ct . (Evergreen Ceme-
tery); slate; poor. "J. Stevens"

Mary Eldred, 1787, Jamestown, R.I. (Cedar Cemetery);
slate; poor. "J. Stevens"

"Martha Moravia, 1787, Newport, R.I. (Touro Cemetery);
slate; good. "J. Stevens"

Josias L. Willson, 1788, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; fair. "J. Stevens"

Mary Post, 1788, Southampton, N.Y. (North End Cemetery);
slate; fair. "J.S."

Isaac Church, 1789, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; good. "J. Stevens"

Capt . John Howland, 1790, Jamestown, R.I. (Cedar Ceme-
tery); slate; poor; no image. "J. Stevens"

Abigail Cahoone , 1791, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; good. "J. Stevens"

David Melvill, 1793, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; excellent. "J. Stevens"

Robert Lightfoot, 1794, Brooklyn, Ct . (Trinity Cemetery);
slate; fair. "J. Stevens fecit"

Bathsheba Church, 1795, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; poor. "J. Stevens"

Capt. Johnathan Weeden , 1795, Newport, R.I. (Arnold
Burying Ground); slate; poor. "J. Stevens"

Martha Duncan, 1795, Newport, R.I. (Trinity Churchyard);
slate; fair. "J. Stevens"

Samuel Carr, 1796, Jamestown, R.I. (Cedar Cemetery);
slate ; poor. "J.S. "

Abigail Phillips, 1798, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; fair. "J. Stevens"

Patience Bennet , 1798, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; fair. "J. Stevens"

Demaris Carr , 1798, Jamestown, R.I. (Cedar Cemetery);
slate; fair; no image. "J.S."

James Cary , 1799, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying Ground);
slate; poor. "J. Stevens"

Hannah Willson, 1801, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; poor. J. Stevens"

Elizabeth Childs, 1802, and Nathan Childs, 1787, New-
port, R.I. (Common Burying Ground); slate; fair. "J.
Stevens"

Capt . John Coggeshall, 1802, Newport, R.I. (Common
Burying Ground); slate; poor. "J. Stevens"

Capt. John Coggeshall Almy, 1802, Newport, R.I. (Common
Burying Ground); slate; poor. "J. Stevens"

Elizabeth Coggeshall, 1803, Newport, R.I. (Coggeshall
Burying Ground); slate; excellent. "J. Stevens"

Capt. James Duncan, 1803, Newport, R.I. (Trinity Church-
yard); slate; fair. "J. Stevens"

Elder William Bliss, 1808, Newport, R.I. (Newport
Historical Society); slate; fair; no image. "J. Stevens"

Mrs. Mary Almy, 1808, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; poor; no image. "J. Stevens"

Isaac Howland, 1810, Jamestown, R.I. (Cedar Cemetery);
slate; good; no image. "J. Stevens"

POMPE STEVENS. Newport, R.I.

Pompey Lyndon, 1765, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; poor. "Cut by P.S."

*Gusse Gibbs, 1768, Newport, R.I. (Common Burying Ground) ;
slate; poor. "This Stone was cut by Pompe Stevens"

JONAS STEWART. Claremont, N.H.

Betsy Hurd, 1818, Newport, N.H.

CEPHAS TQMSON

Robert Strobredge, 1790, Lakeville, Mass. (Thompson
Hill Cemetery); slate; very poor. "Cephas Tomson ,
Sculp*"

LT. WILLIAM THROOP (1739-1817), Bristol, R.I.

♦Elizabeth Bullock, 1786, Rehoboth, Mass. (Palmer River
Cemetery); slate; fair. "W. Throop"

Hannah Thomas, 1790, Swansea, Mass. (Thomas Cemetery).

Alexander Gardner, 1818, Swansea, Mass. (Old Warren Road
Cemetery); slate; fair; urn and willow. "W. Throop"

SAMUEL TINGLEY (1752-1848), South Attleborough , Mass.

Lt . Josiah Pidge, 1793, Attleborough, Mass.; slate;
excellent. "S. Tingley Sculpt"

JOHN WALDEN II (1734-1807), Windham, Ct .
JOHN WALDEN III (1752-1824), Windham, Ct .

Esther Palmer, 1754, Scotland, Ct . ; schist; poor.
"Engraven by John Walden"

Mary Pearl, 1790, Hampton, Ct . (Trumbull Cemetery);
schist; poor. "Cut by J. Walden"

Anna Dorrance, 1792, Sterling, Ct . (Oneco Cemetery).
"Cut by J. Walden. Windham"

Josiah Hammond, 1793, Woodstock, Ct . (Woodstock Hill
Cemetery ) .

Lydia Safford, 1793, Westminster, Ct . ; marble; fair.

Trumbull Children, 1794, Norwichtown, Ct . (Old Norwich
Cemetery); schist; good. "Cut by John Walden, Windham"

Susannah Bingham, 1795, Lisbon, Ct . (Versailles Ceme-
tery) .

Joseph Bordman, 1796, Griswold, Ct . (Rixton Cemetery).

Urania Lyons, 1797, North Woodstock, Ct . (Amity Ceme-
tery) .

Jonathan Maples, 1798, Norwichtown, Ct . (Oak Street
Cemetery) .

Disire Maples, 1798, Norwichtown, Ct . (Oak Street Ceme-
tery); schist; good. "Cut by J. Walden, Windham"

Annah Hude , 1801, South Canterbury, Ct . (Woodstock Hill
Cemetery) .

Bethiah Peck, 1802, Franklin, Ct.

Nicolas Justen, 1804, South Canterbury, Ct . (Baldwin
Cemetery ) .

Elihu Adams, 1804, South Canterbury, Ct . "J + W"

Lydia Safford, 1804, Canterbury, Ct . (Westminster Ceme-
tery); marble; fair.

Reuben Peck, 1811, Hanover, Ct .

Mary Follett, 1814, Windham, Ct . ; schist; good. "Cut

by J.W."

JOTHAM WARREN

Elijah Park, 1793, Preston, Ct . (Avery Cemetery); slate;
poor. "J. Warren Sculpt"

♦Alexander Miller 1798, Plainfield, Ct . ; slate; good.
"J. Warren Sculpt"

ABEL WEBSTER (1726-1801), Hollis, N.H.

Lt. John Kendall, 1759, Dunstable, Mass.; slate; good.
"Engrav'd by A. Webster 1761"

*Thomas Prentice, 1760, Lexington, Mass. (Old Burying
Ground); slate; excellent. "Engrav'd by Abel WEBSTER.
1763"

STEPHEN WEBSTER (1718-98), Chester, N.H.

♦Hannah Webster, 1760, Chester, N.H.; slate; excellent.
"By, Stephen Webster of Holies 1762"

EBENEZER WINSLOW (1772-1841), Uxbridge, Mass.

David and Elias Taf t , 1790, Mendon , Mass.; slate; good.

Hezekiah Cutler, 1792, Putnam, Ct . (Aspinwall Cemetery);
slate; tympanum broken off. "By E-r Winslow Uxbridge"

Gershom Carpenter, 1793, Providence, R.I. (Swan Point
Cemetery); slate; excellent.

*John Taylor, 1794, Douglas, Mass. (Rte. 16 Cemetery);
slate; good. "Made by E. Winslow of Uxbridge - 94"

B. L. WINSLOW

Amos Carroll, 1792, East Thompson, Ct . ; urn.

ALPHEUS WRIGHT (1792-1857), Rockingham, Vt .

*Ebenezer Tinney, 1813, Grafton, Vt . (Town Cemetery);
slate; good. "Made by A. Wright, & A Burditt, B. Falls,
AD, 1813"

Ruth Adams, 1814, Rockingham, Vt . (Rockingham Meeting
House Cemetery); slate; good. "Made by Alpheus Wright,
of Rockingham, VT — price 12,50"

MOSES WRIGHT (c. 1758-?), Rockingham, Vt .

♦Xenophon Earle, 1799, Chester, Vt . (Chester Cemetery);
slate; excellent; urn. "Made by Moses Wright of
Rockingham price 17 Dollars"

Zilpah Kilborn, 1804, Keene , N.H.

John and Margaret Gilmore, 1806, Rockingham, Vt .
(Rockingham Meeting House Cemetery); slate; good; urn.
"Made by M. Wright"

SOLOMON WRIGHT. JR. (1785-1851), Rockingham, Vt .

♦Betsy Messenger, 1808, Rockingham, Vt . (Rockingham
Meeting House Cemetery); slate; fair; urn. "Made by
Solomon Wright JunT"

JOHN ZURICHER

♦Sarah Hawley, 1772, Wilton, Ct . (Sharp Hill Cemetery);
sandstone; poor. "John Zuricher Stone Cutter, N,Y"

Ananias Rogers, 1775, Huntington, N.Y.; sandstone;
good. "Iohn Zuricher Stone Cutter"

Catherine Norss Crook Shank, 1776, Middletown, N.J.;
sandstone; good. "Iohn Zuricher Stone Cutter N.Y."

LOCATION GUIDE

CONNECTICUT

Abington: G. Allen, Jr.; Nathaniel Hodgkins; Nathaniel
Hodgkins, Jr.; Frederick Manning; Beza Soule

Andover: Amasa Loomis

Ashford: Nathaniel Hodgkins; James Hovey

Brooklyn: G. Allen, Jr.; Nathaniel Hodgkins; Nathaniel
Hodgkins, Jr.; Chester Kimball; Josiah Manning; Beza
Soule; Stephen Spalding; John Stevens III

Canterbury: Rockwell Manning; John Walden

Cheshire: Seth Brewer

Columbia: Benjamin Collins

Coventry: Benjamin Collins; Frederick Manning

Danielson: Benjamin Collins

Durham: Thomas Johnson

East Glastonbury: Peter Buckland

East Hartford: Rockwell Manning

East Norwalk: W.C.

East Thompson: B. L. Winslow

East Woodstock: Coomer Soule

Eastford: Beza Soule

Fairfield: Benjamin Collins; Henry Emmes

Franklin: Benjamin Collins; Josiah Manning; John Walden

Glastonbury: Peter Buckland

Griswold: John Walden

Groton: John Stevens III

Hammonassett : Daniel Ritter

Hampton: Nathaniel Hodgkins; Lebbeus Kimball; Richard
Kimball; Josiah Manning; John Walden

Hanover: Josiah Manning; John Walden III

Hebron: Benjamin Collins; Julius Collins

Lebanon: Benjamin Collins; Lebbeus Kimball; Amasa
Loomis

Lisbon: John Walden

Mansfield Center: James Hovey; Josiah Manning; Stephen
Spalding

Meriden Center: Isaac Coles; Roswell Cowles

Milford: B.L.

New Haven: Thomas Gold; Daniel Ritter

New London: G. Allen, Jr.; John Stevens III

North Woodstock: John Walden

Northfield: Daniel Ritter

Norwichtown: Benjamin Collins; Josiah Manning; John
Walden

Old Lyme: Chester Kimball

Oneco: Jonathan Roberts

Pachaug: Benjamin Collins; John Stevens III

Plainfield: Benjamin Collins; Stephen Spalding; Jotham
Warren

Pomf ret : G. Allen, Jr.; Richard Kimball; Beza Soule;
Coomer Soule; Stephen Spalding

Preston: Benjamin Collins; Jotham Warren

Preston City: David Lamb

Putnam: G. Allen, Jr.; Jonathan Roberts; Stephen
Spalding; Beza Soule; Ebenezer Winslow

Salisbury: Zerubbabel Collins

Scotland: Benjamin Collins; Lebbeus Kimball; Josiah
Manning; Rockwell Manning; John Walden II

South Canterbury: John Walden

South Killingly: George Allen; Jonathan Roberts; Beza
Soule; Stephen Spalding

Stafford Springs: Julius Collins

Sterling: John Walden

Stonington: John Stevens III

Storrs: John Stevens III

Stratford: Caleb Lamson; Nathaniel Lamson

Tolland: William Buckland, Jr.; Benjamin Collins

Union: Frederick Manning

Vernon: Amasa Loomis

West Stratford: Amasa Loomis

West Thompson: Stephen Hartshorn; Beza Soule

West Willington: Frederick Manning; Josiah Manning

West Woodstock: John Just Geyer

Westminster: John Walden

Willington: James Hovey

Wilton: John Zuricher

Windham: Benjamin Collins; Josiah Manning; John Walden
III

Woodstock: John Walden

MASSACHUSETTS

Andover: Nathaniel Lamson

Attleborough: James New II; John New; Samuel Tingley

Barnstable: Henry Emmes; Nathaniel Emmes

Belchertown: C. and/or E. Sikes

Bellingham: James New II

Berkley: J. B.; Cyrus Deane

Boston: W.C.; Nathaniel Emmes; J.G.; John Just Geyer;
Nathan Hastings; Nathaniel Lamson; J.N.

Bradford: John Marble

Brockton: James New II

Cambridge: Nathaniel Lamson

Charlestown: Nathaniel Lamson

Concord: John New

Dedham: J.N.

Dighton: J.B.

Dunstable: Abel Webster

Douglas: Ebenezer Winslow

Duxbury: J.N.

Edgartown: G. Allen, Jr.

Franklin: L.F.

Grafton: James New II

Hardwick: Samuel Fisher

Ipswich: Ezekiel Leighton

Lakeville: Cephas Tomson

Lanesborough: Elijah Phelps

Lexington: Caleb Lamson; Abel Webster

100

Maiden: Caleb Lamson

Manchester: Henry Emmes

Mansfield: Cyrus Deane

Marblehead: W.C.; J.G.; Caleb Lamson

Marlborough: Nathan Hastings

Marshfield: J.G. ; J.N.

Mendon: Ebenezer Winslow

Merrimack: J. Marble

Millis: Samuel Fisher

Milton: B. Adams; Henry Christian Geyer

Newburyport : Paul Noyes

Newton: J.N.

Northampton: Roger Booth

Norwood: D.F.

Plymouth: W.C.

Quincy : W.G. ; J.N.

Rehoboth: George Allen; William Throop

Roxbury : J.N.

Salem: J.G.

Shrewsbury: James New II

Stonington: John Bull

Stoughton: James New II

Sutton: James New II

Swansea: William Throop

Taunton: J.B.; John Bull

Upton: James New II

Wakefield: Nathaniel Lamson

Walpole: D.F.

Wayland: Nathan Hastings

West Medway : Cyrus Dean; Levi Maxcy

West Newbury: J. Marble

West Tisbury : W.C. ; J.G.

Westfield: C. and/or E. Sikes

Wrentham: D.F.

101

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Atkinson: J. Marble

Chester: Stephen Webster

Keene : Moses Wright

Plaistow: J. Marble

Portsmouth: Caleb Lamson ; Enoch Noyes

Newport : Jonas Stewart

NEW JERSEY

Middletown: John Zuricher

NEW YORK

Hoosick: Elijah Phelps
Huntington: John Zuricher
Mattituck: John Stevens III
Southampton: John Stevens III

NOVA SCOTIA

Chebogue : Abraham Codner
Chipman's Corner: Chester Kimball
Liverpool: Levi Maxcy

RHODE ISLAND

Block Island: John Bull

Jamestown: John Bull; Henry Bull; John Stevens III;
Pompe Stevens

Newport: John Bull; John Stevens III

North Kingston: Rockwell Manning; John Stevens III

Portsmouth: Henry Bull

Providence: G. Allen, Jr.; Charles Hartshorn; Stephen
Hartshorn; Ebenezer Winslow

Rumford: George Allen; G. Allen, Jr.

Warren: Stephen Hartshorn; John Stevens III

Wickford: John Stevens III

102

RHODE ISLAND

Block Island: John Bull

Jamestown: John Bull; Henry Bull; John Stevens III;
Pompe Stevens

Newport: John Bull; John Stevens III

North Kingston: Rockwell Manning; John Stevens III

Portsmouth: Henry Bull

Providence: G. Allen, Jr.; Charles Hartshorn; Stephen
Hartshorn; Ebenezer Winslow

Rumford: George Allen; G. Allen, Jr.

Warren: Stephen Hartshorn; John Stevens III

Wickford: John Stevens III

SOUTH CAROLINA

Charleston: G. Allen, Jr.; John Bull; William Codner;
Henry Emmes

VERMONT

Bennington: Zerubbabel Collins; Josiah Manning

Chester: Sampson B. Adams; Moses Wright

East Poultney: E.C.

Grafton: Abel Burditt; Alpheus Wright

Manchester: Samuel Dwight

Manchester Center: Zerubbabel Collins

Rockingham: Alpheus Wright; Moses Wright; Solomon
Wright

103

104

SCOTTISH GRAVESTONES AND THE
NEW ENGLAND WINGED SKULL

Betty Willshire

The most common gravestone design in early New
England was the winged skull, or death's head, yet its
sources and its meaning prove elusive. Popular in New
England, it is rare in England, unknown in parts of the
Continent; the only strong analog for the New England
design is a handful of monuments carved in Scotland.
Nevertheless, these few sources provide some indication
of the associations of images of death and time which
may have crossed the Atlantic in the minds of carvers
who would produce winged death's heads in New England by
the 1670s.

The first question to be asked is why should a
skull, so long accepted as the representation of what
happens to the body after man's death, take to the air?
One epitaph suggests the winged skull is an image of the
Resurrection :

Like a bare giant that's thrown into the earth
Dead for a while and mix'd to kindred dust
The body lyes. But at the awful blast
Of God's last trumpet, teeming with new life
Shall rise in noble splendour God's great,
Now weak, corrupt, dishonorable, natural,
Powerfull then, Immortal, Glorious, Spirituall.

(Dougla Wright, 1770,
Exmagirdlle, Perth)

However, at that time Presbyterian doctrine held
that the body would be clothed anew, clothed "in the
flesh." Many inscriptions on headstones and slabs in
Scotland refer to Job 19:25: "And though after my skin
worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see
God." The most common Scottish seventeenth- and eigh-
teenth-century portrayals of the Resurrection show
naked bodies rising upward. Given the teachings of the
Presbyterian Church in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, and the epitaphs and images inscribed on the
stones, one concludes the Scottish carvers did not
associate the winged skull with the Resurrection.

The interpretation of this image is further compli-
cated by the fact that it is a comparatively rare emblem
in Europe. There is no evidence of its use as a mor-
tuary emblem in Germany. It is difficult to assess its
frequency on English memorials as compared with

105

representations of the skull, but it would seem to be
low. Frederick Burgess makes only one reference to a
winged skull, and Kenneth Lindley notes: "Skulls are
occasionally winged, or enclosed within a scallop which
fits into the headstone. nl

Even in east Anglia, the home of so many New
Englanders, there are no winged skulls. Two winged
skulls appear at St. Kew , Cornwall. One is found on the
memorial for Susanna Symons who died in 1729, aged ten
(Fig. 1). The epitaph runs, "Death with his dart / Did
pierce my heart / When I was in my prime." The other is
for John Laing, who died in 1742, age 28, with the
epitaph :

My friends forbear to grieve for me so sore,
I'm gone from hence, youl never see me no more
My life was short, (youl say), gone like a blast
But now my troubles o're my pains are past.

In Surrey, there is another headstone with a carving of
this type of winged skull, with the last two lines of
this epitaph, dated 1773. This coincidence suggests a
significant link between this symbol and sudden and
untimely death.

In Scotland, there is evidence of a seventeenth-
century winged skull tradition which predates these
English examples and provides a clear analog to New
England designs. Three city burial grounds were estab-
lished soon after the Reformation. There are no winged
skulls at Greyfriars, Perth, and at the Howff, Dundee,
but at Greyfriars, Edinburgh, is a collection of enor-
mous mural monuments dating from early in the 1600s,
with carvings which are fantastic in the range of
imagery. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote:

We Scotch stand, to my fancy, highest among nations
in the matter of grimly illustrating death. We
seem to love for their own sake the emblems of
time and the great change; and even around country
churchyards you will find an exhibition of skulls
and crossbones, and noseless angels, and trum-
pets pealing for the Judgement Day. Every mason
was a pedestrian Holbein; he had a deep con-
sciousness of death, and loved to put its terrors
pithily before the churchyard loiterer; he was
brimful of rough hints on mortality. . . .
The classical examples of this art are in
Greyfriars . ^

106

Figure 1. Susanna Symons , 1729, St. Kew , Cornwall.

Figure 2. John Byres, 1629, Grey friars, Edinburgh

107

True, for here we see strange scenes where Father Time
and the King of Terrors stride over a harvest of skulls;
among the armoury of death and the tokens of resurrec-
tion are three memorials which bear winged skulls, for
John Byres of Coittes, 1629 (Fig. 2), Thomas Barratyne,
1638 (Figs. 3a, b), and John McLurg, 1717. In each case
there are also the emblems of the skull, and bones, and
Father Time with hourglass and scythe. The last memor-
ials commemorate people taken in their prime, but Byres
was sixty.

Other examples can be found at the Cathedral Burial
Ground at St. Andrews, Fife. In 1910, A. Reid wrote:
"Chronologically it is more than usually rich, for it
exhibits . . . the rudest of early gravemarks , the
elaborations of the medievalists, the florid evolutions
of later centuries, and the more sound achievements of
modern times. "3 He states that a date of 1380 is legi-
ble on a slab, and that the earliest skull and bones
appear on a rectangular slab to Canon James Eliot, who
died in 1513. Sir George MacDonald also describes in
detail many of the eighty-two items dating from pre-
Reformation times to 1707.4 Many of these are elabor-
ately carved, but in the entire collection there are
only three depictions of winged skulls. One is on a
coped stone memorial to Judith Nairne, who died aged 80
in 1646; on this stone there are scenes from Quarles
Emblems , including one with Father Time, hourglass on
head, scythe in hand, accompanied by the inscription,
"Everything hath an appointed time." Another winged
skull on the stone of Elizabeth Dickson, who died in
1643 aged 61, also has Father Time; the third is on a
1617 slab with the figure of Death with scythe.

While the age factor seems variable, there is lit-
tle doubt that in the few examples we have the emblem of
the winged skull is closely linked with the conception
of time. Thus it appears that the skull and the winged
skull may have had different meanings. The plain skull,
often accompanied by bones, was the accepted memento
mori . Shakespeare uses the term in Henry IV. Part 2,
when Falstaff says, '"Do not speak like a death's head;
do not bid me remember mine end'" (II, iv, 234). This
death's head appeared in illustrations, carvings,
painting and memorials from the fifteenth century.
Horst Janson states that the skull was first used as a
mortuary emblem early in the fifteenth century:

The greater consistency of Italian art in the
representation of life and death as contrasted
with the preference for the living skeleton in

108

Figure 3a,
Figure 3b

Thomas Barrantyne, 1638, Grey friars

Edinburgh.

Thomas Barratyne, 1638, Grey friars,

Edinburgh .

109

the North finally produced in the early Renais-
sance, the human skull as the most condensed
symbol of death. The corpses of the Camposanto
had been merely its more elaborate forerunners.
Although not yet symbols of death but rather con-
crete examples, they had only to undergo a pro-
cess of abbreviation and abstraction to be trans-
formed into the striking formula of the skull.
. . . The artist to be credited with its intro-
duction is Giovanni Boldu, a Venetian medallist,
who in 1458 designed a medal with the portrait
of a naked youth contemplating the figures of
Faith and Penitence, and at his feet a skull
symbolizing Death. 5

In a footnote to this passage, Janson writes: "The sur-
face of the medal is badly scratched, so that the de-
tails of the skull are barely recognisable. It seems
however, that a pair of wings is attached to the sides
of the death's head, denoting perhaps eternity." Is
Janson suggesting that this is a conjoined symbol--the
skull of death and the wings of the soul? Yet wings did
not appear on subsequent medals, and while the notion
may have been transmitted from this original, it was the
death's head in the form of the unwinged skull which
became the popular symbol.

Guy de Tervarent suggests another interpretation of
the winged skull: "il arrive que le squelette la mort
soit aile pour nous rappeler combien elle peut etre
rapide" (It eventuated that the skeleton death was
winged to remind us that it could come swiftly). His
source is given as H. S. Beham, of Hollstein, Germany.
One must also consider the early emblem of the winged
skeleton; two examples may be found in Panofsky's Tomb
Sculpture , one on the memorial of Allesandro Valtrini at
S. Lorenzo in Damaso, Rome, the other on the tomb of
Pope Urban VIII at St. Peter's, Rome; in both cases the
wings are heavily feathered 7 What a threatening figure
is the winged Death, the personification of active, not
passive Death. There is no proof that the winged skull
was an abbreviation of this figure, yet it would seem
likely if one considers the source of the plain skull.

Thus it seems necessary to make distinctions be-
tween (1) the Italian representation of active Death, to
be seen at the Camposanto, Pisa, dated 1350--the figure
of a witchlike female with batwings , talons, long hair
and armed with a scythe; (2) the passive death figure,
representing man's fate after dying, appearing as decom-
posing bodies and skeletons, and then only in the

110

<••-:''*'- ■■■■ • • ' ,-.- . : ' ■■■■■ ■ • - "'-...' •..

( <t\

Figure 4. Buchanan Family, 1751, Logie Pert, Angus

111

skeleton form, this last continuing in Scotland well
into the eighteenth century; and (3) the Northern Death
figure, the living skeleton, originating from the depic-
tion of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, with the
last, Death, in the form of a skeleton, as shown on the
Buchanan stone, 1751 (Fig. 4). One sees the contrast
between passive and active Death, skull and winged
skull, on the Barratyne stone (Fig. 3).

A further confirmation of the association of active
Death and Father Time is in the use of bat wings on
skulls and hourglasses. Often the bat is associated
with the evil, predatory power of Death. Shakespeare
uses the image of bats in unholy situations:

' . . . are the bat hath flown
His cloistered flight, ere to black Hecate's

summons
The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums
Hath rung night's yawning peel, there shall be

done
A deed of dreadful note!

(Macbeth. Ill, ii, 40)

Kenneth Lindley describes a carving on a stone at Little
Dean on which a serpent ring encloses a winged hour-
glass: "One of the wings is that of a bird (Day), the
other that of a bat (Night). The scaled and feathered
wings could also be interpreted as a representation of
the angelic and the devilish, but this is less likely."^

In Stones, there are two possible representations
of bats on stones. At Careston , Angus, an epitaph re-
veals the emotive association of death and night:

As our shorter day of light

Our day of life posts on,

Both show a long course to the night ,

And both are quickly run.

Both have their night, and when that spreads

Its black wings over day,

There's no more work, all take their beds

Of feathers or of clay. 9

The association between active Death and Father
Time is a common feature in Francis Quarles' Emblems,
the design source for the figures of Death and Father
Time on the Joseph Tapping stone, 1678, Boston. Quarles
is quoted on a Scottish stone in Alford, Aberdeen, as
late as 1751:

112

Expect but fear not Death, Death has not power
To cut the Threed, till Time point out the hour,
Death's patent's void, till Time's hand sets the

seal
From whose joint sentence there is no appeal.

Thus it may be that the skull got its wings from
Father Time, Death's accomplice. This image would be a
neat abbreviation for a headstone. At Grey friars the
symbol is in use early in the seventeenth century, with
the figures of Father Time and Death. We must also con-
sider that the hourglass was often winged, and that this
may link it with the winged skull.

In conclusion, the evidence from Scotland suggests
that we look at one group of emblems associated with the
memento mori theme (the skeleton without weapons, the
skull, the bones, the coffin, the shroud, the dead bell,
the sexton's tools), and distinguish it from another
group linked to the theme, "The King of Terrors who dare
withstand" (the living skeleton and his sword, dart, and
scythe, his associate Father Time, the hourglass, and
the winged skull).

It is remarkable that this apparently rare emblem
was available to, and was adopted by, the early carvers
of New England. By strange chance, or by conscious
choice, here was a symbol which readily lent itself to
the subtle and gradual transformation to the soul image
which distinguishes the development of several New
England carving traditions. While we may never deter-
mine exactly which carvers were responsible for the
transference of this image to New England, it is clear
that the Scottish images of the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries make Scotland a likely source for
those carvers' designs.

NOTES

1 Frederick Burgess, English Churchyard Memorials (London:
Lutterworth, 1963), p. 172; Kenneth Lindley, Of Graves and Epitaphs
(London: Hutchison, 1965), p. 100.

2 Robert Louis Stevenson, Edinburgh Picturesque Notes (London:
Seeley & Co., 1903), pp. 52-53.

3 A. Reid, "The Churchyard Memorials of St. Andrews," Proceedings
of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, XLV (1910-11), 488-550.

4 George MacDonald, "Post-Reformation Tombstones in the
Cathedral Graveyard, St. Andrews," Proceedings of the Society of Anti-
quaries of Scotland, LXX (1935-36), 488.

5 W. Janson, "The Putto with the Death's Head," The Art Bulletin,

113

19 (1937), pp. 423-49.

6 Guy de Tervarent, "Attributs et Symboles dans l'Art Profane, 1450-
1600," Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance (Geneva: n.p., 1958), pp. 366,
374.

7 Erwin Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture: Its Changing Aspects from
Ancient Egypt to Bernini (London: Thames & Hudson, 1964), Figs. 435, 436.

8" Lindley, p. 99.

9 Betty Willsher and Doreen Hunter, Stones: 18th Century Scottish
Gravestones (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1978), p. 28.

114

THE JN CARVER

David Watters

In adorning the frontispiece of Gravestones of
Early New England with a photograph of the John Cleverly
stone, Harriet Merrifield Forbes paid tribute to the
finest stylist of early American gravestones, an unknown
craftsman who signed a handful of stones "JN" in the
Boston area in the late seventeenth century. 1 Allan
Ludwig and the Tashjians confirm Forbes' high opinion
of this sophisticated carver's work, yet JN stones pre-
sent these authors with difficulties of interpretation,
because JN's identity remains unknown, and because most
of his gravestone designs are outside the standard rep-
ertoire of the memento mori tradition of New England
stonecarving.2 If, as E. McClung Fleming suggests, "By
means of its materials, construction, design, and use
of symbols, the artifact functions as a vehicle of com-
munication, conveying status, ideas, values, feelings,
and meanings," then it is particularly important to
identify JN and his design sources. 3 While I have been
no more successful than earlier researchers in estab-
lishing conclusively who JN was, I can suggest that he
was a silversmith. Moreover, I intend to show here
that while his designs have meanings consistent with the
memento mori tradition, they are more significant in
defining the status of JN's patrons, members of Boston's
rising merchant class.

JN designs can be divided into four groups. The
first group follows the example of the marker for Rev-
erend Ichabod Wiswall, 1700, of Duxbury, with a death's
head in the tympanum flanked by foliated pilasters.
Stones for Martha Hall, 1701, Sarah Dolbeare, 1701,
Mehitabel Hammond, 1704, and John Cleverly, 1703, can
also be placed in this group (Fig. 1). A second design
group with a cherub in the tympanum, cut only for women,
includes stones for Deborah Thomas and Mrs. Cleverly.
The third group contains stones with a central floral
design, represented by the signed Edward Thompson stone
of Marshfield. From this stone, the Ruth Carter and
Thaddeus Maccarty stones of the Granary, Boston, can be
assigned to JN. The fourth group is the largest and
most striking, with a tympanum design which Forbes
called the "Urn and Mermaid," although Ludwig and the
Tashjians rechristen the mermaids "dagons" (Fig. 2).

It seems unlikely that gravestone carving was JN's
sole means of support, since his stones are few in num-
ber, and they were carved during brief periods of

115

„._. j^ayioi

Figure 1. Lt . John Cleverly, 1703, Quincy, Mass.

Figure 2. William Button, 1693, Portsmouth, N.H.

116

activity, 1693-98 and 1700-05. A variety of evidence
points to the silversmith John Noyes as a likely person
to identify as JN. Their dated works follow a close
pattern, and their works point to common design sources.
Most importantly, JN and John Noyes had the same pa-
trons, patrons who would have understood the sources and
meanings of their images on silver and stone (See
Appendix) . 4

Born in Boston in 1674, John Noyes was a descendant
of the distinguished Reverend James Noyes of Newbury,
Massachusetts. He married Susanna Edwards, the sister
of the silversmith John Edwards, in 1699. Noyes af-
firmed his standing as one of the up and coming members
of the Boston craft community when he helped found the
Brattle Street Church in December, 1699. He is men-
tioned occasionally in church and town records, and in
Samuel Sewall's diary, but he died intestate in 1749.
While little of Noyes' silver has survived, he did ob-
tain several important commissions. He made beakers for
the Newbury church and was one of five silversmiths
chosen to make matching flagons for the Brattle Street
Church in 1711. His masterpiece is a pair of candle-
sticks made for Peter Bowdoin.

John Noyes' apprenticeship would have ended some-
time between 1693 and 1695, and it is at this time that
the first JN stones, in the Urn and Dagon group, appear.
Several of these stones are backdated, but stylistically
they relate to stones carved in the 1693-95 period. The
marvelous Benjamin Hills stone, 1683, was probably
carved in 1695 when his estate finally cleared probate.
Similarly, the estate of Asaph Eliot, whose stone is
dated 1688, was not settled until 1693, when the sum of
h 4.7 was paid for the work at the grave and the stone.
Thus the dates of the group four stones coincide with
the end of Noyes' apprenticeship, at a time when major
commissions for his silver were not forthcoming, for he
competed with such master silversmiths as Dummer,
Sanderson, Coney, Dwight, Edwards and Winslow. Noyes'
first important commission was the Bowdoin candlesticks,
ca. 1695-70, a period of little gravestone carving
activity for JN. Several JN stones are dated 1700-05,
but after 1705, when Noyes received the important
Brattle Street commission for flagons, there is little
stonecarving by JN .

If the designs of the early group four JN stones
indicate a concern for high-style elegance, the pattern
of patronage indicates that socially conscious Boston-
ians turned to these stones to make statements about

117

their position in the community. The surviving JN
stones exhibit a strong patronage correlation with the
members of the Artillery Company and the Brattle Street
Church, two entrances to Boston status. John Noyes
himself is a prime example of upward mobility in Boston.
As a silversmith, he gained entrance to Boston society,
and with his membership in the prominent Noyes clan, it
was natural that he become a member of the Artillery
Company. Both Noyes and JN found patrons in this group,
and most group four stones were cut for its members,
including Asaph Eliot, William Greenough, Thaddeus
Maccarty , Elizur Holyoke, and members of the families
of Benjamin Hills and Michael Martyn. The signed group
two Cleverly stone in Quincy commemorates yet another
member of the Company. In fact, a majority of JN stones
are connected to the Company (See Appendix).

Further connections between JN patrons and Noyes
can be traced through Noyes' family and his silver
patrons. In 1700 the Brattle Street Church "Ordered
that Deacon Barnard be presented with a piece of plate
of ye value of Twelve pounds & that T. Brattle do speak
to Mr. Noyes to make a silver tankard of that value. "°
Later, the tankard was inscribed to commemorate the
marriage of Barnard to Sarah Martyn in September 1715,
which locates the Martyn family as part of the Brattle
Street community. The Martyn family provides another
link between Noyes and JN stones. The Michael Martyn
stone, dated 1682 but probably carved in 1693, stands
in Copp ' s Hill and is from JN's hand. And Martyn ' s
wife, Susannah Holyoke, was the niece of Elizur Holyoke,
an Artillery Company member with a JN stone. The
William Button marker of 1693, Portsmouth, New Hamp-
shire, can also be traced through the Martyn family.
Button was buried by his brothers Thomas and Clement
Lempriere, but Richard Martyn, uncle of Michael Martyn,
and the great uncle of Sarah Martyn, attested the in-
ventory of Button's estate. The other stones in group
four similarly point to a man with Noyes' craft con-
nections. One was cut for Timothy Dwight, a silver-
smith, and another for Matthew Pittom, whose father was
a pewterer.

The strongest evidence relating JN stones to the
work of a silversmith is stylistic, because the full
repertory of JN design innovations is found on silver.
The Lamson family and the Charlestown carver used, in
their pilasters, the vegetation and cherubs common to
mannerist silver objects of the late seventeenth cen-
tury, but only JN placed urns, flowers, peacocks and
dagons in his tympanum designs. All of the discrete

118

elements of JN stone des
made by or known to John
Noyes bears a delicate 1
to that found in the pil
stone of 1696. 10 Noyes'
are delicately gadrooned
acanthus leaf scrolling
flagon and on a salver r
pilasters (Fig. 3a, b, c
was common both to grave
made in England and sold
death's heads and dagons
group four stones featur
resembles silver cups or

igns can be found on objects

Noyes. A small gold clasp by
ily with a striking resemblance
asters of the Deborah Thomas
candlesticks for Peter Bowdoin
as are the JN urns, and the
found on Noyes' Brattle Street
esembles the swags in JN
). Moreover, the cherub face
stones and silver, and spoons
in America commonly featured
. The central designs of
e a two-handled urn which
salt cellars.

Figure 3a. John Noyes, Gold Clasp, ca. 1700, The Garvan

Collection, Yale University.
Figure 3b. Deborah Thomas, 1696, Marshfield, Mass.
Figure 3c. John Noyes, Flagon, 1711, Museum of Fine

Arts, Boston.

But it is the combination of the elements of vege-
tation, cup and dagons on stone and silverware alike
which is most striking. A plate by John Coney displays
an elegantly carved cherub and flowers, and John Coney's
caudle cup (c. 1690), presents a dagon identical to that
found on group four stones (Fig. 4). Coney's chubby

119

Figure 4. John Coney, Caudle Cup. 1690-1700, Boston
65/388. Bequest of Mrs. Edward Jackson
Holmes. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston.

Figure 5. Thomas Heywood, The Hierarchie of the
Blessed Angells , p. 111.

120

anaraorphic dagon figure, the particular flowers, the
shape of the handle, combine in a visual repertory which
point to JN's familiarity with such designs.

If, on the evidence of dating, design and patronage
patterns, we accept the possibility that JN was John
Noyes, then we must consider a range of problems of
identification and interpretation of silver and grave-
stone designs. Harriet Forbes first ascribed Christian
meanings to JN designs, and Allan Ludwig and Ann and
Dickran Tashjian continue Forbes' speculation.1,3 They
convincingly argue that the group four cherub is a
dagon, the half-human, half-fish or vegetable figure
receiving its name from the idol of the Philistines,
and by the seventeenth century "dagon" was the generic
term for any idol. While convincing in identifying
these forms, none of these writers explain why these
designs appear on both gravestones and silverware.
Indeed, the supposedly idolatrous dagon even appears on
the standing cup given by John Winthrop to the First
Church of Boston in 1630. Either we must assume that
these designs were purely decorative, with no meaning
whatsoever, or that viewers were sophisticated enough
to understand that identical designs have meanings which
depend upon their location and their use in certain
rituals.

It is this second possibility that I wish to pur-
sue by arguing that the JN carver expected his patrons,
who were among the most educated and socially-conscious
of Bostonians, to recognize the fitness of his designs
for commemoration of the dead. And I will also argue
that a silversmith such as John Noyes would have been
aware of the meanings of such images.

It is clear from studies of seventeenth-century
silver that certain objects and designs held ritualistic
significance. Porringers with tombstone handle designs
were used by women to drink a fortifying gruel after
childbirth, an experience which brought women close to
the grave; christening spoons were decorated with
death's heads and had "Live to Die" and "Die to Live"
engraved on opposite sides of the stem. Silver sugar
boxes were decorated with emblems celebrating fertility
and harmony in marriage, since sugar was believed to
quicken children in the womb. Certainly John Noyes
understood such ritualistic uses of silver when Samuel
Sewall awarded him for his marksmanship a silver cup,
inscribed "Euprhratem Siccare potes . " a reminder as he
quenched his thirst that the drying up of the Euphrates
would presage the coming of the kingdom of heaven. 5

121

Moreover, Company members were told in sermons that
earthly warfare foreshadowed a larger spiritual warfare
between good and evil which would culminate in Arma-
geddon. 1° Samuel Sewall's apocalyptic proclivities
were well-known in print, and he also chose to express
his ideas when commemorating contemporary events with
silver objects.

A knowledge of heraldry would also have prepared a
silversmith to make use of iconographic designs. The
surge of interest in heraldry in the late seventeenth
century caused the publication of such books as John
Guillim's A Display of Heraldry , with thousands of hand-
colored engravings, and in status-conscious Boston the
possession of a coat of arms represented the height of
fashion.17 The elaborate traditions of heraldry
assigned specific meanings to each element of the crest,
and a family crest often commemorated a historical event
in which a family member exhibited the qualities the
crest represented. The Bowdoin family ancestor who
sacrificed himself to save the King is symbolized in the
family crest by a pelican vulning itself, and the crest
is displayed on the Noyes candlesticks and on the family
tomb.-1-" The pelican is also a common symbol for Christ,
or for any Christ-like person who sacrifices for others;
thus epitaphs in Boston refer to the pelican in commem-
orating dead persons who were particularly self-sacri-
ficing. The pelican symbol also reveals a hope for
resurrection purchased by Christ's sacrificial blood.

Seventeenth-century Bostonians frequently used
heraldic designs to express different meanings in dif-
ferent ritualistic contexts. The crest could be used
as a badge of social status, identifying proudly the
family in possession of such a lavish article of silver
as the Noyes candlesticks. The crest could be engraved
on wedding plate to symbolize the unification of
families. Or, the crest, or hatchment, could be used
as an integral part of funeral rituals. 9 Hatchments,
whether painted or embroidered, were hung on the front
door when the head of the family died; indeed, some
hatchments were made from hair clipped as mementoes of
the dead. Finally, they were carved on the tomb itself,
as the Bowdoin crest graces the Bowdoin tomb in the
Granary . °

Nearly every design element on Noyes' silver and
on JN ' s stones can be found in standard books of
heraldry, and silversmith and gravestone carver alike
would have been familiar with the meanings of designs
their patrons desired. John Guillim offers detailed

122

explanations of all heraldic elements, dividing them
into various categories. All the herbs and flowers
found on the Reverend Thompson, Ruth Carter and Thaddeus
Maccarty stones are placed under the heading "Herbs
Coronary or Physical." He comments, "Coronary herbs are
such, as in respect of their odiferous smell, have been
of long time, and yet are used for decking and trimming
of the body, or adorning of houses, or other pleasurable
use for eye or scent;" he lists roses, gillif lowers ,
slipped bluebottles, cinquefoils, daisies and fleur-de-
lis. -1- These flowers adorning the bodies of both the
living and the dead are fitting for funeral rituals,
but they have heraldic meanings appropriate to thoughts
on death as well.

For example, the viewer of the cinquefoil should
recall, in Guillim's words, that

The number of the leaves answers to the five
senses in a man; and he that can conquer his
affections, and master his senses, (which sen-
sual and vicious men are wholly addicted unto)
he may worthily, and with honour, bear the
Cinquefoil, as the sign of his fivefold victory
over a stronger enemy than that three-headed
Monster Cerebus .

While commenting on the slipped bluebottle, he sums up
the meaning of all such herbs and flowers:

Doubtless they are the admirable work of the
most Omnipotent God, who has sent as many kinds
of Medicines, as of Maladies; that as by the
one we may see our own wretchedness, so by the
other we might magnifie his goodness towards
man, on whom he hath bestowed Fruit for meat .
and Leaves for medicine.

I would suggest, then, that far from being merely
decorative, flowers were carved on stones with care as
to their heraldic significance and appropriateness to
the funeral ritual. Decking the body and coffin with
flowers symbolizing the age, sex and religious status
of the deceased was an ancient practice in England and
America, and stonecarvers such as JN merely placed
these flowers on the gravestone as well.24 Families
not entitled to a crest could still place designs with
heraldic significance on the gravestones of dead family
members, thus sharing in the status associated with
heraldry .

123

Guillim's treatise exposes the richness of visual
sources available in Noyes' time, and the heading of
each chapter consists of the common seventeenth-century
design of vegetation, dagons and urn found on JN group
four stones. Another popular design sourcebook in the
seventeenth century, Thomas Heywood ' s The Hierarchie of
Blessed Angels , displays chapter headings with vegeta-
tion, dagons, urn and peacocks, such as those gracing
the Cleverly stone (Fig. 5). 5

Forbes notes that peacocks often represented the
resurrection, but a seventeenth-century viewer who saw
peacocks with dagons might have had other ideas on the
subject. " Heywood associates Adonis and Anamelech,
idols bearing the form of a cock peacock, with dagon
under the general heading of idolatry. Thomas Wilson,
in A Complete Christian Dictionary . notes the dual
nature of the peacock, a strange combination of beauty
and benevolence with vanity and hatred towards mankind:
"It doth love man, reverence him, and helpeth him when
it seeth him hurt by other beasts," but "It's said to
have the voyce of the Devill, (its voyce is terrible)
the head of a Serpent (which being combed and weak, it
resembleth) and the pace of a theef, being still and
without noyse."^' The peacock displaying its tail
represents earthly vanity, but the peacock with tail
down signifies the overcoming of the flesh.

In the Heywood illustration, dagons lasso the pea-
cocks with tails spread to indicate that pagan idols
capture vain beings. In a delightful emblem by the
popular Otto Van Veen, cherubs of divine love busily
beat down the tail of a cock peacock (Fig. 6). The epi-
graph to the illustration reads, "divine love weighs
down pride. / he who has more humility also has more
humanity." The peacock on the Cleverly stone is a
cock peacock, with tail down, and when seen in con-
junction with the hourglass reminding the viewer of
mortality, it seems fitting to interpret peacocks as
emblems of both humility and resurrection.

In turning to the dagons on group four stones and
on silverware, it should be kept in mind that seemingly
idolatrous figures may have been used to deflate human
pride. While status-conscious Bostonians desired ele-
gant tombstones and silverware, they deferred to the
religious principles of the day by displaying images of
humility. The Van Veen emblems of sacred and profane
love provide, with their focus on the double nature of
human love, an analogy to the paradoxical desire for
elegance and humility in JN group four patrons. To

124

Figure 6. Otto Van Veen, "Svperbiam Odit," Amoris
Divini Emblemata, p. 112.

125

Figure 7. Otto Van Veen, "Animae sal est amor," Amoris
Divini Emblemata, p. 104.

126

illustrate that "The salt of the soul is love," two
cherubs carry a covered salt cellar to show that divine
love and salt are two things which preserve against cor-
ruption (Fig. 7).29 Bostonians viewing the winged
dagons carrying an urn on JN stones may have thought
that the urn represented both an elegant silver covered
salt cellar and a funerary urn. Cotton Mather connected
salt and the ashes of the dead by speculating that salts
obtained from the cremation of the body may revivify the
body at the Resurrection. ° The design could refer at
once to the conflict between idolatrous self-love and
divine love. The dagons seem both to bow down before
and to display the urn, and they have wings, usually
reserved for cherubs, to indicate the double nature of
human love.

Besides being popular figures in the decorative
arts of the seventeenth century, dagons figured prom-
inently in seventeenth-century American literature.
While the Tashjians show that New Englanders associated
dagons with Thomas Morton's men who frisked with Indian
maidens in the 1620s, writers contemporary with JN
assigned new meanings to dagons. Puritans knew Dagon
was the idol of the Philistines in the Book of Samuel.
Chapter three recounts the disastrous loss of the ark
of the Lord to the Philistines, when Phineas and Eli die
and the nation itself is threatened with extinction at
the hands of pagans. When Phineas' wife dies in child-
birth, the child is named Ichabod, "the glory depart-
ing." Yet God intervenes miraculously by striking down
Dagon ' s image after the ark has been presented to it.
The Philistines return the ark to Israel to escape God's
wrath. Increase Mather invokes this text to decry the
departing glory and waning piety of New England in his
famous Ichabod. 31 and he sees the fall of Dagon before
the ark as a symbol of the renewal of the gospel needed
in the pagan American wilderness.

If it is our Duty to Pray that the Kingdom of
Christ may be inlarged, then we ought to Pray
that that may be done by means whereof the Lords
Kingdom is inlarged. Now this is accomplished
by the Preaching of the Gospel, ... as being
the great Instrument by which the Kingdom of
Christ is Propagated in the World. In places
where the Gospel comes and is submitted to,
Satan's Kingdom falls, as Dagon fell to the
Ground before the Ark of the Lord, 1 Sam. 5.
4. And Christs Holy Kingdom is built on the
Ruines of it.

127

Mather continues his treatise with a discussion of the
fruitfulness prayer can bring to the wilderness once
Dagon has fallen, for "When the desolate Souls of Sin-
ners are Converted, A Wilderness becomes a Fruitful
Field. "33 In Mather's eyes, group four stones would
show how dagons fall before the urn containing the ashes
of someone who helped bring the gospel into the wilder-
ness, and the vegetation would represent both fertility
for living saints who pray for Dagon ' s fall and new life
to deceased saints. Ironically, JN's patrons for these
stones wanted to display their elegant, increasingly
secular taste, and they posed the greatest threat to
Mather's vision of a Bible commonwealth restored by
prayer and preaching.

While JN designs do share in the general themes of
New England stonecarving, they also reveal the tastes
of a changing Boston society. Many writers have com-
mented on the secular trends of late seventeenth-
century Boston, represented by the rising merchant class
which populated the Brattle Street Church and threw its
political strength behind Elisha Cook in his struggle
against the Boston religious establishment. The JN
stones confirm these trends both in the dimunition of
the stark memento mori motif, and in the elegance of his
designs. The connections between his work and that of
John Noyes , the relationships between silver design,
heraldry and gravestone design all attest to the social
as well as the religious significance of New England
stonecarving.

128

APPENDIX

Urn and Dagon Stones

Name

Date

Michael Martyn

1682
(1693)

Benjamin Hills

1683
(1695)

Asaph Eliot

1688
(1693)

Jacob Eliot

1693

William Greenough

1693

William Button

1693

Matthew Pittom

1693

Timothy Dwight

1695

Elizur Holyoke

1711

Relationship to Noyes

Artillery Company family
Brattle Street Church

Artillery Company family

Artillery Company member

Artillery Company family

Artillery Company member

Probate attested by
Richard Martyn, uncle of
Michael Martyn

Son of pewterer

Goldsmith, silversmith,
fellow apprentice

Artillery Company member
Brattle Street Church

Other JN Stones

Martha Hall 1701

Sarah Dolbeare 1701

Lt. John Cleverly 1703

Mehitabel Hammond 1704

Thaddeus Maccarty 1705
Rev. Edward Thompson 1705

Artillery Company family

Pewterer 's family

Artillery Company member

Artillery Company family;
perhaps related by mar-
riage to Elizabeth Noyes,
cousin of John Noyes

Artillery Company member

Born in Newbury, home of
Noyes clan

129

NOTES

1 Reverend Icabod Wiswall, 1700, Duxbury, Mass.; Martha Hall, 1701,
Roxbury, Mass.; Sarah Dolbeare, 1701, Boston, Mass.; Lieutenant John
Cleverly, 1703, Quincy, Mass.; Mehitabel Hammond, 1704, Newton, Mass.;
Reverend Edward Thompson, 1705, Marshfield, Mass.

2 Graven Images (Middletown, Ct.; Wesleyan University Press,
1966), pp. 296-300; Memorials for Children of Change (Middletown, Ct.:
Wesleyan University Press, 1974), pp. 89-92, 158-62, 170-73.

3 E. McClung Fleming, "Artifact Study: A Proposed Model,"
Winterthur Portfolio, 9 (1974), p. 158.

4 See Diana William Combs, "Ventures as an Artisan: The Multiple
Talents of Eighteenth-century Gravestone Carvers," Ms. AGS Collection at
the NEGHS Library, Boston, Mass., 1978, for a discussion of another silver-
smith-carver in New England.

5 For Noyes' life and works, see Kathryn C. Buhler, American Silver
1655-1825 jn the Museum of Fine Arts, 2 vols. (Boston: Museum of Fine
Arts, 1972); Kathryn C. Buhler, "A Pair of Candlesticks by John Noyes, 1695-
1700," Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, LIII (1955), pp. 25-29.

6 Probate Records 1285 and 1420, Suffolk County, Massachusetts.
See Zechariah Whitman, The History of the Ancient and Honourable

Artillery Company (Boston: John H. Eastburn, 1842), and Roll of Members
of the Military Company of the Massachusetts now called the Ancient and
Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts, with a Poster of the Com-
missioned Officers and Preachers, 1638-1894 (Boston, n. p., 1895).
° Buhler, American Silver, I, pp. 112-13.

9 Noyes used two touchmarks, "IN" in an ellipse and "IN" surmounting
cross-crosslet in a shield. See Buhler, American Silver, pp. 110-115.

10 The clasp, in the Garvan Collection at Yale University, is illus-
trated in The Magazine Antiques (1965), p. 838.

H See Buhler, American Silver, I, pp. 114-15.

12 These thumbpieces were usually imported from England. For
spoon designs, see Mrs. G. E. P. How, "Seventeenth-Century English Silver
and Its American Derivatives," in Arts of the Anglo-American Community
in the Seventeenth Century, ed. Ian M. G. Quimby (Charlottesville: Univer-
sity Press of Virginia, 1975), p. 195.

13 Forbes, pp. 121-22; Ludwig, pp. 296-98; Tashjian, pp. 89-92.

14 See Anthony N. B. Garvan, "The New England Porringer: An Index
of Custom," Smithsonian Annual Report 1958 (Washington, D.C.: Govern-
ment Printing Office, 1959), pp. 543-52; Mrs. G. E. P. How, p. 195; and
Edward J. Nygren, "Edward Winslow's Sugar Boxes: Colonial Echoes of
Courtly Love," Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin 33, no. 2 (Autumn 1971),
pp. 39-52.

1 5 The Diary of Samuel Sewall 1674-1729, ed. M. Halsey Thomas, 2
vols. (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1973), I, p. 467.

16 See, for example, Samuel Nowell, Abraham in Arms (Boston, 1678).

17 (London, 1679).

18 For a discussion of the Bowdoin coat of arms, see Gerard J. Brault,
"Pierre Baudouin and the Bowdoin Coat of Arms," The New England Histori-
cal and Genealogical Register (October, 1960), pp. 243-69. The pelican was
thought to vuln, or wound itself, in the breast to feed its blood to its young.

130

19 See Lloyd Grossman, "Heraldic Design on New England Grave-
stones," Old Time New England, 64 (Fall, 1973), pp. 55-60.

20 See, for example, the John Fowle stone, 1711, Charlestown, Mass.,
and the Captain Samuel Peck stone, 1736, Rehoboth, Mass., for especially
elaborate coats of arms.

21 Ibid., p. 106.

22 fold., p. 110.

23 Ibid., p. 111. Even the iconographically elusive squirrels (which
may in fact be griffins) on the Benjamin Hills stone have heraldic signifi-
cance. The squirrel's tail which shadows his body makes him "like one, who
carefully keeping the love and affection of his followers and retainers, is
sure thev will stick to him, protect and shadow him, in time of need" (p.
151).

24 For decking of the body and coffin, see "Description of England
and Ireland, in the 17th Century: By Jorevin," The Antiquarian Repository,
eds. Francis Grose and Thomas Astle (London, Edward Jeffrey, 1809), IV,
pp. 663-64.

25 (London, 1635).

26 Forbes, pp. 123-24.

27 (London, 1661), p. 149.

28 Amoris Divini Emblemata Stvdio et Aere Othonis Vaeni Concinnata
(Antwerp, 1640), pp. 112-13. These emblems were frequently reprinted
throughout Europe.

29 Van Veen, pp. 104-05.

3" Jane Donahue Eberwein explains this common seventeenth-
century speculation in " 'In a book, as in a glass': Literary Sorcery in
Mather's Life of Phips," EAL, X, no. 3 (Winter, 1975-76), pp. 289:300.

31 (Boston, 1702).

32 A Discourse Concerning Faith and Fervency in Prayer (Boston,
1710), p. 60.

33 Ibid., p. 65.

131

132

JOSEPH BARBUR, JR. :
THE FROND CARVER OF WEST MEDWAY

Michael Cornish

The aesthetic problem of filling formulary spaces
with genre decoration in a craft product is intriguing.
When the number of variables in a design is very lim-
ited, excellence can be achieved through the subtle
variety of interplay between elements. In the case of
early New England gravestones, the areas of decoration
consist of a semi-circle and two thin bands. It is sur-
prising to see what has been accomplished within such a
rigid format. In the vicinity of Medway , Massachusetts,
is a small group of eighteenth-century gravestones which
utilize only a sparse vocabulary of design elements made
up of arches and other compass play, tiny symmetric
trees, and graceful, flanking "fronds," but the designs
are composed with such cleverness and diversity that
each seems completely unique.

The carver of these stones was Joseph Barbur, Jr.
of West Medway, who cut the well-known Polly Coombes
marker in Bellingham, Massachusetts. Good historical
evidence and a number of probate entries have estab-
lished his shop as the origin of this work.l Now that
all of his carvings have been mapped and cataloged, this
body of sculpture records a gifted and restless imagina-
tion exploring the possibilities in abstract single-
plane relief design within a slate semi-circle (Fig. la,
b).

Nothing about Joseph Barbur 's life hints at his
remarkable talent as a designer. So far as is known, he
did not practice any other type of artisanry, although
his great-grandfather had been one of the region's early
furniture makers. ^ He was a country husbandman, a sim-
ple yeoman for whom carving could only have provided a
modest second income, since he produced only four to
eight stones a year. Son of a deacon and co-founder of
Medway, Joseph was born there in 1731 and remained in
West Medway until his death in 1812. He was impressed
into the service of the King during the French and
Indian wars in 1754, and again in 1758. In 1757 he
married Rebecca Clark and by her had seven children, at
least two of whom died as infants and one at birth. He
served in the American army during the Revolution and
answered alarms at Lexington in 1775 and Warwick, Rhode
Island, in 1776. In 1797, at age 66, he married
Hepzibeth Haven, a woman five years his junior who out-
lived him by nine years.

133

■w

\A.<3>

Natick

Woonsocket, R.I.

Figure la. Massachusetts location of Barbur stones
Figure lb. Concentration of Barbur stones.

134

Figure 2. Meriam Fairbank, 1779, West Medway , Mass

Figure 3. John Haven, 1785, Holliston, Mass

135

Iter-

Figure 4. Mary Dorr, 1776, Mendon, Mass

136

He apparently started making gravestones during the
time he served as a private with the Medway company
under Captain Adams, as his earliest productions date
from 1774-75. It is nearly impossible to get a sense of
the man from the genealogies available, but an indica-
tion of his character is left us by Abner Morse who
recollects that Barbur was "an eccentric but righteous
man. "3 He did not hold any public office as had his
colonial forebears.

The first years of carving appear to be fraught
with experiment, although the foundation for his mature
work is present almost from the start. During the first
decade he created a number of distinct designs which
were never repeated and several small groups of related
designs which he discontinued after this early phase.
These include whimsical adaptations of a design by
another stonecutter in the area4 (Fig. 2); thick,
highly-abstracted bas-relief trees (Fig. 3); death's
heads (Fig. 4); compass-plotted configurations of inter-
locking half circles (Fig. 5); and embryonic "frond and
hillock" designs (Fig. 6). Though these motifs do not
appear in their original form after the 1780s, Barbur 's
repertoire never really excludes them: intaglio trees
are incorporated in many later carvings; the skulls
develop "human" features; 5 the geometric patterns become
common border decorations, and the fronds elaborate into
wonderful stone bouquets which are the carver's most
significant achievement. A handful of late gravestones
carry unique decorations which resemble devices employed
early in his career.

Two main design themes dominate Barbur 's mature
work of the 1790s: the spirit effigies (Fig. 7), and
the abstract compositions for which a generic descrip-
tive name might be "frond and hillock" (Figs. 8-10).
The effigies are certainly delightful creatures, and
they are often complemented by very ornate and beautiful
borders of leaves and flowers on undulating vines, but
there is a uniformity to their conception which does not
mirror the invention lavished on the frond and hillock
type. Nothing accounts for the antithesis between these
conventional (if unusually animated) effigies and the
unfamiliar arrays of fronds, circles, arches, lobes,
collapsed triangles, and rosettes which compose the
other designs. There does not appear to be a relation-
ship between designs and the doctrines of local
churches, for both types are always found in the same
graveyards and they are contemporary. It is debatable
whether the curious frond and hillock designs have
specific iconographic meaning.

137

Figure 5. Elisabeth Cutlar, 1785, West Medway, Mass

Figure 6. Benjamin Kingsbury, 1787, Walpole , Mass

138

Figure 7. Susanna Adams, 1789, West Medway , Mass

139

Iconographic content can be found on a badly eroded
gravestone by another carver in Holliston for Kezia
Park, 1742, which depicts trees flanking and overhanging
a pile of balls. This pile of balls, which is also
found in concert with fronds on gravestones in the Taun-
ton area, is, according to C. A. Weatherby , a symbol for
Calvary." This stone was undoubtedly seen by Barbur
when he placed his work in the Central Burying Ground of
Holliston, and it predates his earliest efforts, so it
is possible that his embellished and stylized versions
of the design refer to Calvary. Small trees sometimes
incised into the central element, then, may signify the
Resurrection promised by Christ or the Tree of Life in
Paradise attainable through His sacrifice (Fig. 10).
Two gravestones carved by Barbur in the early nineteenth
century portray this scene in a more naturalistic fash-
ion; conifers or palm-type fronds arch gracelessly over
unarticulated mounds on the atypical markers for Sarah
Cutler, 1806, and Mary Cutler, 1806, both in West Med-
way's Evergreen Cemetery. It is, of course, possible
that these odd designs may be no more than space-filling
ornament, with detailing such as the trees revealing a
partially developed horror vacui. They may actually be
imitations of fashionable urn and willow designs. It is
also possible that the frond and hillock carvings are a
simplified, idiosyncratic copy of a peculiar design type
prevalent in Bristol County, Massachusetts. It is pos-
sible that the dramatic stone for Amos Adams, 1792,
represents the Tree of Life (Fig. 11).

Regardless of any meaning these designs may have,
their importance lies in the success with which Barbur
solved the formal problem of organizing decoration in a
semicircle. It is especially clear from rubbings or
drawings, which isolate the design from the artifact,
that the stonecutter possessed a profound sense of
balance and a keen eye for creating pleasing negative
shapes in his relief surface. Many of the frond and
hillock compositions can effectively be read backwards
from the negative space. This attention to negative
space was also a concern in earlier carvings, and a
small group of stones from the 1770s and 1780s have
playful positive/negative borders wherein relief ele-
ments alternate with cut outs on a scrolling stem.

Barbur worked at the end of an epoch enriched by a
tradition of original designs from the hands of individ-
ual craftsmen. His last gravestones date from the early
nineteenth century when almost all carvers in eastern
Massachusetts were affected by the popular neoclassical
mode, yet, except for the aforementioned rare

140

Figure 8. Moses Thompson, 1794, West Medway, Mass

141

Figure 9. Nathan Adams, 1800, West Medway, Mass

^& ' jr -*" »-^^H

Figure 11. Amos Adams, 1792, West Medway, Mass

142

Figure 10. Elial Metcalf, 1792, West Medway , Mass

143

exceptions, his designs remain unchanged in conception
from those of the previous decade. It could be that, as
an old man, he was intractable in his ways. He may have
seen no reason to conform to fashion, just as he never
saw reason to eliminate the antiquated long "s" from his
lettering. His market dwindled in the last years to his
own town. This may be the result of residents patron-
izing their only local carver as a thrifty alternative
to importing stones, or the result of Barbur's unwil-
lingness or inability to transport his gravestones and
install them farther away than Evergreen Cemetery, di-
rectly adjacent to his shop. It is reasonable to sup-
pose that his work was not much sought after, not being
in the current vogue in decoration, and it seems sure
that his weakened condition in these years would not
have allowed him to accommodate many orders. 7 Loyalty
or conservatism on the part of his customers may account
for some of the final sales, as many of his customers
over the years were relatives.

In conclusion, Barbur's mature art derives from two
different local prototypes. His death's head and effigy
represent the mainstream of gravestone design, and he
shifts to the effigy as did carvers all over New Eng-
land. The effigies are, however, endowed with vernacu-
lar traits which set them apart from the baroque pro-
ducts of such workshops as the Lamson ' s in Charlestown,
Massachusetts, or the Stevens' in Newport, Rhode Island
The abstract designs, on the other hand, probably mimic
a regional invention which grew out of the acanthus
scroll family of designs. Barbur gave these an original
interpretation. While many of the other frond or
tendril carvers filled the tympanum with a clutter of
multi-lobed, overlapping vines, lozenges, hearts, tu-
lips, confusing drill-holes, and diaper patterns, his
are realized with restraint and an instinct both for
balancing masses and for proportion. ° While this whole
school of frond carving deserves careful analysis, by
virtue of the ingenious interplay of figure and ground,
Joseph Barbur was surely one of its leading exponents.

144

APPENDIX A
Sites of Barbur Stones

Bellingham, North or Oak Hill Cemetery 12

Holliston, Central Burying Ground of the First

Congregational Church 16

Hopkinton, Central Burying Ground 1

Medfield, Vine Lake Cemetery 7

Mendon , Old Cemetery 4

Milford, Vernon Grove Cemetery 3

Millis, Bare Hill or Prospect Hill Cemetery .... 20

Sherborn, Boggistowe Farms Burying Ground 1

Sherborn, South Cemetery 2

Sturbridge, Old Burying Ground 1

Upton, Old Town Cemetery 11

Walpole, Old Burial Place 6

Walpole, Plain Street Cemetery 2

West Medway, Evergreen Cemetery 51

Total 137

This list does not include some undecorated stones where
identification based solely on lettering would be prob-
lematic, or footstones which are found only in Belling-
ham, Holliston, Medfield, Sherborn, Upton, and Walpole.

145

APPENDIX B

Probated Barbur Stones

Name Date

Nathan Adams 1800

James Clark, Jr.* 1786

Mary Brick 1788

Meriam Fairbank 1779

Elihue Harding 1796

Lydia Harding 1795

Elias Hayward 1783

Eliel Metcalf 1792

Moses Thompson** 1794

Probate

Location (County) Number

West Medway (Norfolk) 169

West Medway (Suffolk) 18852

Sherborn (Middlesex) 2516

West Medway (Suffolk) 17059

Millis (Norfolk) 3760

Millis (Norfolk) 8780

West Medway (Suffolk) 18073

West Medway (Suffolk) 20133

West Medway (Norfolk) 18289

* This stone has been replaced with one signed by Levi
Maxey .

** The payment in this case accounts for two grave-
stones. The second is either that for Kezia, wife of
Moses, or for Moses, Jr. who died of smallpox in
Sturbridge and was buried there.

Nine unspecified payments were made to Barbur in other
accounts, and these may represent gravestone purchases.

146

NOTES

1 Both a memorandum to Barbur's genealogy in Ephraim Orcutt
Jameson's The History of Medway, Mass., 1713-1885 (Providence: J. A. &
R. A. Reid, 1886), p. 453, and his entry in "The Descendants of Captain
George Barbour of Medfield" manuscript, New England Historic Genealogi-
cal Society, state that the man was a maker of gravestones. Harriette
Forbes' notation in her appendix of stonecutters to Gravestones of Early New
England (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1927) that Barbur's work is identi-
fied, in addition to probate evidence, on the basis of signed or initialed
examples cannot at present be substantiated. Forbes' notes at the American
Antiquarian Society do not provide information to support her published
statement.

2 No product of George Barber's craftsmanship is known to have sur-
vived to the present day, although he was a close neighbor of John Thurston
whose carved furniture is well documented. Joseph decorated the grave-
stone for Amos Adams, 1792, West Medway, with a similitude of a carved
chest panel by Thurston which may, in fact, be a copy from his forebear's
furniture handed down in the family (See Fig. 11).

3 A Genealogical Register of the Inhabitants and History of the Towns
of Sherburn and Holliston (Boston: Damrell & Moore, 1856), p. 13.

4 The model for this design, which differs markedly in detail from
Barbur's stripped down version, shows that the central element is a sheaf of
wheat. The preponderance of gravestones using this motif, which Vincent
Luti attributes to a member of the New family of carvers, is found gener-
ally to the south of Medway.

5 The earliest effigy, for Sarah Perry, 1786, retains the "lightbulb"
skull shape as well as the triangular nose. It is the only such head without
hair, with a mortality slogan, "My Glass is Run," and with a frowning mouth.
Another early effigy for Nathan Whiting, 1790, still uses the bone-shaped
nose.

6 C. A. Weatherby, "Old Tombstones," manuscript, Vol. 2, p. 32, New
England Historic Genealogical Society.

7 It can be seen in carvings dated 1806 and 1809 that Barbur was
enfeebled since the decorations and inscriptions are only scratched in. In
some of his last carvings, the chisel was walked across the stone to produce
shallow diaper backgrounds, and the recessed band borders discernibly wob-
ble. The signature he applied to his will, drawn up in 1807 when he was
already "weak in body," is very unsteady. It is not known whether his son
Joseph was at this time assisting with the business. Joseph III neither
inherited the carving tools nor succeeded his father in the craft.

8 David Linkon (Lincoln), an early stonecutter using the typical frond
designs, produced a great number of gravestones from his shop in Norton,
Massachusetts. Jabez Carver from Raynham, Ebenezer Winslow from
Berkley, another Ebenezer Winslow from Uxbridge, Cyrus Deane, Barney
Leonard from Warrentown (Middleboro), and Leonard Deane from Taunton or
Rehoboth, all made gravestones decorated with arrangements of naturalistic
and geometric shapes including these typical, unchanging fronds. For an
initial study of the frond school, see my "Bay Colony Tendril Carvers" manu-
script, Association for Gravestone Studies Archives, New England Historic
Genealogical Society.

147

148

STONECARVERS OF THE NARRAGANSETT BASIN:
STEPHEN AND CHARLES HARTSHORN OF PROVIDENCE

Vincent F. Luti

Narragansett Bay area slate carvers in the eigh-
teenth century produced some of the finest gravestones
in New England. The Hartshorn, Allen and New families
all drew heavily on designs from the dominant Stevens
family shop in Newport, Rhode Island, and also borrowed
freely from each other. For this reason, and because of
possible apprenticeship ties among the families, it is
often difficult to distinguish the works of one carver
from those of another. In the case of Stephen Hartshorn
and his son Charles, it is possible through probated
and signed stones to compile a list of stylistic ele-
ments which define Hartshorn stones. With this evidence
in hand, a group of unusual and beautiful stones in
Rhode Island can be traced to the Hartshorn shop (Fig.
1).

Stephen Hartshorn of Providence, "stonecutter,"
was directly descended from Lt . John Hartshorn, stone-
cutter, of Essex County, Massachusetts. Stephen's
father, Jacob, the grandson of Lt . John Hartshorn, was
born in Haverhill, Massachusetts in 1701. 2 He married
Martha Frye in Boston in 1723 and first appears in
Rhode Island documents with the birth in Bristol of his
first child in 1725.3 He next appears in Providence in
a deed of July 6, 1729, for the purchase of a dwelling
house and small lot at the southern end of town (what
is now South Main St. at Fox Point).4 He is listed as a
mason, and there is no evidence that he was ever a
stonecarver .

His third son, Stephen, the only one who appears to
have been a stonecarver, was born in 1737 in Providence.
He was a mason like his father. 5 He married Silence
Ingraham of Newport (or possibly Bristol), Rhode Island,
in Newport in 1760. 6 Stephen had a brother, Charles,
born 1735, who is listed by Dr. Ernest Caulfield as a
carver, but there is no documentation given for this
claim.' He is not even mentioned in his father's will
which lists every living son and daughter by name. He
may have left his family and home before his father's
will was made, or, he may have died young. His brother,
Stephen, however, named one of his own children Charles,
and this Charles (1765-1832) was indeed a carver, the
one that Caulfield mistakenly refers to as a brother.8
Charles' work is a pale reflection of his father's,
limited in output, and, barring a few exceptions, dull.

149

® fv'endon

West ©

Thompson

RHODE ISLAND

Providence- ®
Cranston- (5
Warwick- ©

E. Greenwich

MASSACHUSETTS

©Tsunton
©/ Dlghton

Figure 1. Location of cemeteries with Hartshorn stones

Figure 2. Elizabeth Kinnicutt, 1754, Warren, R.I

150

Father and son worked together briefly in Provi-
dence until about 1788 when the whole family disappears
from the records. They left Providence at the time of a
large emigration of Baptists and Quakers from south-
eastern New England to the counties east and west of
Albany, New York, in the 1770s and 1780s.9 They seem to
have settled in the area around Johnstown, New York.
Charles was apparently the only one to return to
Providence.10 A Stephen Heartshorne was listed as liv-
ing in Montgomery County, New York, in the 1810 Federal
Census Index. His death on January 8, 1812, is recorded
in Providence records, but he probably died elsewhere.
Silence, his wife, lies alone in the Hartshorn plot at
Swan Point Cemetery, Providence.

The earliest documented payment for a Steven
Hartshorn stone is that for Abigail Becknall, who died
November 26, 1772. An entry of June 28, 1773, for this
stone payment is in Joseph Tillinghast ' s Account Book.
There is only one earlier reference to Stephen Hartshorn
in a burial account for Obadiah Brown, 1764, in the
Obadiah Brown Account Book. Hartshorn was paid for
"picking and laying the stones" for the tomb which could
only be masonry work. This date of 1764 is probably
close to the time he actually started carving. His
stones are backdated to as early as 1710, but stylistic
evidence and the number of stones dated 1764-70 give
broad evidence that he started carving at this time.

Jacob Whitman's Account Book, in the Rhode Island
Historical Society Library, was kept by Stephen Hart-
shorn's brother-in-law, and it includes the following
tool references in Stephen's account. They indicate he
was a working mason, if not already a stonecutter, by
1767.

Apr. 23, 1767 to mending a crowbar and chisel
Nov. 13, 1770 purchase of two steel chisels

1772 payment for pair of gravestones
for Stephen Jenkins
Apr. 6, 1772 to mending of chisels
Jan. 25, 1773 to sharpening 10 chisels

He was 22 when his father died in 1769, but Jacob Hart-
shorn's gravestone bears stylistic evidence that it was
carved some ten years later, when Stephen was in his
early thirties. From these account books and from pro-
bate records, the following list of attributions to the
Hartshorn shop forms the basis for the identification
of Hartshorn designs (Figs. 2-7).

151

ATTRIBUTION

Name

Obadiah Brown

1761

Providence , R.I.

(missing)

Abigail Becknall

1772

Barrington , R.I.

Allin Brown
1778
Providence, R.I.

Amos Bowen

1780

East Providence, R.I

Elizabeth Bowen

1778

Urial Bowen

1768

Samuel Watson

1781

West Thompson, Ct .

Elisabeth Ballou
1783
Providence, R.I.

Martin Thurber

1783

Providence , R.I.

John Kinnicutt

1783

Warren , R.I.

Elizabeth Kinnicutt

1754

Lydia Kinnicutt

1754

Samuel Thurber

1785

Unknown

Rhoda Chaffee
1786
Providence, R.I.

Joshua Ashton
1786
Providence, R.I.

RECORDS FOR THE HARTSHORNS

Source

O. Brown Account Book, RIHSL,
payment to Stephen Hartshorn
for "picking and laying
stones," 1764

Joseph Tillinghast Account
Book, RIHSL, estate of A.
Becknall, payment to Stephen
Hartshorn for gravestone, 1773

Unspecified estate payment to
Stephen Hartshorn, Providence
Probate A1024, 1779

Estate of Amos Bowen, payment
for three sets of stones to
Stephen Hartshorn, Taunton,
Mass. Probate 26:323, 1780

Signed "S. Hartshorn 1783"

Signed "S. Hartshorn"

Estate payment to Charles
Hartshorn for gravestones,
Providence Probate A1164, 1783

Signed "S. Hartshorn," estate
of John Kinnicutt, payment for
all three stones to Charles
Hartshorn, Warren, R.I. Pro-
bate 1:504, 1784

Estate payment to Stephen
Hartshorn for gravestones,
Providence Probate A1230, 1787

Signed "C. Hartshorn"

Estate payment to Stephen
Hartshorn for gravestones,
Providence Probate A1255 , 1791

152

FAMILY STONES

Name

Jacob Hartshorn
1769
Providence , R.I

Lydia Hartshorn
1776
Providence , R.I

Relationship
Father of Stephen Hartshorn

Daughter of Stephen Hartshorn

The documented and signed stones of Stephen and
Charles Hartshorn provide a list of designs (numbers
1-20) used for primary authentication purposes. Stones
carved for immediate and related members of the Hart-
shorn family, but not documented or signed, are desig-
nated numbers 21-24 for secondary authentication. Com-
binations of any elements 1-24 are believed to be suf-
ficient to attribute a stone to Stephen Hartshorn.
Other aspects of the stone (lettering, numbers, stone
type) can be used to give more weight to an attribution.
Once having confirmed, by elements of primary and sec-
ondary authentication, a stone's "identity," it is then
possible to add to the repertoire of attributed designs
any new element that appears on subsequent stones. Six
such derived elements are numbered 25-30. In this way
some 173 stones can be attributed to the shop of Stephen
and Charles Hartshorn. This is by no means a final
count, but it is a sufficient number upon which to base
a study of the distinctive character of the shop's work.

REPERTOIRE OF HARTSHORN DESIGN ELEMENTS

Amos
Bo wen.

Eilz.
Kutrucutt

1. Hourglass

UfUil Bowen-
3. Spread acanthus

Elizabeth. Bowen.
2. Profile rose

Lydia. Kinnicul

Lamp

153

Amos Bowen.
5. Drilled pegholes

Abigair^'BecKnall

6. Wig with knob and coil

Sa/nuel Watson.
7. Wig with bump and
coil

bail

BecKaalL

8. Straight feathers in
flight

Elirabe\KKinnicutt $a,mue I Watson.

9. Straight feathers 10. Chevron marks

with stubby overlay

'Joshua
>Ashton,

tJoKjrv
KinaLcatt

11. Rolled, etched
parchment

luelWdtsoo.
12. Link with button and
heart

m$m%®

tliiabeDiKinnicutt
13. Peacock fan

Amos
Bowerv

14. Scroll with carrot top

154

UrlaL
Bowerv

15. Scroll with
f iddlehead

Abigail
BecKnolL

16. Scroll with coil

Joshua
Ashtoa

17. Scroll with

flowering fig

Jbhrb
Kinnicutt

18. Scroll with fig

Ki'nnicutt

19. Rose-rod vine

John. Kinnicutt
20. Portrait effigy

Jacob HarUKom,
21. Wig with straight
hair, bump and
flaps

LydiaiHartshorrv
22. Portrait effigy

155

LydtCL

Hartshorn.

23. Pineapple

Lewis
Pitt
6tflio<A, >&/

25. Rolled parchment
with foliate
extension

Hartshorn,

24. Flat scroll with coil
and hook

Hannah
TucKer

26. Deep-cut scroll

Lyafa, Sheldon.
27. Frontal rose

Abigail Becknell
28. Pear-shaped bald head

Lydia Williams
29. Coined feathers

Susannah Hoar
30. Roseate rod with
pineapple finial

156

Figure 3. Abigail Becknall, 1772, Barrington, R.I

Figure 4. Samuel Watson, 1781, West Thompson, Ct

157

Figure 5. John Kinnicutt, 1783, Warren, R.I

Figure 6. Jacob Hartshorn, 1759, Providence, R.I.

158

Figure 7. Lydia Hartshorn, 1776, Providence, R.I

Figure 8. Hartshorn eye designs

159

Given the similarity of many of the design elements
of the Hartshorn shop to those of the Stevens' shop in
Newport and the Allen shops of Providence and Rehoboth,
close attention should be paid to facial features and
border scrolls. A careful observor of Narragansett
Basin stonecarving will notice essential features which
help to distinguish the Hartshorn style.

The pear-shaped head and the eyes are of particular
importance in identification. Careful comparison shows
that George Allen uses the pear-shaped head only for
cherub figures. All his other effigies present adult
proportions, and thus cannot be confused with those of
the Hartshorns which are pear-shaped. John Stevens I
and II employ the pear-shaped head, but their stones
lack any other details of design and lettering which
might be confused with Hartshorn carving. Similarly,
the eyes cut by the Hartshorns are strikingly distinct
from those of the Aliens and the Stevens. The distance
from eye to chin is short and child-like in Hartshorn
designs, but the Aliens present adult proportions here.
Moreover, Allen eyes are modeled in a naturalistic
fashion, with the eyeball and lid correctly modeled. In
contrast, the eye of Stevens stones are stylized slits.
Between these extremes lie the Hartshorn eyes, which are
too large for the(ir sockets, and carved in a crude,
bulging fashion. The drilled hole for the pupil
increases this effect. On some stones, the eyelids meet
in the outer corners and turn up sharply, creating a
slant-eyed effect (Fig. 8).

The Hartshorn border scrolls can be used in con-
junction with primary and secondary elements to attrib-
ute several important groups of stones to the shop
(Fig. 9). However, the scrolls are useful for identi-
fication only in conjunction with other elements, since
many Narragansett Basin carvers used similar designs.
The Hartshorn scrolls were probably derived from those
of George Allen, although he apparently never used the
fig-like element favored by Hartshorn. It was probably
borrowed from William Stevens, reflecting Hartshorn's
familial connections with Newport. After 1770, when
George Allen died, the scrolls of Gabriel Allen closely
resemble the work of the Hartshorns.

The Mary Buliod stone (Fig. 9e) is verified as a
Hartshorn stone since its tympanum is the same as that
of the Abigail Bicknall stone. The Mary Blackmar stone
(Fig. 9d) has an identical panel, which then helps
authenticate the rose-in-ring finial design found on
many Hartshorn stones. The Mary Blackmar stone is part

160

Figure 9. Hartshorn border scrolls.

9a. Nathan Arminton, 1768, Providence, R.I
9b. Elizabeth Hynes, 1750, Providence, R.I
9c. Patience Arnold, 1765, Warwick, R.I.
9d. Mary Blackmar, 1724, Providence, R.I.
9e. Mary Buliod, 1763, Newport, R.I.

Figure 10. Sarah Swan, 1767, Bristol, R.I

161

of a group of ten stones carved for Roger William's
decendants, in the small Williams Family cemetery in
Providence. This group of Williams stones is further
confirmed as Hartshorn work by other primary and
secondary design elements. The Elisabeth Hynes border
(Fig. 9b) leads to a group of ten stones which all have
double-ribbed stems in the border, a design taken from
George Allen.1! They in turn have both primary and
secondary design elements that tie them to the corpus
of Hartshorn work.

SIX SINGULAR STONES

These are six gravestones in the Narragansett
Basin with unique designs, unmistakably related by
carving details (Figs. 10-13; 19-20). These six stones
are widely distributed like advertisements around the
region, and on the basis of the repertoire of documented
design elements, they can be attributed to the Hartshorn
shop. The problem is not so much to prove that they are
from the Hartshorn shop as it is to place them in the
chronology of Hartshorn work. The six stones are pre-
sented in chronological order, with the first three dis-
cussed as a group because of the close ties between
them. The fourth stone is shown to connect all four to
the Hartshorn design repertoire, and then the last pair
is presented in relation to the main body of the shop's
work .

The first three stones are for Sarah Swan, 1767,
and Mehethbell Wardwell, 1764, Bristol, Rhode Island,
and for Molley Danforth, 1769, Taunton, Massachusetts
(Figs. 10-12). Each stone has some aspects which can
be considered "old fashioned" at the time, such as the
heavy baroque carving technique which was giving way to
a newer, low relief style throughout the Basin. They
also display biblical and mortuary symbols such as Adam
and Eve, skull, scythe, and hourglass. However, it is
on the basis of archaic lettering forms that the stones
can be shown to be the work of the Hartshorn shop. The
first three stones probably date to the earliest stage
of Stephen Hartshorn's career, 1767-70, since lettering
archaisms disappear from all stones carved after 1770.
Archaic letter forms all but disappear over the course
of the carving of these three stones.

The stone with the earliest date, that of
Mehetabell Wardwell, has a "y" with sweeping, curled-
under tail; a hooked "r"; a hooked italic "1"; an "s"
with hooked serif; and a "t" with an open triangular
cap. The other letters match those of authenticated

162

Pv <^S i

Figure 11. Mehethabell Wardwell, 1764, Bristol, R.I

Figure 12. Molley Danforth, 1769, Taunton, Mass

163

iAi^i

Figure 13. Rev. Richard Round, 1768, Rehoboth, Mass

y^iiirvitCCC Z&J768S

Figure 14. Hartshorn letters and numerals.

164

— "SmT^iii i V> i H" ' i» .%<u»u

Figure 15

Hannah Tucker, 1767, Warwick, R.I.

Figure 16. Richard Round and Sarah Swan border scrolls

Figure 17. Sarah Earl, 1768, Providence, R.I.

165

Hartshorn stones. These early stones also display
inconsistencies in the height of the numerals, a problem
which Hartshorn resolves first by making all numerals
the same height, and later by carving them with proper
variations in height.

The Molley Danforth stone, 1769, was probably
carved next, since it still has the archaic "y»" "r,"
and "s" and uncertain numeral heights. However, the
archaic "t" disappears with the exception of the tiny
letter on the scroll in the tympanum. He now uses a
simple cross beam "t" until 1775. The Sarah Swan stone,
1767, has lost the archaic "r," "s," and "y" and the
uneven letters. It retains only the archaic "t" and
the italic "1." It does have a misspelling, "hear,"
and an italic "i" which make single appearances later.
The Rev. Richard Round stone, 1768, Rehoboth, Mass-
achusetts is the key marker showing the relationship of
these archaisms to the documented later letters and
numerals cut by Stephen Hartshorn (Fig. 13). Both
versions, old and new, of each letter and numeral
appear in the long epitaph (Fig. 14). Thus by showing
that the Round stone is from the hand of Stephen Hart-
shorn, it becomes clear that the earlier group was cut
by him as well.

The facial features of the Round stone are clearly
related to those on documented Hartshorn stones (Fig.
15). The eyes of the documented Tucker, Hartshorn,
Blackmar, and Brown effigies are heavy-lidded and
bulging, with staring, dotted pupils and a slight upturn
of lid and eyebrow lines, as do the eyes on the Round
effigy. Moreover, the wigs on the Tucker and Round
effigies and the wings and feathers are very close in
style. Clearly, the Reverend Richard Round stone is
from the hand of Stephen Hartshorn.

Given this attribution, we can turn again to the
first group of three stones to find further design
similarities between them, the Round stone, and other
Hartshorn work. The panel borders and base runners of
the Round and Sarah Swan stones are identical, down to
the number and type of scratch marks on the fig shapes
(Fig. 16). The Swan footstone has the rolled parchment
with foliate extension seen on the authenticated John
Kinnicutt stone. The Mehethabell Wardwell stone effigy,
with head, wing and supporting scroll is related both
to the Round stone and to the authenticated Sarah Earl
stone (Fig. 17). Note the distinctive Hartshorn puffy,
heavy-lidded, curved eyes and the pear-shaped head.
The wings on the Wardwell stone are double layered, in

166

sk4*-** * .!

Figure 18. Abijah Hunt, 1769, Providence, R.I
KM mm

Figure 19. George Law, 1769, Providence, R.I

Figure 20. Jeremiah Randall, 1770, Warwick, R.I

167

the Hartshorn manner. Finally, the Molley Danforth
stone presents a variety of Hartshorn designs, from the
border scrollwork to the trumpeting figure. The back-
ground stipling is the square shape used frequently by
Hartshorn; the scales on the parchment scroll match
those on the Sarah Swan stone snake; and a sun face
peeps from under the tympanum arch, as on the Swan
stone .

The last two singular stones for George Law, 1769,
Providence, Rhode Island, and Jeremiah Randall, 1770,
Warwick, Rhode Island, were inspired by a stone George
Allen cut for Abijah Hunt (Figs. 18-20). The stones
share the open Bible flanked by scrolls and surmounted
by an effigy, but the Law and Randall stones could not
have been cut by Allen. Allen never used the simple
"t" appearing on the Randall and Law stones; he always
carved a thickened "t" with serifs. Further evidence
of Hartshorn lettering is found in the boxy "R" and "D"
and in the typical Hartshorn spacing of "RANDALL."

At the base of the Law stone is a rolled parchment
border seen on the John Kinnicutt stone, and on the Law
and Randall stones, the effigies have the typical fat
Hartshorn face. The vine border of the Jeremiah Randall
stone is the Hartshorn double-ribbed stem type. Final-
ly, there is the plain difference in quality of carving,
as the scrollwork on the Hunt stone is elegant and cor-
rectly modeled in comparison to the work on the Law and
Randall markers.

These six stones are the finest productions of the
Hartshorn shop, and they reveal the inventive nature of
Narragansett Basin carvers. The stylistic range of the
Hartshorn shop also displays the increasing sophistica-
tion of urban gravestone carving in the years before
the American Revolution. Like their competitors, the
Allen and the Stevens families, the Hartshorns easily
blended classical ornament and traditional memento mori
motifs. As the number of stones attributed to the
Hartshorns increases, the shop can take its place as one
of the most prolific centers of early New England grave-
stone carving.

NOTES

1 Probate Records, Deeds, 20:611, Providence City Hall.

2 Deane and Pearson, Hartshorn Geneology, (Ottawa, 111.: The
Elliot Press, 1961), pp. 6-8. We are told that Jacob's mother, Hannah, upon
the murder of her husband, John Jr., in Haverhill, by Indians, remarried to a
William Smith in 1709 and moved to Providence, R.I., with the family, about

168

the same time Jacob and his family moved there from Bristol, R.I., in 1729.

3 Jacob's marriage appears in the Report of the Records Commis-
sioners, Boston, 1883, 9:114. The births of his children can be found in
Town Hall Records, Bristol, R.I., and in James Arnold, Index of Births,
Marriages, Deaths, Providence 1636-1850, 1:29.

4 Probate Records, Deeds, 8:231, Providence City Hall. Another lot
was purchased approximately across the street on the west side in 1772
(19:170), and was bounded by the salt river. Other transactions for these
lots are under Stephen Hartshorn's name (20:611; 21:566). However, both
are sold by 1788, the critical year in which it appears all the Hartshorns
left Providence. Both lots are shown in H. R. Chace, Maps of Providence,
Rhode Island (n.p., 1906), Plate I. One building is referred to in Names of
the Owners and Occupants of Buildings in the Town of Providence from
1749-1771 (Providence, 1870).

^Probate Records, Deeds, 19:170, Providence City Hall.

6 James Arnold, Vital Record of Rhode Island, Newport County
(Providence, 1893), 4:36.

7 Ernest Caulfield, "Connecticut Gravestones xii," The Connecticut
Historical Society Bulletin, 32, no. 3 (1967), 65-79.

8 Probate Records, Deeds, 26:91-92. Both refer to Charles as a
stonecutter. There is also the signed Rhoda Chafee stone of 1784 in the
Providence North Burial Ground.

9 Chnsfield Johnson, History of Washington Co. N.Y. (Philadelphia,
1878), 290 ff. In the 1790 New York Census for Caughnawaga in Mont-
gomery Co., three Hartshorns are listed, Jacob, Richard Sr., and

Hartshorn.

10 The 1810 U. S. Census for Providence lists no other Hartshorn
but Charles.

11 The double-ribbed stem group:
Providence, R.I.
Providence, R.I.
Warwick, R.I.
Providence, R.I.
Providence, R.I.
East Providence, R.I.
Providence, R.I.
Warwick, R.I.
Warwick, R.I.
Rehoboth, Mass.

12 The sweeping tail reappears on the Mary Richmond stone of 1781
in East Providence and on the Franciss Dumee stone, 1783, Providence. On
the Dumee stone, the misspelled "hear" of the Sarah Swan stone also
reappears. The hooked "r" makes a rare appearance on the Jonathan Olney
stone, 1787, Providence. The Abigail Brown stone, 1766, Providence, has a
hooked serif "s." The Sarah Earl stone, 1768, Providence, has a hooked "C."
The James Blackmar stone, 1710,, Providence, has a hooked "G." All these
stones are the work of the Hartshorn shop.

169

Daniel Smith

1770

Lydia Sheldon

1772

Hannah Tucker

1767

George Jackson,

1769

Joseph Williams

1724

Sibbell Mason

1759

Sarah Earl

1768

Elizabeth Hynes

1750

Jeremiah Randall

1770

William Lindsey

1777

170

FOLK ART ON GRAVESTONES:
THE GLORIOUS CONTRAST

Charles Bergengren

By the late eighteenth century in America, there
was anxiety in some circles about the dearth of culture
and elegance in provincial life in contrast with what
the colonists knew was available in London. The old
country was considered to have the ideal cultural cli-
mate, and the wellspring of its culture was classical.
American and English artists conceived the highest art
to be history painting, which celebrated the noble atti-
tudes of the ancient art of Rome, newly rediscovered in
excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum. This class of
Americans fervently believed in and tried to hasten what
they called the "translation" of the arts from east
(Greece) to west (first to Rome, then London, finally to
America) . 1

After the Revolution, however, another attitude
developed in patriotic circles. This sentiment was
given expression by Timothy Dwight, poet and president
of Yale College, and was termed by him "the glorious
contrast." He combined the patriotic fervor of the
revolution with the continuing Puritan ethos of New
England. In so doing he emphatically rejected the
rococo excesses of English taste and the American intel-
lectual slavery to such aristocratic models. The man-
ners, the titles, the ostentation of european nobility
were stilted; American habits, by contrast, he praised
for their honesty, directness, and plainness. Dwight
was often caustic about this contrast. He called Eng-
land a "dy'd serpent," "tinselled outside," "painted
tomb," "foul harlot," and, most amusingly, "a fribble
dwindled from a man. "2 Americans, by contrast, were
"sunny geniuses," "Phoenixes divine," "plain," "frank,"
"practical," and presumably real men, too. The worst
thing one could do, in Dwight 's opinion, would be to
poison these American virtues by making a trip to vain
and corrupt Italy and thereby becoming a "travelled
Ape. "3

The objects one would see on the grand tour, or
artifacts produced for the aristocrats who indulged in
the tours, are saturated with the very attitudes that
Dwight deplored. They are as mannered as possible and
they are executed in about as high a style as the acad-
emy ever devised. Grandiose history paintings in par-
ticular are full of dramatic lighting, agitated brush-
work, and the full range of academic technique. But

171

they are only one extreme of the cultural spectrum; most
objects exist in a more complex middle range. Rela-
tively few people are ever influenced by only one cul-
tural idea or model at a time, be it progressive, con-
servative, elite, folk or even popular. People and
their artifacts are usually more interesting than that,
because the same individuals invoke different patterns
of behavior at different moments or in different situa-
tions. The elite, for instance, often rely on some
traditional patterns even while they concoct other, more
progressive styles or modes; and the folk are always
aware of and adopt elements of the latest trends, even
as they insist on continuity and tradition. In both
cases people freely choose among alternatives often
thought to be mutually exclusive. 4

Thus the majority of artifacts we can study are
what one might call "multi-valent , " since they contain
features which simultaneously resonate both folk and
elite attitudes. Portrait paintings produced in America
for various classes present familiar examples. The
works of John Singleton Copley, Ammi Phillips and anony-
mous folk masters all inherently reflect individuality
and ego, but they also show the visual and technical
restraint associated with the egalitarian American
religious or folk community. 5 The gravestones of late
eighteenth-century America also exhibit complex aspects
of this glorious contrast, both when compared to English
prototypes, and when identified as being carved for
various classes, religious or folk groups within the
United States.

A full continuum of social values can be found in
the images on gravestones, ranging from a relatively
high style (corresponding to academic paintings) to a
relatively folk style (corresponding to the itinerant
professional folk painters), to the plainly amateur as
well. As in folk paintings, the imagery on the stones
more influenced by folk moral and aesthetic attitudes
tends toward a nonpersonalized, flat, symmetrical and
abstract style. Stones which are carved to satisfy the
individualistic and competitive values of the merchant
elite, or of the intellectual elite yearning for the
"translation" of the arts and civilization from Europe,
tend to be ornate and fleshly reminders of, or monuments
to, accomplishments in this world. Perhaps the clearest
examples of varying ratios of folk and elite attitudes
in gravestone art can be seen in the stylistic range of
the portrait stones.

At one extreme are the monuments sculpted to the

172

Figure 1. Mary Owens, 1747, Charleston, S.C

■HRimimnmni

Figure 2. Rev. Nathaniel Rogers, 1775, Ipswich, Mass

173

tastes of the very rich, the most worldly class of all.
This class has traditionally favored realism, and the
most lifelike, lively and naturalistic portrait stones
that I have found are for a group of wealthy planters
and/or merchants who are buried in Charleston, South
Carolina. Their portraits in stone are all exquisitely
and naturalistically detailed, even to the point of sug-
gesting the luxuriousness of the fabrics. One can al-
most see the sheen of satin dresses in the slate. They
are also exceptionally animated portraits; the very per-
sonalities of the individuals shine forth as actively as
the rustling dresses. Note, for instance, the eyes of
Mary Owens' portrait stone, 1747 (Fig. 1). On other
stones, academic robes billow or silk scarves wave
about, adding to the animation. Some of these portraits
are also beswagged with acanthus (itself a reference to
classical Greece), and the Elizabeth Simmons stone,
1740, features her portrait as a Roman-style bust,
flanked by mourners in togas. Mrs. Simmons thus
represents the much desired translation of culture to
these barren western shores. Her portrait can be com-
pared to that of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Izard, also of
Charleston, whom Copley painted in 1775 in a setting
filled with icons of opulence and antiquity, including
an ormolu table, statuary and the Coliseum. The oval
cameo frame and a nearly three-quarters pose, which
characterizes these Charleston portrait stones, suggests
that they were executed using ivory miniatures of the
sitters as a model. But the animated personalities and
textures alone would lead us to compare them to the most
corporeal and lively of the academic painters, such as
Gilbert Stuart.

It is important to note that these Charleston
stones were all carved in Boston. The slate alone would
tell us that they were imported from beyond the sandy
shores of Carolina, but the Elizabeth Simmons stone is
also proudly signed, on the top, "H. Emmes, Boston."
This fact clearly speaks of the far-flung connections of
these families via the coastal trade, not to mention
their far-flung aspirations. It also clearly indicates
the degree of technical virtuosity and nuance achieved
by Boston carvers, and the sensitivity with which they
adapted their product to their clientele. For while
there are a few portrait stones in New England with
similar displays of personality, the majority are more
subdued and sterner in character. Emotion and person-
ality are diminished, or at least presented soberly.
These stones were for the most part made for ministers,
and I believe their reserved and formalized qualities
are not a matter of awkward carving but rather a careful

174

Figure 3. Thomas Chester, 1781, Groton , Ct

Figure 4. Silas Bigelow, 1769, Paxton, Mass

175

adjustment to the Puritan religious ethos still pre-
vailing in this region, and especially in this class of
patrons such as Nathaniel Rogers (Fig. 2). These carv-
ings therefore represent the same combination of cos-
mopolitan, worldly wisdom tempered by a Puritan or
Yankee communal ethos as is found in the early portraits
of Copley. The same carvers supplied, by contrast,
distinctly more lively and academic carvings to the
Anglican merchants of Charleston.

Another ratio of folk and elitist values is dis-
played in the stone for Thomas Chester, 1781, which
proudly proclaims him to be a sea captain from Groton,
Connecticut (Fig. 3). The baroque, ornate carving
creates an effect of worldly opulence; the foliate ten-
drils and crowns swirl about with the agitation of aca-
demic atmospheric brushwork. The wings are delicately
carved, each feather slightly ruffled. The face is
fully fleshed with three-dimensional modeling, another
gesture toward high-style realism. But there is no
personality or even individuality in this face at all.
The central effigy on this stone is virtually indis-
tinguishable from countless others by the same carver,
and very similar to many more by other carvers up and
down the Connecticut River Valley. As in folk por-
trait painting, the emotions are neutralized, and even
the individuality of the sitter seems reduced by the
egalitarian ethos of the folk community. The strength
of this ethos is such that even this worldly sea cap-
tain bows to it on his otherwise baroque stone.

Some of the portrait stones of ministers were
actually erected by their bereaved congregations, such
as the William Young stone for Silas Bigelow, 1769, who
died just two years after taking over his flock at
Paxton, Massachusetts (Fig. 4).° This communal action
on the part of the congregation removes the tinge of
egotism that such a large stone might suggest. It be-
comes a symbol of group unity under the minister's
guidance rather than the monument to earthly attainments
that it might appear to be. The image is, like all of
Young's work, and of folk art in general, artistically
poised between communal and individual values: crea-
tively variable in details, such as the variety of
flowers which bedeck other Young stones, but decidedly
egalitarian in major features, such as the abstract,
non-personalized face. And though the gesture is
active, but for his book, our preacher at Paxton is as
symmetrically arranged as any of the paintings of Joseph
Davis or even the painted blanket chests of the
Pennsylvania Germans.

176

At the furthest folk end of the spectrum are the
totally non-personalized masks of the rural ornamental
style. The portrait per se . and the egocentric atti-
tudes it embodies, disappear completely. I should
emphasize that in these by now famous images of the
rural ornamental style, it is neither the rurality, nor
the ornamentality , nor, for that matter, the abstraction
itself which make these stones works of folk art.
Rather, it is the degree to which individual expression
is subsumed within the cooperative community of neigh-
bors. The best example is the spirit mask carved by
Jonathan Worster, surely one of the most abstract images
on New England gravestones (Fig. 5). The reduction of
detail to basic shape seems incredibly powerful to most
modern viewers. But this reaction is, I think, exactly
the same as that of the modern artists who collect
quilts and whirligigs as examples of abstract design.
What makes it folk is the communal ethos which demands
abstraction. Abstraction alone, as in a Picasso
drawing, does not express this value.

Other features of gravestone carving and style also
demonstrate the ways in which egalitarian or folk art
tends to subdue the visual extremes of the high style.
These tendencies are visible in all early American
gravestones in the relative shallowness of the carvings.
Even on the most ornately baroque stones in America, the
carving is radically flatter than it is in England.
Ignoring for the moment that there are also folk styles
in England, as in Maidstone, Kent, the English stones
are very fully, even robustly carved. ? Many examples
are undercut, and even the field of the inscription
bulges on some stones. American gravestones, on the
other hand, reach a degree of linearity unknown in
England except on brasses, and even some of the most
ornate stones, by John Stevens III of Newport, Rhode
Island, which also contain some of the most overtly
classical imagery, are incised, not sculpted. However,
cosmopolitan imagery on gravestones in America still
shows a greater relative tendency toward bas relief and
modeling than does the folk imagery. That it is never-
theless flatter than the English versions reflects, I
think, more the lingering effects of Puritan restraint,
than the fact that American carvers had only prints or
woodblocks to copy. 8

Classical imagery on the gravestone is one of the
most specific ways in which the elite classes could sig-
nal their allegiance to Old World culture, or at least
to the mercantile empires stretching back to Europe and
beyond. The stola-clad youths on Nathaniel Waldron's

177

stone by John Stevens III in Newport are remarkable, of
course. More common are the ubiquitous allusions to
Classical, Federal, or Neoclassical architectural vocab-
ularies. Though many of these stones are flatter than
English versions, they lack nothing in ornateness. This
combination represents one ratio of folk and non-folk
attitudes. Another ratio, emphasizing the egalitarian
plainness and simplicity that Timothy Dwight appreciated
in rural areas, can be seen on the Neoclassical Anna
Jones stone, 1841, Hillsboro, New Hampshire (Fig. 6).
The Egyptian obelisk on her stone can hardly be con-
sidered a local reference, and by this token represents
a cosmopolitan and fashionable gesture. But look what
has been done to the willow. The standard willow motif
is, like the compositions of academic paintings, dynam-
ically asymmetric, arching over an urn. Here, however,
the willow is radically simplified, reduced to a hiero-
glyph of just a few leaves, and rendered in the formal
and rigid symmetry associated with the folk style.

In general, the gravestones sold to the merchant
classes also share qualities of academic paintings,
including drama, dynamic unbalance, and transitory emo-
tions or personality to highlight the presumably spe-
cial, worthy and proud people they commemorate. The
sense of drama in gravestone imagery is quite distinct
in folk and cosmopolitan carving. Actual vignettes of
dramatic action, such as "Death Snuffing the Candle of
Life" or "Father Time's Arrival," are as rare as hen's
teeth in New England and are cut exclusively in a
naturalistic/academic mode. Three-quarters views or
other asymmetric configurations, such as John Bull's
scythes cutting hour glasses in Newport, Rhode Island,
are a bit more common. Broad gestures, such as Dr.
Munro's reaching hand in Bristol, Rhode Island (Fig. 7),
are also much more likely to be found on naturalistic
stones. Such displays of emotion and personality are
all on the cosmopolitan/academic stones.

The glorious contrast shows clearly in the folk
paintings which subdue the visual extremes of academic
art, and in the gravestones which tend toward abstrac-
tion and thereby erase the naturalistic depiction of
earthly flesh, personality and individuality. Many of
the visages on stones throughout the eastern seaboard
exhibit totally neutral expressions. The abstract or
otherwise folk style stones which show animated or
lively expressions are definitely not images of earthly
beings as in high style naturalism, but rather they are
spirit masks. 9 The emotions therefore represent per-
manent spiritual conditions, not transitory or ephemeral

178

Figure 5. Abigail Rugg, 1746, Harvard, Mass

Figure 6. Anna Jones, 1841, Hillsboro, N.H

179

Figure 7. Thomas Munro, 1785, Bristol, R.I

180

moods of personality. And any motion in folk gravestone
imagery, either represented by tilting wings, or implied
by streaming lines of force or hair, is strictly verti-
cal. The vertical composition of all of Samuel Dwight's
stones, with their smiling effigies, makes this direc-
tion explicit (Fig. 8). By these seemingly timeless
images, folk gravestones in the Northeast attained a
degree of humility and subliminity virtually unsur-
passed.

A final instance of the glorious contrast can be
seen in the distribution patterns of the stones. With
the possible exception of the Mannings of eastern
Connecticut, who seem to have sent their stones as far
away as New Bern, North Carolina, the urban workshops
are much more likely to have exported their stones to
the worldly far and wide. The plainer, more simplified
or abstract styles are likely to have a much more local
patronage base. This is another feature of folk so-
cieties; in "the little community" one feels allegiance
with the people one knows face to face, and usually one
adopts emblems or markers to signal this local identity.

As Peter Benes and David Watters have shown in
several cases, carvers placed their stones very selec-
tively, according to religious, genealogical or even
fraternal allegiances . 10 Thus they become identity
markers for the immediate community, distinguishing the
members of each area from their neighbors and unifying
the members of each community as a group. In this way,
the gravestone functions as does much of material cul-
ture to distinguish the inhabitants of different locali-
ties, or to unify the members of a sect.

Examples of stones with motifs used as markers for
scattered subgroups abound. For instance, there are
the Germans with their flowers, their fylfot swastikas,
and their hearts, as found in Pennsylvania, Virginia and
North Carolina. Lawrence Krone's stone for Nickolas
Tarter, 1821, Wytherville, Virginia, combines a sun-
flower, a tree of life, and a heart-shaped urn (Fig. 9).
Krone worked in the 1820s and 1830s; the Germanic motifs
persist in Virginia well into the 1850s, decades after
Neoclassical uniformity had supplanted vernacular tradi-
tion in Anglo-American communities. Another example of
a widespread subgroup would be the Masons, whose stones
are found throughout America.

In conclusion, I should remark that the applica-
bility of these generalizations will come from further
studies of the social as well as religious attitudes of

181

INMFMOBYot

^/\ JMii'V I lutli HvikI/ oiiior'

Figure 8. Ruth Hard, 1801, Arlington, Vt

182

■•> •"•■Vk'.-t:;-. -r

Figure 9. Nickolas Tarter, 1821, Wytheville, Va,

183

the people buried under the stones. Notice that I am
asking about social contexts and aspirations, not
religious attitudes alone. While gravestones contain
overtly religious symbols, and have been studied from an
essentially iconographic/religious perspective, they
also exist in the wider context of a social setting.
Some time ago David Hall suggested that some of our
preoccupation with religious interpretations may be off-
base. H It may well be that the general western moral
tradition to which he alludes significantly differs
among the folk groups of some areas when compared to the
official Puritanism taught at Harvard as folk religion
almost always does differ from official church theology.
But even more pertinent, but often neglected, are the
other social manifestations of this same folk attitude.

Peter Benes has certainly made heroic efforts to be
more exact about religious nuances, and to bring social
and even geological factors to bear on gravestone inter-
pretation, though the essential thrust of his argument
remains iconographic/religious. It is a commonplace to
say that the more naturalistic portraits represent a
more cosmopolitan outlook, but particularly useful are
his emphases on those factors contributing to egalitar-
ian, localized traditional attitudes: genealogy,
occupational groups, or even the sense of local calamity
in the face of an earthquake or an epidemic. 12 Gaynell
Levine has brought an even wider spectrum of folklife
data to gravestone studies, now adding house types,
garden layouts and town plans to her studies of the
trade networks of the Long Island New Englanders . 13

We can't go back and ask those folk what exactly
their attitudes were. We can only talk to contempor-
aries like "Vince," the Kentucky chairmaker who said,
"For myself I want a decent plain-made chair," and pick
up some good strong hints . 14 There is no literary
record of the craftsmen's attitudes on aesthetics be-
cause they didn't leave one. To imply that they should
have, as Steven Foster does, is to reveal yet another
high-style bias. 15 But therein lies the great excite-
ment of material cultural studies: to find tangible
evidences of the cognitive attitudes of precisely that
vast majority that did not write down their every
thought but constructed their world according to those
thoughts instead. The paintings by the itinerant folk
masters and the gravestones by the local carvers were
for the same clientele living side by side in the same
towns. Though they have different functions, they are
products of the same world views; though the iconography
of gravestones is overtly religious, its execution, the

184

style, folk or other, is sensitive to a wider social
and political context.

NOTES

1 Kenneth Silverman, A Cultural History of the American Revolu-
tion (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1976), pp. 7-11.

2 Kenneth Silverman, Timothy Dwight (New York: Twayne Pub-
lishers, 1969), pp. 47-48.

3 Ibid., p. 48.

4 Folklonsts traditionally insist on this point. See Richard Weiss,
Volkskunde der Sweiz (Erlenbach-Zhurich: E. Rentsch, 1946); Henry Glassie,
"Folk Art," in Richard Dorson, ed., Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), pp. 253-80; Simon Bronner,
"Investigating Identity and Expression in Folk Art," Winterthur Portfolio,

16 (1981), pp. 65-83.

5 See Linda Sampter, "High Style in Eighteenth Century New England
and London," American Art Review, 4 (1977), pp. 58-61, 67.

6 Dickran and Ann Tashjian, Memorials for Children of Change
(Middletown, Ct.: Wesleyan University Press, 1974), p. 115.

7 Allan I. Ludwig, Graven Images (Middletown, Ct.: Wesleyan
University Press, 1966), pp. 262-71; Peter Benes, The Masks of Orthodoxy
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977), pp. 75, 105-07, 185-90.

8 Ludwig, pp. 271, 274-82.

9 Benes, pp. 178-83.

10 For example, the Soule family carved both the old "medusa"
design and the newer "fish-wing angel" during the same period but placed
them in different towns according to local preference. The JN carver cut
his urn and dagon design stones primarily for members of the Artillery
Company. See Benes, pp. 138-39, and David H. Watters, "The JN Carver,"
above.

11 David Hall, "The Gravestone as Puritan Cultural Code," Puritan
Gravestone Art, Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folk-
life, 2 (1976), pp. 29-30.

12 Benes, p. 134; Ludwig, p. 337; Tashjian, p. 110; Benes, "A Particu-
lar Sense of Doom," above.

13 Gaynell Levine, "The Material Culture of the Southold Plantation,"
AGS Annual Conference, 1980, Bradford, Massachusetts; "Colonial Long
Island Gravestones: Trade Network Indicators, 1670-1800," The Dublin
Seminar for New England Folklife, 1978, Dublin, New Hampshire.

14 Michael Owen Jones, "For Myself, I like a Decent, Plain-Made
Chair: The Concept of Taste and the Traditional Arts in America,"
Western Folklore, 31 (1972), pp. 27-52.

T3 Stephen Foster, "From Significant Incompetence to Insignificant
Competence," Puritan Gravestone Art, Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar
for New England Folklife, 2 (1976), p. 38.

185

186

THE CARVERS OF PORTAGE COUNTY, WISCONSIN, 1850-1900

Phil Kallas

The gravesites of early trapping and trading adven-
turers to Wisconsin's wilderness have over three cen-
turies been all but lost. Established cemeteries
appeared with the more permanent, organized settlement
patterns of the 1820s and 1840s, brought on by the
arrival and development of lumbering interests and the
influx of immigrants. During the next fifty years,
stonecarvers followed the general pattern of Wisconsin
settlement by setting up shops in the major transporta-
tion centers. Carving in marble the popular urn and
willow designs from back east, these carvers show little
innovation. But they are important in showing the com-
mercial development of the trade, a process repeated
throughout the midwest during the nineteenth century.

Two of the earliest Portage County settlements were
Plover and Stevens Point, platted in 1844 and 1847
respectively, and extant cemeteries date from the late
1840s and early 1850s (Fig. 1). Many early gravesites
were probably marked by wooden or fieldstone memorials
on which time and progress have taken their toll, but
several memorials with 1840s dates are in existence.
The Amanda Alban stone in Plover Cemetery bears an 1843
death date but it is probably a cenotaph. Amanda Alban
is most likely buried in Sauk County, west of Portage,
where the family resided immediately prior to their
removal to Plover. Next to her stone is the George
Alban stone, 1849, which appears to be original. The
carver of neither of these stones is presently identi-
fiable .

Another early memorial is the William H. Johnson
stone in Union Cemetery, Stevens Point (Fig. 2).
Johnson, an early frontiersman, died in 1848. Johnson
and his marker were moved to Union Cemetery at a later
date, from the original Stevens Point Cemetery, which
was located in the center of Main Street in what is now
the central business district. As Stevens Point ex-
panded, Main Street was extended eastward. The original
cemetery had to be moved, and the majority of the bodies
were reinterred in either Union or Forest Cemetery.

Carvers and their work can be identified by several
means: obituaries which are rarely helpful; probate
records which are occasionally helpful; advertisements
which are most helpful in identifying firms; and the
stones themselves which, at times, are signed by the

187

» Eau Claire

Whitins

Stevens Point
•* Plover,

eyauwega

, -Jshkosh
: r 1 1 nl
.Rip?

^Fond du Lac
» Brandon
. Waupun
5ortage

Milwaukee*

Figure 1. Locations of early Wisconsin settlement

188

•• f

■ t

/y *> */

mBBnim

Figure 2. William Johnson, 1848, Stevens Point, Wis

189

carvers. Though early carvers seldom signed their work,
there were those who either thought enough of their
carving ability or who used the markers as an advertis-
ing medium to do so. Most signed markers are found in
cemeteries outside of the carver's immediate locality,
thereby giving further credence to the idea of stones as
advertisements .

One of the earliest signed stones in Portage County
is the Edwin W. Bell marker in Plover Cemetery. Bell
died on 26 February 1853, and his stone was probably
erected that spring. The carver's name has weathered
away but the location of his place of business is still
discernible — Portage. This is the city of Portage
located in Columbia County and not Portage County in
which Plover is located. Extant copies of the Fort
Winnebago River Times do not contain any advertisements
for carvers or monuments. The first ad appearing in a
Portage newspaper, the Badger State of 23 September
1854, is that of Curtis Adams, with Dr. T. E. Best as
his agent, which makes Adams the probable carver of the
Bell stone.

It is logical that this carver worked out of
Portage. Formerly Fort Winnebago, this settlement was
one of the earliest in Wisconsin, and played an impor-
tant role in the development of the Upper Wisconsin
River region. When the area was officially opened to
settlement in 1836, lumbermen and others followed the
river northward to the pineries. Other pioneers used
the route, but it was, from the southeast, an indirect
route to central Wisconsin. The "Pinery Road" fell into
disuse except for rivermen, lumbermen, and other local
traffic .

The first reference to a resident stonecutter
appears in the 22 March 1856 Wisconsin Pinery , published
in Stevens Point. It reads: "--Stone--There is a stone
cutter in town--a good opportunity to test the qualities
of the quarries." He may have been only a quarryman ,
but it is probable that he engaged in such stone work as
tables, sills, hearths, and gravestones. His identity
is presently unknown.

The 1 June 1864 Wisconsin Lumberman , another
Stevens Point paper, mentions a new advertisement in its
columns, for the firm of Pedrick and Baldwin, becoming
later Stuart and Baldwin, and throughout its existence
referred to as Ripon Marble Works (Figs. 3-4). Appar-
ently this is the first monument craftsman advertise-
ment to appear in Portage County newspapers.

190

mm i

PEDRICK & BALDWIN,

Americas & Italuan Marble,
MoKunwfTa. Head Stores a.nd Fur-
situ be M abbls Constantly on band
and made to order.

|^g~New Patent Cases for Pic-
tures tarnished to those who may de-
sire them. f32T Orders promptly
filled and work warranted.

Figure 3. Advertisement, Wisconsin Lumberman , 1 June
1864.

RIPOU MARBLE WORKS

PKDIUCK & BALDWIN',,

X>«aler* in Foreign and Rutland Marble,
Manufacturers of every variety of Monu-
ments, Head Stone9 and Furniture Marble.
AH orders promptly filled. The citizens of
Portage, Waupaca, and adjoining .counties,
arc invited to call and examine our work,
before purchasing. Prices reasonable and
All work warranted

Patent cases for Pictures furnished to
tao^ who desire them.

Shop on Blossom street, two doors cast of
the .Vapts House, Pvipon, Wisconsin.

«ravfl Pennine, it-, n. b.ildwt.v. 25Jy.

Figure 4. Advertisement, Plover Times . 17 March 1866

191

Cyrus Pedrick, born 31 December 1831, in North
Salem, Westchester County, New York came to Wisconsin
in 1848 and settled with his father, brother, and their
families in Ripon in 1849. Pedrick engaged in building
construction until the fall of 1860 when he began his
marble business, which he continued until October 1866
when he sold his interest to Robert Stuart of Oshkosh.
Pedrick' s interest in stone continued; he became a
representative of Flint Brothers, marble manufacturers
of Rutland, Vermont.

Henry Dwight Baldwin, born 6 October 1837, in
Victory, Cayuga County, New York, went to Michigan with
his parents the following year and in 1857 came to
Wisconsin. His work in the marble business dates from
1861; in 1864 he joined Cyrus Pedrick.

H. D. Baldwin was, for a time, the company's
traveling agent and the one responsible for delivering
and erecting monuments. As the Wisconsin Pinery of
18 January 1866 notes, "Mr. Baldwin from the Ripon
Marble Works was in town a few days since and we had the
pleasure of seeing some new designs of work which they
are now finishing. . . . Mr. Baldwin is through the
country attending to the delivery of work." And from
the 23 July 1870 Pinery an item that had appeared in the
Plover Times: "Mr. Baldwin . . . was in town this week
and showed us a new book of designs which they have just
received from Chicago. ..."

The Times of 3 June 1871 makes this comment con-
cerning the Ripon Marble Works:

For the past year they have furnished and put
up more monuments, headstones, &c , in this part
of the Northwest, than all the rest of the mar-
ble establishments combined, which shows that
the people in this section know who to give
their orders to if they wish to get a good job
done and they know when they give their order
to Baldwin and Stuart it will be filled to the
letter. Some of our best Monuments and head-
stones in the Plover Cemetery was put up by them
(and over half in the Plover Cemetery was put up
by them) which shows who furnishes the best
marble and does the best work. They have de-
livered and set up over thirty sets of head-
stones in Wausau Cemetery this spring and have
just taken another large order for monuments
and headstones to be delivered soon, which show
who the people of Marathon county patronize in

192

that line of trade.

Their work appears as recently as 1890 as seen on the
Andrew J. Welton monument in Plover Cemetery, a standard
plinth-style marble marker signed by Baldwin.

In Forest Cemetery is the Blake-Mitchell monument
composed of red Swedish granite and dark Barre granite
(Fig. 5). Erected by R. G. Campbell and Sons of Berlin,
Wisconsin in 1893, the Stevens Point Journal of 22 July
refers to it as "one of the finest . . . ever erected in
this part of the state." The work of Campbell and Com-
pany, which first appears in area cemeteries in the
1860s, did not always meet with such high acclaim, as
witnessed by this account in the 20 May 1871 Plover
Times , reprinted from Wausau's Wisconsin River Pilot :
"H. D. Baldwin, of the firm Stuart and Baldwin, marble
dealers, Ripon, Wis., has been spending several days in
our town putting up monuments and tombstones in our
cemetery. This firm manufactures the best work ever
brought to Wausau. Mr. B. has delivered and set up
thirty set of headstones here this spring all of which
have given satisf action--very unlike the firm of Camp-
bell and Company, Berlin." Other examples of Campbell
and Company stones are the Arthur and Mary Redfield
stone in Forest Cemetery; the Moses, Jane and infant
Finch stone in Union Cemetery; and the Addison Bell,
Isabelle and John Altenberg, 0. H. P. Bigelow, and James
Curran stones in Plover Cemetery.

Before commenting on the probable routes used to
bring the stones to the region and on Stevens Point's
first resident carvers, there are other carvers who
should be mentioned. One is W. F. Cook. A signed
example of his work is the Lucy M. Clark stone, 1857, in
Plover Cemetery. Cook was born 21 January 1837 in
Manchester, Bennington County, Vermont, and it was there
that he learned stone cutting. In 1855 he emigrated to
Milwaukee. According to Edward A. Fitzpatrick ' s History
of Northern Wisconsin, he opened, in April 1856,
Oshkosh ' s first marble shop.1 In 1858 Cook moved to
Sparta, and in 1871 to Eau Claire where his firm by 1880
employed four men engaged in monument work exclusively.
His work appears primarily in Chippewa, Eau Claire,
Dunn, Pepin, and Barron counties--the Indianhead country
of west-central Wisconsin.

Another carver is a man named Carpenter who worked
out of Indianapolis, Indiana. The Charlie Agnew stone,
1879, in Forest Cemetery, is signed by Carpenter, and
all that is known of him is that he did have a sales

193

Figure 5. Blake/Mitchell Family, 1893, Stevens Point,
Wis.

_ _-.-^r. - ,. - MP-

Figure 6. Charlie Agnew, 1879, Stevens Point, Wis

194

WAUPUN

MARBLE WORKS

GEE & CO.,

MANUFACTl IIE1.3 Of

MONUMENTS,
Tomb Stones and Tables,!

Il^AD-STOXES. i

Table and Stand Tops,

AC.. A.<\. JtC.,
AM) I'K.VLKr.S IX

All Kinds of Marble,

First Poor South of the Rostnti llor.se,

Waiipiin, Wi*..

\T7"OUI.D n'i»pci'tfu'.ly inf.. mi t!i." citizens «rf
W Doii^e, Fond du Lao, nnd ailjoinin^rjHii-
ti»-s, that they have established, in connection
with tluir main simp on tin* Fund ilu Lap wail,
h Branch Shop, at the place above iiii>n!itinr-il
in tlit* ViHn-jr of Waupun, uiiil uro now pro-
Jpaic i to furnish

EVERY VARIETY

Of .work in tlii . r line on the. mrf>l rt":i*»>nnldf
term?, nnd -of the fcrjr IjerU quajJAWund tiui.-h. j
Wo wish it distinctly uiidoihlitudlIi.it

Our Work in Equal to Any in the IStntc,

While every one will acknowledge that our jui-
ces ure anions the most reasonable. Ail we iisk
i» that von (.-.ill tikI examine <\\: eint.'TM of mrt :
work, wi-ll knowiii-; that you will not only be &at i
Uficd but plo«rid. Heiiieiiibur the

ir.i I7V.V .W.I Ulil.K WORKS,

and pive us n rail.
Oct. 16, 1857.

GKKlJk CO.

Figure 7. Advertisement, Waupun Times . 20 October 1857

195

agent resident in Stevens Point (Fig. 6).

With the "Pinery Road" falling into disuse, access
to central Wisconsin in the late 1840s and early 1850s
was either by a road from Milwaukee to Waupun to Almond
and then Plover, or from Portage to Montello and north.
After 1853, and prior to the railroad's arrival in 1871,
another common route was from Fond du Lac and Oshkosh to
Gill's Landing near Weyauwega, by Lake Winnebago and the
Wolf River, whence overland to Stevens Point and beyond.
By means of this route many monuments came from Berlin,
Ripon and Oshkosh.

Monuments from the Ripon Marble Works were
freighted overland to either Berlin, Oshkosh, or Fond
du Lac, transferred to water craft, in which they could
serve as ballast, for the journey to Gills Landing, and
then returned to freighters for the journey's last leg.
However, works of the Oshkosh dealers and of Campbell
and Company avoided overland transport, being located
near the waterways.

The 1870s brought the railroads and an increase in
population and commerce. Perhaps for this reason and
because of the relative ease of obtaining raw materials,
in 1876 the Gee family opened Stevens Point's first mon-
ument works. By 1876 when a portion of the family
arrived in Stevens Point, the Gee's had already been
actively engaged in the monument business for forty-five
years, the last thirty of which were spent in the Waupun
area. J. S. Gee, born in 1816 in Virgil, Cortland
County, New York, learned the stone-cutter's trade at a
young age in Ithaca, New York. He started in business
in Elmira, and by 1837, went to Frenchtown, New York.
The next nine years saw him in business in Troy,
Pennsylvania, Danville, New York, Fredonia, New York,
and Penn Line, Pennsylvania. He arrived in Waupun in
1846 and with his cousin George, who arrived the fol-
lowing year, started Waupun ' s first marble works.

Born in Virgil, in 1816, George also learned the
trade at an early age. Possibly the cousins were
apprenticed together. The firm they established was
known at different times by a variety of names, but for
the sake of clarity it shall be referred to as the
Waupun Marble Works. J. S. resided in Waupun but prob-
ably had a farm nearby, while George resided on a farm
in Springvale, only several miles distant from Waupun.
It is probable that this first marble works in 1847 was
located on either J. S. or George's farm, because the
20 October 1857 Waupun Times announces that their firm

196

has established a branch ". . .in the building hereto-
fore known as the Boston House Saloon" (Fig. 7). The
Gee cousins were staunch Methodists, having married
sisters who were the daughters of a Methodist minister.
When a score of years later the Advance Temple of Honor,
Lodge #21 (a secret temperance society) was organized in
Waupun , J. S. was a charter member and one of its first
officers .

Two weeks after the opening of the branch, the
Waupun Times tells us that Oscar, a son of J. S. , has
purchased the interests of the other partners, and that
the entire business will be conducted by him in the
village. Less than one year later, 15 September 1858,
the Times again tells us that the firm has changed
hands, this time to George. By August 1860 the Prison
City Item (Waupun is the site of Wisconsin's state
penitentiary) refers to Oscar as the firm's proprietor.
According to newspaper ads he remained so until 27 April
1861. Two weeks later, the ads indicate J. S. is the
proprietor. J. S.'s son probably turned the business
back to him because Oscar had joined, as a 2nd Sergeant,
the Waupun Light Guards, later to become Company D of
the Third Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry. On 13 June, he
received orders to march, on the fifteenth, to Fond du
Lac. He died of exposure, and he was buried at Arling-
ton.

In early July "Gee [probably J. S.] has removed his
marble works to his old shop, on his farm, about one and
a half miles out of town." It can be assumed that
through the war the firm was operated by J. S. and
George. We do know that after the war Hiram, J. S. and
George's nephew, returned to Waupun to learn the stone-
cutter's trade and remained there until 1876 when George
began the Stevens Point Marble Works with Hiram in
charge (Figs. 8-9). It may be incorrect to say that
Hiram "returned" to Waupun. Even though his enlistment
papers state that he was a Waupun resident, other
sources tend to indicate otherwise. The 1860 census has
him residing with his parents in the town of Plover,
Portage County; the same census also has him residing
with his cousin Nelson in the adjacent town of Stockton.
We also know that by 1879 Truman, another of J. S.'s
sons, was an active partner in the Waupun Marble Works.

Portage County newspapers shed little light on the
carvers Gee in Stevens Point from 1876 until 1879, but
other sources inform us of their activities. In a vil-
lage near Waupun, the Brandon Times of 18 May 1876
states that George has opened a marble shop in Stevens

197

Figure 8. Hiram Gee, 1864. Courtesy of the Portage
County Historical Society.

198

STEVENS POINT

Garble Works,

N. E. & J. L. GZE, Proprietors.

We desire to inform tic peoplo of StsYena Point
and the surrounding coantry, that having re-
cently opened a Marble Shop on the South
Side, we arc prepa.*ed to manufacture

Monuments, Head Stones

AHD FIRE MARBLE WORK

Of all kinds, from the beslCTadca of Foxelgn and
American Heroic.

Granite Work Famished to Order.

fT7~Ha7in^ had an cspa-iencc of over IS jesra
in the Marble Cutting busings', we feci ccnUdcnt
oar work will givu enUro stlsfactlon.

Figure 9. Advertisement, Waupun Times . n.d,

Figure 10. Hale Family, 1876, Plover, Wis

199

Point. The History of Northern Wisconsin indicates that
Hiram came to Stevens Point in March 1876 to take charge
of a marble shop. A signed gravemarker also helps
verify the Gee presence. The Hale stone, 1876, in
Plover Cemetery is signed "J. L. Gee, St. P." (Fig. 10).
This stone may be signed as an advertisement since the
Gee firm was new to this area.

Stevens Point tax records for the years 1876-79
show that the real estate valuation of George Gee and
Company property, located just south of the Soo Line,
then Wisconsin Central Railroad tracks, ranged from
$130 to $150, while personal property valuations were
minimal. This probably indicates a small basic inven-
tory of stones, with only the engraving being done
locally, before cemetery placement.

"George Gee of Cheney's Corner's has sold out his
marble shop in Stevens Point," the Brandon Times of
21 August 1879 informs us, while the Stevens Point
Journal of 23 August calls our attention to the new
advertisement of the Stevens Point Marble Works under
the proprietorship of H. E. (Hiram) and J. L. Gee. It
would appear that the information furnished in the
Times is somewhat inaccurate in that the only listings
in the 1879 Stevens Point tax rolls are for George Gee
and his company. It is not until the 1880 rolls that
H. E. and J. L. appear. Thus it would seem that when
the Times said "sold," it meant that George had disposed
of his inventory and operational rights, but not his
property .

H. E. and J. L. operated the Stevens Point Marble
Works in partnership until 1881 when the 23 March Por-
tage County Gazette, published at Stevens Point, informs
us that the partnership was dissolved and the firm would
now be operated by J. L. Ten weeks later the Gazette
tells us that "George Gee, who started the business in
this city and afterwards leased it to J. L. [is] again
the proprietor."

From this point on it appears that George made
Stevens Point his permanent home, and he alone operated
the firm, at least until 1889 (Fig. 11). By 1893 the
Stevens Point City Directory tells us that George is a
marble cutter (and owner) of the Stevens Point Marble
Works and that Billington Whiting is an agent, probably
for his father. By 1895 George Gee and Company became
George Gee and Son, B. W. , known to his friends and the
local children as "Uncle Bink," became a full partner.

200

Stevens Point Marble Works.

maiiutactufacl tilers of

Monuments, Head Stones

and Fine Marble Work.

A fine stock of Foreign and American mai>
l»l c always on hand to select from, and orders
rilled tor all kinds of granite. Have had
over 50 years experience in the business and
can warrant satisfaction. Do not buy until
you gut our prici s. Special rates on all orders
received at the shop.

Church street, south of W. C. traiek.

Stevens -Point,

Wii

Figure 11. Advertisement, Stevens Point Gazette ,
17 July 1889.

201

Even though George died in 1901, the firm continued
under the name George Gee and Son until after 1904. By
1907 it was known simply as Gee's Marble Works. The
company ceased to exist upon "Uncle Bink's" death in
August 1918. The contracts and inventory were purchased
by Haertel Monument Service which was established in
Stevens Point in 1901. Presently, Haertel 's is the
largest retail monument dealer in Wisconsin. B. W. Gee,
at the time of his death, was Stevens Point's sixth ward
alderman. He had been an alderman intermittently since
1892. His father George had been a county supervisor.
George's nephew Hiram had been both alderman and super-
visor. B. W. was actively engaged in the marble busi-
ness from about 1889, until his death in 1918. George
was an active carver from about 1830 until failing
health forced him to curtail his activities in about
1895. Hiram carved from 1865 until 1881 after which
time he considered himself a carpenter. It is not known
when J. L. learned the trade or when he ceased carving.
J. S. of the Waupun Marble Works was an active carver
from about 1830 to about 1900. The dates of Truman's
activity as a carver are unknown.

Gee family members were engaged in the monument
business for nearly a century, almost seventy-five of
which were in Wisconsin. They were the first to estab-
lish monument firms in at least two Wisconsin cities and
were actively involved in community service throughout
their careers. The Gee family and its monument works
represent the final step in the development of stone-
carving in Wisconsin from a frontier, itinerant practice
to a major commercial business.

NOTES
1 (Chicago: The Western Historical Publishing Co., 1881), n.p.

202

THE EXAMPLE OF D. ALDO PITASSI :

EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT AND PRACTICE IN CONTEMPORARY

MEMORIAL DESIGN

Robert Prestiano

Though some of the most significant works in the
history of art have been related to burials, personal
memorials of our own time seldom receive artistic recog-
nition. Undoubtedly, the general mediocrity of most
contemporary markers, as well as the lack of a psycho-
logically healthy acceptance of death within modern
culture, have contributed toward this bias.-'- Conse-
quently, the contemporary memorialist is confronted with
the challenge to redirect form from the moribund overuse
of nineteenth-century stylistic prototypes and the
unimaginative, mass-produced slab shape, toward more
sculpturally vital expressions of our own time. Among
the work of the few memorialists in the United States
who have attempted to meet this challenge, that of D.
Aldo Pitassi continues to offer new and refreshing pos-
sibilities. Therefore, a consideration of his most
expressive work to date, the D'Ascenzo Memorial, 1968,
in Calvary Cemetery of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Fig.
1), and five previous, formative designs may contribute
to a re-evaluation of the creative potential of the
contemporary cemetery memorial.

An understanding of Pitassi 's approach to the
D'Ascenzo Memorial, and to memorial art in general,
derives from an explanation of its conception and an
analysis of its technical, formal and iconographical
aspects. The D'Ascenzo Memorial took nearly two years
to complete, for only four days after receiving the
commission, Pitassi suffered a critical coronary attack.
The intensity of that experience compelled him to
approach the memorial not only as another experiment in
design, but as a deep, personal statement of his own
close encounter with death. His recollection of the
moment of inspiration highlights this dimension of the
work .

While recuperating from the attack, his thoughts
began to drift back to a time eight years earlier when
he had spent four days at Kenneth's Square, near
Philadelphia. There he had encountered seven huge
wagons, which were heaped with steaming manure to be
used as fertilizer in the extensive mushroom caverns
nearby. Strangely, this sight did not repulse him, but
stimulated a compulsive appetite for mushrooms. It was
his artistic sensibility and the beginning of work on

203

Figure 1. D'Ascenzo Memorial, 1968, Calvary Cemetery,

' v 1 1 A ■

Pittsburgh, Pa., 8' x 11

Figure 2. Working drawing for second die

204

the monument which allowed this mundane recollection to
inspire not only images of growth of new life from de-
cay, but also a personal vision of transcendent life.
The challenge remained to translate these ideas through
the inert, formidable material of granite.

Art is much more than a product; it is the success-
ful material expression of an individual creative pro-
cess. Therefore, to appreciate the essential vitality
of the D'Ascenzo Memorial, some consideration will be
given to the artist's attempt to stretch the technical
means available. The search for form paralleled the
search for technical solution and idea. Each reinforced
the other. Most notable among the technical devices
used were enhanced working drawings, a scale model,
epoxy , and chunk-glass.

The drawings, each containing three separate views
of a single component, facilitated the workmen's compre-
hension of, and sensitivity toward, the total concept
(Fig. 2). The elegant contours, expressed through the
negative photostatic copies, emphasized the three-
dimensional nature of the idea; while a second set of
drawings helped clarify the textural variants. Pitassi
has stated:

I simply express in the blueprint the age-old
equivalent of the sculptor's final cut before
reaching the 'skin' of the piece. At this
point the artist can step in to alter or per-
sonally direct the finishing process. . . .
My test for any blueprint is its effect on the
shop foreman. ... He must have a sense of
its form and meaning. . . . Therefore I aim
for drawing which is more than mechanical grada-
tion of contrasting areas ... .2

Such drawings helped develop a common creative mind, not
unlike that produced through the Medieval guild system.

However, the most complete link between the artist
and workmen was the plastilene scale model (Fig. 3).
For Pitassi the model becomes the tangible extension of
the initial mental sketch. And, it may be that the
flexible process of shaping the clay model also con-
tributed to the elastic sense of attenuated form, evi-
dent in the sculpture. 3 The individual pieces of the
memorial were cut with an electric saw, and the rough-
ened surfaces were produced with a pneumatic channeling
tool. Later, epoxy PC7 was employed to bind the dies
to each other and onto the base, as well as to fasten

205

Figure 3. Plastilene model.

206

four pieces of chunk-glass into the granite.

Pitassi is one of the few contemporary memorialists
who has experimented with glass for expressive and sym-
bolic purposes. For this monument he was required to
make the decisive break in a large single piece of
glass. An intuitive blow with the splitter hammer
resulted in six pieces, from which the desired four were
selected. Afterwards, only slight additional shaping
with the pneumatic tool was required to achieve the
flame-like forms, intended to symbolize the human soul
(Fig. 4).

Such technical considerations are related inti-
mately to the meaning of the work; yet it was creative
imagination which transformed the skills of craftmanship
into an appropriate artistic expression. The tortuous,
irregular shapes of the sculpture appropriately express
the artist's struggle to find meaning in the face of
death. The sense of struggle is emphatic. Surfaces
seem gouged out, twisted, and violently fractured.
These erratic forms appear to push and pull each other
in a compositional movement which begins with the inter-
locking lower pieces and continues through the vertical
thrust of the tall, asymmetrically placed die. Yet, the
elegant facets of the tall die maintain a sobering con-
trast with the more jagged forms below. Expressionistic
distortions and Cubistic fragmentation are held in uni-
fied tension.

Thus, the forms of the memorial sculpturally pro-
claim themselves. The three-dimensional reality of
stone is affirmed expressively, in contrast to the usual
frozen paper aspect of most contemporary gravestone
design, in which stone is artificially conceived as a
flat surface to be written upon rather than tangible
substance to be shaped. The D'Ascenzo Memorial is a
work of modern sculpture, not merely a convenient sup-
port for an epitaph.

Since the contemporary sculptor does not have the
advantage of an on-going stylistic tradition, as did
earlier memorialists, the formal expressiveness of the
D'Ascenzo Memorial necessarily was the result of a slow
yet steady evolution of artistic thought, which was dis-
ciplined through a creative encounter with the actual
conditions of individual cemetery sites and numerous
cemetery regulations. This evolution may be discerned
through a brief review of five of Pitassi 's most signif-
icant previous designs. Three of these were used for
completed monuments, while the earliest and latest

207

Figure 4. Chunk-glass affixed to the third die

208

Figure 5. Blake Memorial, 1963-64, North Catholic
Cemetery, Pittsburgh, Pa., 4'6" x 3'2".

Wuh IhPil liNdfRbUrfS

*4£e

Figure 6. Wisniewski Memorial, 1967, North Catholic
Cemetery, Pittsburgh, Pa., 6' x 4'6".

209

remain studies. The most direct relevance of these
designs, within the present context, lies in their
demonstration of a more progressive exploration of
dynamic spatial involvement.

The earliest of these is the Blake Memorial, which
was designed in 1963 (Fig. 5). Its rectilinear die of
Bethel White granite fits snugly into a depression which
was cut at right angles into the upper right section of
the base. The Jet Black granite base, therefore, acts
as a recepticle for the die, which also overlaps the
base at the top and at the right side. Further, most of
the front of the base and the entire die incline
slightly away from the viewer. This deviation from the
vertical, together with the overlapping, increases the
viewer's spatial awareness, while the angled positioning
allows for more complete drainage and self-cleaning.

A further step was taken in the Wisnieski Memorial
of 1967 (Fig. 6). Here a tall, acutely angled die of
Gorman Green granite was placed next to a lower, separ-
ate surname stone. Both dies, in turn, rest upon a
tautly angled, multi-leveled base of American Rose
granite which, along with the angled shapes of the dies,
tensely and emphatically encourages the eye to move
around the piece. In addition, a visual dialogue is
implied through the dramatic positioning of the double
dies and carried through into the symbolism. The image
of a stem of roses on the tall die symbolically echoes
the words on the surname piece.

Compositionally this work more directly anticipates
the D'Ascenzo Memorial in that the tall die stands asym-
metrically to one side and the angled forms are arranged
in a complex set of visually interlocking directions.
The difference, of course, is that the components of the
D'Ascenzo are united within a singular form. It was not
until the contemporary design for the projected Ali
Memorial that the unity and expressiveness of the
D'Ascenzo were most directly predicated (Fig. 7).

Although the completed Zukiewicz Memorial of 1968
seems more traditional in its verticality and certainly
is unlike the D'Ascenzo in appearance, it actually is a
more complex design, in which four individual pieces of
granite are fused (Fig. 8). These contain varied sur-
face textures and more spatially involved angular con-
tours, which are tightly and dynamically arranged around
a central, negative space. Unity also is achieved by
having the compositional lines of the central dies gen-
erally continue the contours of the base. Thus, except

210

Figure 7. Ali Memorial, scale model study

Figure 8. Zukiewicz Memorial, 1968, North Side Catholic
Cemetery, Pittsburgh, Pa.

211

for its coloristic variations, the work appears to sit
directly upon the ground as a singular sculptural state-
ment, indirectly reflecting the rather consistent ten-
dency within twentieth-century sculpture to eliminate
the pedestal. The rejection of an obviously separate
base, the extension of the topmost die beyond the sides,
and the angular faceting, within and around the central
space, all contribute to the greater sculptural integ-
rity of this work.

Remarkably, the source for many of these ideas
exists in a much earlier study for the projected Di Cola
Memorial of 1953-54 (Fig. 9). Though the forms of this
work also are essentially vertical, the angled base of
the surname piece, the expressive, vertical chamfering
of the dies, and the extension of the decorative relief
work around the sides of the surname piece serve to
encourage the eye "around the corner," foreshadowing the
stronger tendency in the works just cited. Moreover,
the shape of the bottom of the surname die forms the
basic motif upon which the other memorials are based.
For example, if one were able to view the surname die
from below, the shape would relate to the angled cuts on
the side of the base of the Blake Memorial. Pitassi
approaches the design of a creative memorial as a con-
temporary artist approaches a serial piece--each work
becomes another evolutionary step within a developing
idea.

Therefore, the D'Ascenzo Memorial was heir to a
formal evolution within Pitassi 's own work; yet the
particular power of this memorial lies in its greater
unity of formal expression and iconographical concept.

The iconographical context is Christian, and it is
within this context that the more specific meaning of
the work will be examined. Although no literary program
was intended in the creation of the D'Ascenzo Memorial,
the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins has been a contin-
uous influence on Pitassi 's thinking and sensibilities.
And, since the metaphors within Hopkins' poem, "God's
Grandeur," so well parallel the intended symbolism of
the sculpture, Pitassi has indicated to me that refer-
ence to this poem would not be inappropriate. There-
fore, the poem will serve as an indirect inspirational
guide toward an analysis of the memorial's symbolic
content :

212

**m

Figure 9. Di Cola Memorial, scale model study, 1953

213

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook

foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of
oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleated,

smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell:
the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down
things;
And though the last lights off the black West
went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward,
springs--
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah!
bright wings. ^

Hopkins' poem begins by stating an existential
dilemma. It asks rhetorically why men "have trod, have
trod" in a world where "all is seared and smeared" and
which "wears man's smudge." Such phrases bring to mind
not only the dark tortured shapes of the sculpture, but
also Pitassi's own vivid memory of wagon loads of man-
ure. Thus, both poem and sculpture were based upon
experiences of decay and corruption inherent to the
human condition. Sculpturally, the intermix of varied
surface textures symbolizes the unpredictability of this
condition and the mystery which underlies it. The
polished and honed surfaces, expressing joy and content-
ment, contrast with the rougher steeled and pointed sur-
faces, expressing feelings of disturbance and anguish.

Pitassi has written, "As the stone represents the
world in both its brilliant and terrible aspects, the
roughness is as essential to the theme as the areas of
polish." In life lyric beauty and tenderness are
mingled with searing tragedy, and the resultant anxiety
is expressed sculpturally through the negative space
which "... works its way around, under, and through
the form and is captured between the third and fourth
dies. "

Hopkins' phrase, "the world is charged," further
describes the undirected, anxious energy within life; so

214

Figure 10. D'Ascenzo Memorial

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Figure 11. D'Ascenzo Memorial, footstone

215

too the agitated shapes of the memorial seem unfamiliar,
evolving, aggressive, almost primeval. Pitassi, in
fact, has indicated that the die located behind the tall
form often reminds him of the shape of a shark, a
creature which is at once potentially threatening, and
well adapted for survival. From certain views this
piece does seem to have a devouring grasp upon the
taller die. Indeed, the entire work vaguely resembles a
prehistoric animal. Yet, as productive energy has
resulted from the remains of such animals, so the
vitality within the world, though often destructive, is
potentially creative. Or as Hopkins put it, "It gathers
to a greatness, like the ooze of oil / Crushed." Not
only the color of the memorial, but also the vertical
squeeze of the compositional mass convey visually a
similar image.

These forms set the stage, as it were, for the more
direct Christian symbolism. The four large chunks of
glass, which extend from various areas of the surface,
symbolize the transcendent human soul. In a religious
sense the soul enacts its drama on the world's stage,
seeking ultimately to transcend physical limitations.
In the memorial this is expressed through the glass
pieces which in Pitassi 's view seem to work their "way
in and out through the lower dies and up the eleven foot
piece, to be released finally at the pinnacle . . .
absorbing light as . . . grace." The glass helps give
visible emphasis to the theme of transcendence, as
Hopkins' phrase, "god's grandeur," gives causal and
existential definition to the charged energy within the
world. The effect of sunlight on the inserted glass
calls to mind the simile which Hopkins used to describe
the grandeur of God: "It will flame out, like shining
from shook foil . . . ." At dusk the glass chunks
accent the looming masses of granite by catching the
fading light and throwing it prismatically in various
directions, creating an image like that in Hopkins'
final three lines.

The epitaphs further complement the forms and give
the work its most specific meaning, found concentrated
in the words, "I Believe." This phrase, as well as the
other words and symbols, is highlighted in gold leaf and
forms the singular statement on the front of the
memorial which seems locked into the spatial cavity pro-
duced by the second and third dies (Fig. 10). Their
placement, together with the personal nature of the
statement, give graphic immediacy to Hopkins' line,
"There lives the dearest freshness deep down things. .
. ." Could this concave section also be a reference to

216

the dark mushroom caverns near Kenneth's Square,
Pennsylvania?

The use of reflective gold leaf on this dark,
cavernous background not only gives focus to the epi-
taph, but also symbolically presents the greater theme
of transcendent life. Hopkins too was attracted by the
aesthetic qualities of reflective surfaces. In an
explanation of his use of the term "foil," he wrote, "I
mean foil in the sense of leaf or tinsel. . . . Shaken
goldfoil gives off broad glares like sheet lightning .
. . . "5 Pitassi not only used gold leaf effectively in
this work, but he has also largely pioneered its use in
cemetery memorials. Complementing the use of gold leaf
was the client's decision to use black granite for the
entire work. Each strikingly reinforces the other.
Work and form, once again, are distinguished dramati-
cally .

The visual impact of the epitaph lies in its
economy. An awareness of the need to subordinate detail
to compositional mass grew in the minds of the artist
and client during continued discussions regarding the
work. The original version of the epitaph read:

Ascend Eternal Soul
Out of the Hollow Darkness of the World
Into the Infinite Brightness of the Holy Spirit

The final choice of a single, concise line seems wise,
for though the original thought was constantly before
the mind of the artist and is in the nature of a
traditional epitaph, the number of words would have been
visually distracting.

The central epitaph further contains, from left to
right, the first name of the deceased, the family name,
and a contemporary symbol of faith. The letters of the
deceased's first name, Frank, are arranged in the form
of a Greek cross, again emphasizing the Christian char-
acter of the work. In addition, the letter "r" at the
apex of the cross helps form a type of the early
Christian symbol for Christ, chi-rho. which also is
related in form to the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph,
ankh, meaning "everlasting life."" The letters beneath
the crossbeam, "a n k," are related phonetically to the
hieroglyph. The letter "r" also helps form an image of
a shepherd's staff, relating the deceased's role as
benefactor to that of Christ as a good shepherd. Thus,
the deceased's faith, the cross of Christ, and the con-
cepts of everlasting life and benevolent headship are

217

combined within one image.

To the right the name D'Ascenzo is arranged in an
ascending manner, effecting a calligraphic interpreta-
tion of a musical crescendo and emphasizing the meaning
of the family name, "ascension." Of course, both of
these notions correspond with the theme of transcen-
dence.

Further, the central phrase, "I Believe," carries
the meaning beyond that of the ordinary epitaph by
representing the deceased's own voiced affirmation.
Compositionally , the larger dimension of the letter "I"
and its end pieces visually seem to embrace the word
"Believe." This arrangement again emphasizes the per-
sonal nature of the statement. An abstract symbol
having the same meaning is found directly to the left.
This symbol is of contemporary African origin and con-
sists of a circle with a vertical line through the cen-
ter. The vertical line represents the individuality of
the profession of faith and the circle represents the
timelessness and perfection of the source and goal of
religious belief.

On the footslab this symbol is repeated with two
vertical lines, becoming a symbol of the united faith of
husband and wife (Fig. 11). The related inscription on
the footslab begins at the left with a variant of the
Latin cross, formed by the first names of the couple,
Irma and Frank. Here, the letter "r" serves to unite
the two names. The man's name forms the upright of the
cross, supporting the name of his wife, which in turn
forms the crossbeam and asymmetrically extends to the
right, leading to Irma D'Ascenzo' s epitaph. The verti-
cal situation of the name Frank also gives it a strong
sense of rootedness in the dates of the man's physical
existence, engraved below. These devices reinforce the
meaning of Frank D'Ascenzo's epitaph, "Father-Benef ac-
to-Peace Maker," which follows to the right.

The client, Mrs. Irma D'Ascenzo, who was killed in
an automobile accident about a year after completion of
the monument, significantly influenced the design of the
memorial. Not only did she request that the entire work
be made of black granite, as indicated above, but she
also suggested that no subsidiary headstone be used for
other members of the family. Initially a design was
offered which proposed twelve small stones, stylized as
theatre seats. These were to relate symbolically to the
main piece, as members of an audience would to an event
on stage. This, at first, seemed appropriate, since

218

Mr. D'Ascenzo was a co-founder and manager of stage con-
struction for a theatre guild in Pittsburgh. However,
the sculpture maintains greater focus and coherence
without the multiple pieces. Rather than presenting an
ensemble, symbolically representing a play, Pitassi,
through this singular form has touched on the essence of
drama by expressing the very sentiment of playfulness.
Amidst the cumbersome monuments which surround it, the
D'Ascenzo appears free and playful, prancing through the
rigid formality of its ancestors.

It is hoped that this review will offer substance
for thought toward a reevaluation of the creative
potentiality within contemporary memorial design. While
fantasies about, and exercises in, disposable art and
disposable culture are of theoretical interest and offer
stimulating experimental interludes, as well as momen-
tary celebratory manifestations, most people continue to
desire, and probably will continue to desire, not only
permanent homes, relationships, and social systems, but
permanent memorials as well. Yet, the memorialist need
not continue to provide us with endless images of bore-
dom.

The use of more expressive and more carefully
planned, contemporary cemetery art may help make the
reality of death a more naturally acceptable experience.
Perhaps, creative memorialization also will help foster
a deeper awareness of our common humanity as has Pitassi
in his D'Ascenzo Memorial.

NOTES

1 See, for discussion of these attitudes; Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, On
Death and Dying (New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1969) and Death:
The Final Stage of Growth (New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1975); Ernest
Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1973);
Robert Lifton and Eric Olson, Living and Dying (New York: Bantam Books,
1974).

2 This quotation, and all following without footnote references, are
from unpublished written statements of D. Aldo Pitassi. D. Aldo Pitassi
studied at the Carnegi-Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, under Professor
Joseph Bailey Ellis and received his bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the
John Herron School of Sculpture, now associated with the University of
Indiana. He also holds the equivalent of a Masters of Fine Arts degree for
more than two years of study in the Academy in Florence, Italy. Presently
he is working as chief designer for the Birk Monumental MFG. in San Angelo,
Texas.

* The geometric abstraction of Pitassi's models reflect his early
training under Professor Joseph Bailey Ellis at the Carnegie Institute. Ellis
taught design by beginning with abstraction and emphasizing the potentially

219

taught design by beginning with abstraction and emphasizing the potentially
dynamic relationships between such three-dimensional, geometric shapes
as squares, tetrahedrons, and spheres. These studies promoted a direct
understanding of the interrelationship of volumes in space and their compo-
sitional movement.

Also influential in this regard is the work of the American Region-
alist Painter, Thomas Hart Benton. The strong impression which Benton's
painted figures made upon Pitassi, and the fact that Benton used plastilene
models for the figures in his paintings, encouraged the sculptor to experi-
ment further with scale models.

4 The Norton Anthology of English Literature (New York: W. W.
Norton and Co., 1962), p. 1239.

5 Ibid, p. 1239.

° In Christian art this is also called the crux ansata.

220

INDEX OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND CARVERS

Adams,

Amos, 142

Adams ,

B. , 74

Adams ,

Curtis, 190

Adams ,

Nathan, 142

Adams,

Sampson B. , 74

Adams ,

Susanna, 139

Agnew ,

Charlie, 194

Allen,

George, 2, 4, 74,

149, 160,

168

Allen,

G. , Jr. , 2, 3, 74

149

Ali Memorial, 211

Allis, Desire, 23

D1 Allleboust , Ludovicus, 26

Andrews, Samuel and Abigail, 16

D'Ascenzo Memorial, 204

B. , J. , 76

Baldwin, Henry Dwight, 190-92

Barbur, Joseph, 133-47

Barratyne, Thomas, 108

Beach, Ephraim, 43

Becknall, Abigail, 157

Bigelow, Silas, 175

Blake Memorial, 209

Blake/Mitchell Family, 194

Blanchard, Louisa, 35

Booth, Roger, 75

Brewer, Seth, 75

Bruster, Mary, 17

Buchanan Family, 111

Buckland, Peter, 3, 75

Buckland, William, 76

Bull, Henry, 76

Bull, John, 76, 178

Bullock, Elisabeth, 63

Burditt, Abel, 77

Burnham, Esther, 36

Button, William, 116

Byres, John, 107

C. , E. , 79
C. , W. , 79
Cady , Benjamin, 9
Campbell, R. G. , 193
Carpenter, 193
Chafee, Rhoda, 33
Chester, Thomas, 175
Clark, James, 51
Cleverly, Lt . John , 116
Codner, Abraham, 3, 77

221

Codner, William, 77

Colby, Ens. Enoch, 50

Coles, Isaac, 77

Collins, Benjamin, 2, 3, 4, 77

Collins, Edward, 2

Collins, Julius, 2, 78

Collins, Zerubbabel, 2, 78

Coney, John, 120

Cook, W. F. , 193

Cowles, Roswell, 79

Cox, Ebenezer, 28

Cushman, Timothy, 46

Cutlar, Elisabeth, 138

Danforth, Molley, 163
Deane, Cyrus, 2, 79
Di Cola Memorial, 213
Dorr, Mary, 136
Dwight, Hannah, 57
Dwight, Samuel, 6, 79, 181

Earl, Sarah, 165
Earle, Capt . George, 7
Earle, Xenophon , 71
Eells, Sibil, 11
Emmes, Henry, 3, 80, 174
Emmes , Nathaniel, 80

F. , D. , 80

F. , L. , 80

Fairbank, Meriam, 135

Field, Daniel, 45

Fisher, Samuel, 1, 4, 80

Fuller, John, 39

G. , J. , 81

G. , W. , 81

Galusha, Jacob, 19

Gee, B. W. , 200-02

Gee, George, 196-97

Gee, Hiram, 197-98, 200

Gee, J. L. , 200

Gee, J. S. , 196-97

Gee, Oscar, 197

Geyer, Henry Christian, 81

Geyer, John Just, 81

Gibbs, Gusse, 62

Gold, Thomas, 4, 81

Grant, Mindwell, 20

Grimes, Joseph, 42

222

Haertel Monument Service, 202

Hale Family, 199

Hammond, Mehetabel, 52

Hard, Ruth, 182

Hartshorn, Charles, 82, 149-69

Hartshorn, Jacob, 158

Hartshorn, Lt . John, 149

Hartshorn, Lydia, 159

Hartshorn, Stephen, 82, 149-69

Hastings , D. , 5

Hastings, Nathan, 82

Haven, John, 135

Hawley, Sarah, 73

Heywood, Thomas, 120

Hodgkins, Nathaniel, 82

Hodgkins, Nathaniel, Jr., 4, 82

Hotchkiss, Caleb, 32

Hovey , James, 2

Howe, Rev. Perley, 56

Howland, Job, 14

Hunt, Abijah, 167

Hunt, Jonathan, 10

Johnson, Joseph, 5
Johnson, Sarah, 38
Johnson, Thomas, 4, 83
Johnson, William, 189
Jones, Anna, 179

Kimball, Benjamin, 44
Kimball, Lebbeus , 3, 83
Kimball, Richard, 3, 4, 83
Kingsbury, Benjamin, 138
Kingsbury, Hannah, 59
Kinnicutt, Elizabeth, 150
Kinnicutt, John, 158
Krone, Lawrence, 181

L. , B. , 84
Lamb, David, 3, 84
Lamson , Caleb, 84
Lamson , Joseph , 5
Lamson, Nathaniel, 5, 84
Law, George, 167
Lawrence, Ebenezer, 27
Leighton, Ezekiel, 85
Loomis, Amasa, 85

Mackintoshe, Lt . John, 30
Manning, Abigail, 49
Manning, Frederick, 4, 85

223

Manning, Josiah, 2, 3, 4, 47-48, 85

Manning, Rockwell, 2, 86

Marble, John and Joseph, 3, 87

Marshall, Mary, 31

Maxcy , Levi, 87

Messenger, Betsy, 72

Metcalf, Elial, 143

Miller, Alexander, 66

Moravia, Martha, 61

Munro, Thomas, 180

N. , J. , 87, 115-31

New Family, 149

New, James II, 87

New, John, 2, 3, 4, 88, 149

New, Marcy , 53

Noyes, Enoch, 88

Noyes, John, 119

Noyes, Paul, 88

Owens, Mary, 173

Paine, James, 25
Park, William, 5
Pearl, Mary, 65
Peck, Capt . Samuel, 8
Pedrick, Cyrus, 190-92
Phelps, Elijah, 88
Phippene, Joseph, 21
Pidge, Lt . Josiah, 64
Pitassi, D. Aldo, 203-20
Pond, Lois, 22
Prentice, Thomas, 67

Randall, Jeremiah, 167
Ritter, Daniel, 89
Roberts, Jonathan, 89
Round, Rev. Richard, 164
Rugg, Abigail, 179

Shays, Daniel, 5

Sikes, C. and E. , 89

Sloss, Sarah, 24

Smith, Sarah, 55

Soule, Beza, 2, 3, 89

Soule, Coomer, 91

Spalding, Stephen, 1, 91

Stearns, Booz, 60

Stevens Family, 149, 160

Stevens, John II, 4

Stevens, John III, 3, 91, 177-78

224

Stevens, Pompe , 4, 94
Stewart, Jonas, 94
Sukiewicz Memorial, 211
Sumner, Samuel, 40
Sumner, Seth, 29
Swan, Sarah, 161
Symons, Susanna, 106

Tarter, Nickolas, 183
Taylor, John, 69
Thomas, Deborah, 119
Thompson, Moses, 141
Throop, Lt. William, 94
Tingley , Samuel, 2, 95
Tinney, Ebenezer, 70
Thomson, Cephas, 94
Toplift, Margaret, 37
Tucker, Hannah, 165
Tyler, Hopstill, 41

Van Veen, Otto, 126-27
Vinson, Mary Lawton, 13

Walden, John, 3, 95
Walden, John II, 95
Walden, John III, 95
Waldron, Nathaniel, 3
Wardwell, Mehethabell, 163
Warren, Jotham, 96
Watson, Samuel, 34, 157
Webster, Abel, 2, 3, 96
Webster, Hannah, 68
Webster, Nicholas and Ann, 15
Webster, Stephen, 3, 96
West Children, 12
White, Robert, Jr., 18
Wickham, Mary, 58
Winslow, B. L. , 96
Winslow, Ebenezer, 96
Wisniewski Memorial, 209
Worcester, Moses, 3, 6
Worster, Jonathan, 177
Wright, Alpheus, 96
Wright, Moses, 97
Wright, Solomon, Jr., 97
Wyatt , J. , 3

Young, William, 176

Zuricher, John, 97

225

CONTRIBUTORS

Charles Bergenren, a frequent presentor at the Associa-
tion for Gravestone Studies Annual Conference, is a
Doctoral Candidate in Folklore at the University of
Pennsylvania.

Michael Cornish is a graduate of the Art History Depart-
ment of the Massachusetts College of Art. He has held
the position of archives vice president for the Associa-
tion for Gravestone Studies for two years, and is now in
the first year of a term as conservation vice president.
He is a woodworker currently making picture frames for a
large shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Phil Kallas writes about Wisconsin gravestones, and he
has been a guest editor of the Association for Grave-
stone Studies Newsletter.

Sue Kelly and Anne Williams are noted for their grave
rubbings of New England stones. Their A Grave Business :
New England Gravestone Rubbings , A Selection was pub-
lished to accompany an exhibit of rubbings which has
travelled to various museums in New England.

Vincent Luti is a Professor of Art at Southeastern
Massachusetts University. He has lectured and written
extensively on the stonecarvers of the Narragansett
Basin .

Robert Prestiano is an Associate Professor of Art at
Angelo State University, San Angelo, Texas. He has pub-
lished articles on Pitassi and on late nineteenth-
century architecture in Chicago. He is currently writ-
ing a book on Oscar and F. E. Ruffini, pioneer archi-
tects of West and Central Texas.

David Watters is the author of "With Bodilie Eyes":
Eschatological Themes in Puritan Literature and Grave-
stone Art and several articles on early American litera-
ture. He teaches in the English Department at the
University of New Hampshire.

Betty Willsher is the author, with Doreen Hunter, of
STONES : 18th Century Scottish Gravestones. She is a
resident of St. Andrew, Scotland.

226

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