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MARKERS III

The Journal of the
Association for
Gravestone Studies

David Watters, Editor

UNIVERSITY
PRESSOF
AMERICA

MARKERS III

rhe Journal of the
Association for
Gravestone Studies

David Watters, Editor

UNIVERSITY
PRESS OF
AMERICA

LANHAM • NEW YORK • LONDON

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Historical Publications and Records Commission.

Dedicated to

Avon Neal
Ann Parker

111

ASSOCIATION FOR GRAVESTONE STUDIES
EDITORIAL BOARD

David Watters, Editor

Peter Benes Jessie Lie Farber

John L. Brooke 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 TJie. Chicago Manual of Style and be accom-
panied by glossy black and white prints or black ink
drawings. For information about other Association for
Gravestone Studies publications, membership and activi-
ties, write AGS, c/o American Antiquarian Society,
Worcester, MA 01609

The editor wishes to thank the University of New
Hampshire for support for this volume. All photographs
are by the authors except: Figure 16, p. 19, courtesy
of Daniel and Jessie Lie Farber; Figure 2, p. 51,
courtesy of David Watters; Figure 5, p. 55, courtesy of
Daniel and Jessie Lie Farber; Figure 6, p. 57, by
Harriette Merrifield Forbes, courtesy of the American
Antiquarian Society. Articles appearing in this journal
are annotated and indexed in Historical Abstracts and
America; History and Life.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Acknowledgments v

Where the Bay Meets the River:

Gravestones and Stonecutters in the River Towns

of Western Massachusetts, 1690-1810

Kevin M. Sweeney 1

Speaking Stones: New England

Grave Carving and the Emblematic Tradition

Lucien L. Agosta 47

A Particular Sense of Doom:

Skeletal "Revivals" in Northern Essex County,

Massachusetts, 1737-1784

Peter Benes 71

The Colburn Connections:

Hollis, New Hampshire Stonecarvers, 1780-1820

Theodore Chase and Laurel Gabel 93

"And the Men Who Made Them":

The Signed Gravestones of New England

1984 Additions

Sue Kelly and Anne Williams 147

Index 151

Notes on Contributors 154

VII

Where the Bay Meets the River:
Gravestones and Stonecutters in the River Towns
of Western Massachusetts, 1690-1810

Kevin M. Sweeney

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
the towns lying along the Connecticut River in western
Massachusetts constituted a distinct region within the
Bay Colony. Though politically a part of Massachusetts,
the river towns were separated from Boston by over
eighty miles of sparsely settled hill country (Fig. 1).
Because of the distance to the Bay and the rugged
nature of the intervening terrain, the Massachusetts
river towns found themselves more closely tied to the
colony of Connecticut, and from the time of the first
settlements, ties of family, trade and communication
bound the settlers of western Massachusetts to the
residents of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersf ield, Con-
necticut. At the same time, however, kinship, politics
and commerce helped preserve ties with Boston, and in
the course of the eighteenth century, such links with
the Bay grew in importance. The happenstance of poli-
tical development and the influence of geography, there-
fore, combined to produce in the river towns of western
Massachusetts a cultural region which was, despite its
comparative isolation, open to influences from the Bay
area and from Connecticut and which could occasionally
produce its own distinctive artistic expressions.

The region's surviving gravestones, when studied
in combination with relevant documentary evidence,
offer a coherent picture of changing cultural orienta-
tion in western Massachusetts and provide insight into
the relative influence that craft practices, family
ties, patronage preferences and religious sentiment had
on changing styles in funerary art. What emerges is a
portrait of a craft tradition strongly influenced by
trained, full-time stonecutters and their networks of
apprentices and journeymen, and by consumer preferences
for particular materials as opposed to particular mo-
tifs. The progression in gravestone styles in this
region can be traced through five distinct stages.
These stages differ significantly from the tripartite
scheme of death's head, cherub and urn popularized by
some studies of New England gravestones, and in partic-
ular the evidence provides little support for the asser-
tion that "the stylistic sequence there [the Connecticut
River valley] seems to follow the urban Boston-Cambridge
pattern . . . . Each of the five stages in western

NEW
HAMPSHIRE

ACHUSETTS

Long Island Sound

Figure 1. Map of Connecticut River valley region.

Drawing by author after J. Ritchie Garrison,

Massachusetts is marked by the ascendancy of a partic-
ular shop tradition and by a particular cultural orien-
tation. Though exceptions to this rather schematic
approach exist and will be noted, the overall pattern
that is revealed parallels other cultural changes in
the river towns of western Massachusetts.

In the late 1600s and early 1700s, the settlements
along Massachusetts's Connecticut River frontier formed
a relatively isolated cultural pocket whose residents
had limited resources and relatively restricted cultural
horizons. Very few surviving gravestones date before
1720, and a number of these are clearly backdated
examples of later work. The majority of the residents
of the river towns of Old Hampshire County, Massachu-
setts lay in unmarked graves or possibly in graves
marked only by wooden markers. The earliest stone
markers were probably cut bv George Griswold (1633-
1704) of Windsor, Connecticut, "and~~cTran sported up the
river valley. Griswold's carefully lettered stones in
the distinctive reddish brown Windsor sandstone mark
three graves in Enfield, six graves in Northampton, and
five in Westfield, including that of his son Edward,
who died in 1688 (Fig. 2). The stones with right-angle
shoulders, rounded tops and simple, incised borders set
the pattern for utilitarian sandstone grave markers
that were in Old Hampshire County from the early 1700s
to the late 1730s.

Figure 2. Edward Griswold, 1688, Westfield, Mass,
Attributed to George Griswold.

Most of the lettered but undecorated gravestones
set up in the early 1720s and 1730s were the work of
-\t Joseph Nash (1664-1740) of Hadley. It is unlikely that
va there was any direct connection between Nash and Gris-
wold who died in 1704. An unidentified Northampton
stonecutter working in the 1710s and 1720s produced
stones similar to Griswold's gravestones and may have
provided a stylistic link between Griswold and Nash.
Nash's own work ranges in date from the early 1720s to
the mid-1730s, and references to Joseph Nash in probate
records begin in the 1720s (Fig. 3). The earliest
stone in his style, for Dr. John Westcarr, 1675, Hadley,
was actually cut in 1737 (Fig. 4). This stone for
which Nash was specifically paid provides the key to
documenting his work.4 It is possible that Nash, the
son of Timothy Nash, a Hadley blacksmith and joiner,
may have been making wooden grave markers before taking
up stonecutting. The granite coffin post Nash made for
Jacob Warner, 1711, Hadley, which, as Peter Benes ob-
served, "was probably in imitation of comparable wooden
posts . . . ,n provides a piece of circumstantial phys-
ical evidence suggesting an earlier career as a maker
of wooden grave markers.

During his working career as a stonecutter, Nash
placed his stones in just about every Massachusetts
town then existing along the Connecticut River, and cut
stones for the families of yeomen farmers and leading
magistrates such as Col. Samuel Partridge of Hatfield
and Lt. Col. Eleazer Porter of Hadley. ° Nash's crudely
lettered stones show little awareness of contemporary
stone carving in eastern Massachusetts and only hint at
their indebtedness to Griswold's style of cleanly cut
stones. Six of his stones that have some crude attempts
at skulls, picks and shovels are notable only for their
scarcity.7 Variations in style alone relieved the

.sameness of Nash's markers. The religious enthusiasm
^ of the valley revival of 1735, a precursor of the Great

lAwakening, left not a mark on his work. The same
conservatism and entrenched craft practices that sup-
ported the continued production of carved, joined Hadley
chests and of houses with hewn overhangs during the
early 1700s also supported Nash's conservative, plain
gravestones. After Nash's death in 1740, another stone-
cutter—possibly John Clark (1704-£. 1750) of Hadley^—
made a half dozen stones in his style that are in South
Hadley's cemetery.

Alternatives to Nash's simple markers became avail-
able in Old Hampshire County during the 1720s and

. Nash

x Nash imitator

Before 1710 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46

Figure 3. Distribution by Date of Surviving, Legible

Gravestones Attributed to Joseph Nash (Mass-
achusetts river towns only) . The stones with
dates before 1710 and those with dates in the
mid-1710s were probably backdated.

Figure 4. Dr. John Westcarr, 1675, Hadley, Mass.
Documented to Joseph Nash. See note 4

1730s, but their limited distribution underscores the
extent to which Nash's local patronage rested on more
than just isolation and a lack of alternatives. In
Deerfield several interrelated families began importing
slate gravestones from the Boston area. In 1715, Eben-
ezer Barnard of Deerfield moved to Roxbury and married
Elizabeth Foster, sister of the Dorchester, Massachu-
setts carver James Foster (1698-1763), and, probably as
a direct result of this marriage, winged death's heads
cut by members of the Foster family began appearing in
Deerfield's burying ground during the later 1710s or
early 1720s. Almost two dozen greenish gray slate
stones cut by the Foster shop, a single stone made in
the Lamson shop in Charlestown and two red slate stones
which can be attributed on the basis of style to Nathan-
iel Emmes (1690-1750) of Boston were transported to
Deerfield at various times between 1715 and 1756. Two-
thirds of these stones were erected by members of the
Barnard, Hinsdale, Wells and Williams families. Though
the total number of such g raves tohesHpurclrased by the
town's leading families was comparatively small and had
no impact on the surrounding towns, the patronage of
Boston area carvers did create in Deerfield a taste for
slate stones that lingered and that distinguished Deer-
field's burying ground.

The second challenge to Nash and established grave-
stone cutting in the mid-Connecticut River valley came
from the quarries around Middleto_wn, Connecticut. Early
in the 1700s a few members of the county's elite bought
stones from the Stancliffs — James Stancliff (1634-1712)
and his son William Stancliff (1687-1761) — of Chatham
and had them shipped up the Connecticut River. In
Hadley the tablestones of Rev. John Russell, 1692, and
of his wife Rebeckah Russell, 1688, and the Nathaniel
Dwit [sic Dwight] stone, 1711, West Springfield, docu-
ment the importation of Middletown, Connecticut grave-
stones in the 1700s and 1710s. In the late 1720s, some
of the county's leading families turned to Thomas John-
son I (1690-1761) of Middletown for gravestones. In
1729, the heirs of Rev. John Williams of Deerfield
purchased two pair of gravestones to mark his grave and
that of his first wife Eunice. ° The winged death's
heads on the stones were typical examples of Johnson's
work,11 and resembled the effigies on contemporary
stones from eastern Massachusetts (Fig. 5). Early in
the 1730s, other families ordered similar stones from
Johnson, or other Middletown carvers.12

Around the same time, residents of Westfield and

Ill-

5. John Gunn, 1726, Longmeadow, Mass. Attri-
buted to Thomas Johnson I.

Figure 6. Mary King, 1737, Suf field, Ct. Attrributed
to "The Bat Carver."

b, ^m^m^<su

Figure 7. Henry Dwight, Esq., 1732, Hatfield, Mass,
Attributed to Gideon Hale.

Suffield (then a part of Old Hampshire County, Massachu-
setts, but now a part of Connecticut) started obtaining
gravestones with death's heads from a carver working in
the Simsbury, Connecticut area. This still unknown
carver has been dubbed "The Bat Carver" because his
death's heads usually have blank wings with scalloped
borders that resemble the wings of a bat. 3 The hollow
eyes, triangular nose, long chin and prominent teeth of
the death's heads and the borders found on the earliest
stones by "The Bat Carver" clearly show the influence
of Thomas Johnson's death's heads (Fig. 6). At present
it is not possible to determine if "The Bat Carver" was
apprenticed at the Middletown quarries or merely imi-
tated Thomas Johnson's work. Ten examples of his work
are in Westfield and about twenty are located in Suf-
field. His influence remained circumsribed geographi-
cally and chronologically.

The efforts of Gideon Hale (1712-1776) to establish
a market for his work in western Massachusetts proved
to be no more successful. Sometime around 1734, Hale
moved to Northampton from Middletown, married a woman
twenty years his senior, and set himself up as a grave-
stone cutter. 4 During the next six years he cut a
few — approximately a dozen — stones with winged death's
heads that are easily distinguished from Thomas John-
son's own work by Hale's use of local sandstone which
is not always of the best quality (Fig. 7). Again, as
in the case of Nash's work, the enthusiasm of the
revivalism in Northampton and the surrounding towns was
not expressed in Hale's gravestones, though Hale himself
was moved and joined the church in 1735. Unfortunately
for Hale, he failed to make much of an impression on
individuals who bought gravestones locally. About
1740, he abandoned his wife and returned to Connecticut
where he worked briefly for Joseph Johnson in East
Windsor before going into partnership with the Johnsons
in Middletown, where he subsequently died in relative
poverty. 5

Despite Hale's failure to sell many of his Middle-
town style gravestones, Connecticut shop traditions
centered in Windsor and Middletown eventually won accep-
tance in western Massachusetts during the 1740s, and
this development marked the beginning of a second stage
in the evolution of gravestone carving in the mid-
Connecticut River valley. From the mid-1740s to the
early 1770s, stonecutters from down the Connecticut
River or those trained by them grew to dominate grave-
stone making in Old Hampshire County. Patronage net-

works among the region's leading families also played a
role in diffusing new fashions throughout the entire
valley, and differences in patronage came to be more
closely related to differences in status than to differ-
ences in residency. Certain purchasers" of gravestones
in Old Hampshire County appear to have had more in
common with some consumers in Middletown and Wethers-
field than with their immediate neighbors and fellow
townsmen. 6

The new stones from Windsor and Middletown which
began appearing in Old Hampshire County graveyards
during the 1740s bore w_iaged cherubs that marked a
break from the earlier Johnson stones with winged
death's heads (Fig. 8). While it is tempting to attri-
bute or to relate the shift in effigies from winged
death's heads to cherubs to the religious revivalism of
the mid-1730s and the early 1740sf the character of
some of the earliest Hampshire County patrons of the
new style of stones belies this theory. Johnson cherubs
found favor with Col. Israel Williams, who publicly
opposed the visit of itinerant revivalist George Whit-
field to the county in 1745; with Rev. Jonathan Ashley,
one of the region's first clerical "cTi^ETcs~ of^the ur"eat
Awakening; and with Lt. Col. Oliver Partidge, Colonel

**^¥ TFW^f^lW

Men TenYty;:**:;! t^$%

.*'**

■Kfl

Figure 8. Israel Williams, Jr., 1741, Hatfield, Mass,
Attributed to Thomas Johnson II.

Williams's ally, who sat on the council that voted to
dismiss Rev. Jonathan Edwards in 1750. These indivi-
duals were very self-conscious consumers, and it is
hard to believe that they would have knowingly purchased
recognizable emblems suggesting religious enthusiasm or
association with the Awakening. The purchase of such
stones probably indicated nothing more nor less than a
desire to k_aep up with funerary art down river and to
affirm their kinship with leading gentry families in
the lower valley who also patronized the Johnsons.

The majority of the strikingly similar cherub
stones with elaborate foliate borders that appeared in
Old Hampshire County during the 1740s were carved by
Thomas Johnson II (1718-74), Joseph Johnson (1698-e..
1770), William Holland (working 1748-67) and Nathaniel
Phelps (1721-89). 8 The similarity of the stones re-
sulted from the master-apprentice relationships which
bound together these cutters (Fig. 9). Thomas Johnson
II, his uncle Joseph Johnson and Gideon Hale all un-
doubtedly trained with Thomas Johnson I in Middletown,
and even though Joseph worked in East Windsor during
much of the 1740s, the Middletown quarries remained the
focal point for the family. William Holland is known
to have worked for Joseph Johnson in East Windsor in

^„J

Thomas Johnson I
Middletown, Ct.)

Gideon Hale
(Middletown,
Northampton,
E. Windsor)

I . j

| Gideon Hale, Jr

I (Middletown)

Nathaniel Phelps
(Northampton)

Joseph Johnson-
(Middletown,
E. Windsor)

-Thomas Johnson II
(Middletown)

Elijah Phelps Ruf
(Northampton, (No
Lanesborough)

Thomas Johnson III
(Middletown)

William Holland

(E. Windsor, Longmeadow,

Middletown) ^^

Joseph Williston

v. (Springfield)

us Phelps j

rthampton)

Aaron Bliss Ezra Stebb'ins II (?)
(Wilbraham) (Longmeadow)

Ezra Stebbins
(Longmeadow)

I
I.

Figure 9. Middletown-Windsor-Hampshire Network. Solid
lines: documented; dashed lines: probable.

1748, and very well may have been trained by him, for
he returned with Joseph to Middletown around 1750.
Nathaniel Phelps, the son of a prosperous Northampton
brick mason, probably received his training from Hale
or possibly a Johnson. The connection has not been
documented, but the echoes of their work in Phelps's
early stones are so striking that his work could be
mistaken for that of a Johnson.19 Once established,
this Connecticut-based network of stonecutters working
in sandstone put down deep roots as Thomas Johnson II,
Gideon Hale and Nathaniel Phelps all trained sons to be
stonecutters.

Phelps, the Northampton native, initially captured
the largest share of the growing gravestone market in
Old Hampshire County. For four decades, from the late
1740s__to _the_-mid-1780s, his shop was the most prolific
in Old Hampshire County as he became the prime source
of gravestones for those of moderate means. He supple-
mented his income by farming, and he followed his
father's trade as a brick mason, building and repairing
chimneys. He usually obtained sandstone for grave
markers from a quarry he owned on Mount Tom, but occa-
sionally he carved markers of shale, of schist, and of
sandstone obtained from outside of the Northampton
area. His earliest work, which probably does not
date before the late 1740s, included a few death's
heads (Fig. 10). In the early 1750s he carved winged
cherubs which were clearly indebted to the Johnsons'
work, although Phelps's use of local stone, usually
flatter relief and hollow eyes without pupils distin-
guished his cherubs from those of his probable master
(Fig. 11). Phelps's later work was marked by stylistic
diversity. Circumstantial evidence suggests strongly
that the increased diversity resulted from constant
efforts to keep up with competition from other stonecut-
ters. For a time in the mid-1760s, the competition
from stonecutters down river and the apparent loss of
his usual source of sandstone seem to have put him out
of business, plunged him deeply into debt and forced
him to mortgage his lands (Fig. 12). 2l He resumed
cutting and selling stones in the late 1760s and recov-
ered some of his lands, though he still faced stiff
competition and remained in precarious financial circum-
stances for the last twenty years of his life.22

The competition that threatened Phelps's livelihood
came initially from the Johnsons and William Holland.
The ties that linked stonecutters in vTKe-tTonne"cticut
River valley during the third quarter of the eighteenth

a. 1742-53

b. 1745-85

c. 1745-70

d. 1767-72

e. 1767-74

f. mid-1770s

Figure 10. Major examples and date ranges of effigies
by Nathaniel Phelps.

{«£ -

^ S ;

J • _ Av ..

V -

Figure 11. John Arms, 1753, Deerfield, Mass.
Attributed to Nathaniel Phelps.

Before 1740 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 84

Figure 12. Distribution by date of surviving, legible
gravestones attributed to Nathaniel Phelps
(Massachusetts river towns only) . In the
late 1770s the Phelps shop is producing
other stones which clearly are the work of
another hand. Even the stones in the 1780s
with motifs similar to those cut earlier by
Nathaniel are lettered by another hand.
The chart includes only those in which
Nathaniel had a hand.

century did not blunt competition among individual
shops. Despite the advantages provided by Northampton's
central location in Old Hampshire County and by his
access to locally quarried stone, Phelps failed to win
the patronage of certain groups of consumers. Some of
the county's leading gentry families continued to prefer
gravestones and large imposing tablestones produced at
the Johnson quarry in Middletown. They bought stones
with cherubs from Joseph Johnson and Thomas Johnson
II's "curiously wrought" (i. e. heavily ornamented)
stories with shaped profiles and baroque scrolls (Fig.
13). Phelps did not have a counterpart for these
latter stones during the 1750s and 1760s, nor did he
produce the tablestones that found favor with the lead-
ing gentry families. His failure to win the patronage

m f err ft; f ne * rtetnsms ot

•r -r- •*■

\ » V

*TTN V HESTER LV. c.ccl

/""*"

fVT!

Figure 13. Sarah Williams, 1770, Hatfield, Mass. Doc-
umented to Thomas Johnson II. See note 24.

of the region's wealthiest residents limited his oppor-
tunities to produce the elaborate and ambitious works
of which he was capable.

Competition also cut into the market provided by
middle class consumers in the county's southern towns.
Residents in the towns of the Connecticut River's east
bank from South Hadley to Longmeadow continued to buy
from the Johnsons, who supplied most of the gravestones
placed in these towns during the late 1740s and early
1750s. Around 1756, William Holland moved from Middle-
town to Longmeadow to take advantage of this ready
market for~The "work of Middletown stonecutters. He
bought land and began producing grave markers in locally
quarried stone. An extremely skillful carver, Holland
spent most of his career as a journeyman working for
others and working in their styles. Several distinctive
gravestones in Connecticut which can be documented to
be his work clearly reveal that his status as a journey-
man had nothing to do with his talent asj stonecutter
or "stonecarver" as he called himself. During his
three to four year stay in Longmeadow, he was his own
master and produced stones with his own distinctive
touches (Fig. 14). The low hairy foreheads, the precise
lettering and the hooked numeral '1' recall his earlier
work and that of his probable master, Joseph Johnson,
but the languid, open foliate borders and the crown
surmounted by a glpfc>e and the Maltese cross are innova-
tions of Holland.26 The use of the cross may explain
why Holland placed only a few stones outside of Long-
meadow in neighboring Springfield; the mid-Connecticut
River valley probably was not really ready for such a
papist symbol. Holland left Longmeadow at some time in
1760 and returned to the Middletown area where he cut
stones with his distinctive pointed crowns that can be
seen in Durham, Middletown, North Guilford and North
Haven, Connecticut graveyards. He stopped working in
the late 1760s and vanished without a trace.

Holland's influence in southern Hampshire County
lingered long after his departure, for he appears to
have trained two or three Springfield area stonecutters.
Between 1759 and 1767, Joseph Williston (1732-68) of
Springfield produced approximately 100 gravestones in a
red sandstone. Williston copied Holland's lettering,
borders and effigies, but dispensed with the hair on
the forehead and only cut three stones with crosses.2'
A certain stiffness, a reduction in scale and a tendency
to simplify distinguished his work from that of Holland
(Fig. 15). He embellished at least four of his stones

HHH

Figure 14. Thomas Hale, 1750, Longmeadow, Mass. Doc-
umented to William Holland. See note 26.

Figure 15. Mrs. Christian Williams, 1766, Hatfield,

Mass. Documented to Joseph Williston. See
note 27.

by carving a brick wall under the effigy. He placed
most of his stones in South Hadley, Springfield, West
Springfield and Westfield, and examples are found in
Chicopee, Deerfield, Hadley, Hatfield and Northampton.
The four latter towns had been prime markets for Nathan'
iel Phelps who, as noted above, produced few stones
during the mid-1760s. Williston's untimely death cut
short what appears to have been a promising career.

After Williston's death, Aaron Bliss (1739-76) of
Wilbraham attempted unsuccessfully to supply WillistonV
market.28 Ever since the publication of Harriette
Merrifield Forbes's work in the 1920s, Aaron Bliss has
been confused with a contemporary Longmeadow stonecutte
who may or may not have beenan Aaron Bliss living in
Longmeadow from 1730 to 1810. It was, however, Aaron
Bliss of Wilbraham who called himself a stonecutter,
and it was his probate inventory that contained "four
stone axes 6/, four hewing Chisels 3/, nine writing
Chisels 4/, two Iron Claws 1/6, l£Qn Mallet 1/ , Iron
Sledge 8/ and Pair of Compass 2/6. "30 A man of modest
circumstances, Bliss supplemented his income from stone-
cutting by blacksmithing. He appears to have begun
cutting gravestones in the later 1760s in a dark brown
sandstone easily distinguished from the red sandstone
used by Williston and the paler, closer grained brown
sandstone used by the Longmeadow stonecutter. His
stones usually had winged cherubs and foliate borders
which recall the work of Holland and Joseph Johnson
(Figs. 16-17). Most of Bliss's stones, including those
which mark his children's graves, are in Wilbraham;
several are in Westfield, and examples can be found in
South Hadley, Springfield and West Springfield. His
death brought a temporary halt to stonecuting in Wil-
braham, and when activity resumed in the 1780s, under
the direction of John Buckland (1748-93) of East Hart-
ford, it marked a bjreak with the traditions derived
from Holland's work. ^

The legacy of William Holland persisted much longer
in Longmeadow. After Holland's departure, a stonecutter
obviously trained by him continued to produce crowned
cherubs that closely followed his work, even though the
Longmeadow stonecutter's cherubs are more broadly pro-
portioned and less deeply cut than Holland's own work
(Fig. 18). Traditionally, Aaron Bliss (1730-1810) of
Longmeadow has been identified as the Longmeadow stone-
cutter who began working in the 1760s. This Aaron
Bliss appears to have been a mason and may have been a
stonecutter, but this latter assumption cannot be docu-

Arifcre vr?v< mv X.t\z

v. O \ -v. i Li I \\U. 4 A -
\ ' r% tic ax r >~f-\ - *~! * **» *~! «

s ,->r«^

VL\L\ ^,C- . K * i Ail

>*'-■ MM ■

-k. L'l! t

w*v-;

Figure 16. Nathaniel Bliss, 1772, Wilbraham, Mass.
Documented to Aaron Bliss. See note 28

fpx\ V; vppir. f\A \<tx "Ave
i-i J V a^ A^U, ^nC!- r?ll,-:: A\j3

$*aitii

-■^*— i

SSBtS***** ~~- ~"'f^r.

'4*"S,»*»».',,w!'•,'

Figure 17. Abel Bliss, 1762, Wilbraham, Mass.
Attributed to Aaron Bliss.

■■■Br ■

■£

3 Ti •Memory,.

Pa .His;.8^^re^i
| Ton ai^ XWCoiitji

Died of itfie" ^all-Pox

HoT.y lOrdeTv^
to P^a:cli tKe Crcxfpel
tn a ParisK of tfi'
.Kpisc opal CH^rt-fr"

» In Pt ^vbVbq\) -

■W . '

a a

Figure 18. George Colton, 1760, and Jonathan Colton,
1752, Longmeadow, Mass. Attributed to
Ezra Stebbins I.

merited for he never called himself a stonecutter, and
the record for payment cited by Harriette Merrifield
Forbes clearly refers to a stone cut by Aaron Bliss of
Wilbraham. 2 A more likely candidate for the Longmeadow
stonecutter is Ezra Stebbins (1731-96) of Longmeadow
who was paid for gravestones in 1773 and 1784 and is
identified as a gravestone maker in the Stebbins family
genealogy. The 1773 payment to Ezra Stebbins could
have been for the Mary Bliss stone, 17,57, Longmeadow
(Fig. 19). Whoever he may have been,35 the Longmeadow
stonecutter soon dispensed with Holland's crosses and
eventually did away with the hairy foreheads. In the
late 1760s and 1770s, the Longmeadow shop began to
develop motifs that were richly symbolic: hour glasses,
cocks crowing, and flowers cut by scythes (Fig. 20).
During the 1780s and 1790s, the shop produced portrait
stones and crowned cherubs reminiscent of, though dis-
tinguishable from, the cherubs of the 1760s. These
stones with profiles and crowned cherubs, which contin-
ued to be produced after the death of Ezra Stebbins I
in 1796 may have been the work of Ezra Stebbins II
(1760-1819) of Longmeadow.36 Under the leadership of
Herman Newell (1774-1833), the Longmeadow shop continued
to produce gravestones until the 1820s.37

The developments in the southern towns of Old
Hampshire County, Massachusetts, during the 1760s and
1770s did not have much of an impact on the more nor-
therly river towns. Williston did place gravestones in
Deerfield, Hadley, Hatfield and Northampton during the
mid-1760s, but Phelps resumed his business and recovered
his customers by the late 1760s. Most people around
Northampton bought from Phelps during the late 1760s or
did not buy. _ln_ Northf ield and Sunderland, the vast
majority of those who died before 1770 lay-in graves
unmarked by stones. West of the river in the recently
settled and rapidly growing hill towns, unmarked graves
were the rule.

The situation in the northern part of the county
changed dramatically during the 1770s. Once again
Nathaniel Phelps saw his livelihood threatened by out-
siders. The challenge to Phelps and to the popularity
in western Massachusetts of the Connecticut shop tradi-
tions of sandstone carving came from the Soule_^f_amily
of southeastern Massachusetts stonecutters who had
already established themselves in neighboring Worcester
County. Around 1760, Ebenezer Soule, Sr. (1711-92),
the patriarch of this family of gravestone cutters,
moved from Plympton in Plymouth County to Rutland Dis-

Figure 19. Mary Bliss, 1757, Longmeadow, Mass. Docu-
mented to Ezra Stebbins I. See notes 33-34

C^}

a. 1760s

b. 1760-70S

c. 1780s

d. 1780-90s e. 1780-90s

Figure 20. Longmeadow shop motifs,

f. 1790-1810S

trict, now called Barre, in Worcester County.38 Later
his sons Beza (1750-1835) and Coomer (1747-77) joined
him. Visits by members of this family to the mid-
Connecticut River valley marked the beginning of a
third stage in the progression of gravestone carving in
western Massachusetts. During the late 1770s and
1780s, the successors of these southeastern Massachu-
setts stonecutters, who preferred to work in slate,
dominated stone carving in the northernmost towns of
Old Hampshire County and even challenged the popularity
of sandstone gravestones as far south as Hadley and
Hatfield.

The Soules were the first true itinerants to cut
gravestones in the river towns of Old Hampshire County.
From their base in Barre, they traveled to Deerfield,
Sunderland, Stockbridge, Lanesborough and other towns
in western Massachusetts to cut grave markers in locallj
available slate, sandstone, limestone and marble. Un-
like Gideon Hale and William Holland, they did not own
land in Old Hampshire County nor give any other indica-
tion of an intention to settle in the communities they
visited; occasional account book references, payment of
a poll tax, and scattered gravestones mark their pere-
grinations during the early 1770s.39 When they found
there were few gravestones to cut, they hired themselves
out as casual laborers. Farming appears to have played
only a minor role in providing for their subsistence.

The distribution of their stones in western Massa-
chusetts suggests the varying degrees of success that
greeted their itinerancies. In the graveyards of Sun-
derland and neighboring Montague, where there had been
few grave markers, Ebenezer Soule or possibly his son
Coomer used a locally available sandstone to cut approx-
imately two dozen stones with the family's distinctive
"medusas."40 Because of the poor quality of the stone,
the^se medusa markers were rather roughly cut and the
placement of such markers remained a localized phenome-
nom. In Deerfield, where Beza and Coomer placed two
dozen anthropomorphic angel stones in 1772, they suc-
cessfully capitalized on a lingering taste for slate
gravestones (Fig. 21). The availability of slate in
nearby Bernardston enabled them to satisfy an existing
desire for quality slate gravestones at an affordable
price. Few of these slate stones, however, were placed
by the Soules in neighboring towns. Sometime around
1774, Coomer traveled through Berkshire County in far
western Massachusetts, but cut only a few stones, for
members of the region's leading families.

$gm

Figure 21

. **&/*jk

Margaret Williams, 1773, Deerfield, Mass,
Attributed to Beza or Coomer Soule.

>lj)j£UtU&l

•:^^P.EI);, ih the {Mr.rjiory bj ' Mrjj/'
Jo? '/THAI' A LLEJ r ?vpAo foq vfic\)fr

at Jm u/)(\ r' Hlvi+mg .,q.ti'::'i be %;|fe
Day o/ JriH1". 17/J0. .boning J ilfi '
mlr-rtiWhe jl'tcI year :()j )/n /jw'r. j
i "<=.r 0/ a Srm>oj a Brother \

brine) o Pftrrnt eV.a joi/b
liil '?s Br ewe offirffr ip i-fir- ' Con") iff:
neh}fi%(hnifr; -t 'u bethel:

Jry himr. H^' bo< . , ;rir\

•u-.

\Q.c

3&51

Figure 22. Jonathan Allen, 1780, Northampton, Mass.

Documented to Nathaniel Phelps. See note 43

The itinerancies into western Massachusetts by the
Soules ended with the death of Coomer in 1777 and
Ebenezer's departure for Hinsdale, New Hampshire in the
same year. Despite the brief duration of the itineran-
cies, the family's work had a lasting influence in the
Massachusetts river towns, because competitors such as
Nathaniel Phelps and their own apprentices quickly
domesticated the anthropomorphic angel. For the remain-
der of the 1770s and throughout the 1780s, naturalistic I
angels replaced stylized winged or crowned cherubs as
the most popular image on gravestones in the northern
towns of Old Hampshire County. J*-*

Soon after the Soules* stay in Deerfield, Nathan-
iel Phelps's Northampton shop began making very austere
sandstone markers with anthropomorphic angels (Fig.
lOe). In the late 1770s or the 1780s, the shop produced
several very ambitious stones with angels or imps hold-
ing aloft crowns and blowing trumpets or bugles that
owed little or nothing to indigenous traditions but
attempted to respond to a new taste for naturalistic
gravestones (Fig. 22). While Phelps received payment
for at least one of these stones, they could be the
work of another hand. 3 Phelps's son Elijah (1761-
1842) could have had a hand in producing these stones
or they may be largely the work of an undiscovered
stonecutter working as a journeyman for Phelps.

More directly indebted to the Soules' angels were
the images on slate stones that a new generation of
stonecutters in the Deerfield area began producing.
These stonecutters continued to supply interested cus-
tomers in Bernardston, Deerfield, Greenfield, Hatfield,
Montague, Sunderland and Whately with a version of the
Soule angel until at least 1800. The training of these
stonecutters who set up local shops was the most lasting
legacy of the Soules. Though it is not possible to
document certain stonecutters' associations with the
Soules, timing, proximity and visual evidence suggest
the existence of master-apprentice relationships with
members of the Soule family (Fig. 23). The production
of slate gravestones by these cutters and their accept-
ance in the northern river towns broke the unity
created by the Connecticut River valley's network of
stonecutters working in sandstone.

First of the local stonecutters to begin working
in slate was Ebenezer Janes (1736-1808) of Northfield.
Janes may have been a practicing stonecutter before the
Soules' itinerancies, but the dates of the surviving

Ebenezer Soule, Sr.
(Barre, Hinsdale, N. H.)

Coomer Soule— Beza Soule Ivory Soule Ebenezer Janes
(Barre) (Barre) (Hinsdale, N. H.) (Northfield)

John Locke-

(Deerfield, West-
minster, Rockingham, Vt.)

Solomon Ashley
(Deerfield)

Isaiah Soule
(Wendell)

Henry Locke Jonathan Allen

(Brattleboro, Rockingham, Vt.) (Bernardston)

Figure 23. The Soules and their probable apprentices.
Solid lines: documented; dashed lines:
probable.

4fe

■:^vi(^%

Figure 24. Ebenezer Janes, Jr., 1766, Northfield, Mass.
Attributed to Ebenezer Janes.

examples of his work suggest that he learned the stone-
cutter's trade late in life, perhaps from Ebenezer
Soule, Sr. A prominent life-long resident of North-
field, the forty-one-year-old Janes stood fifth on
Northf ield's tax list in 1771. He pwned_a mill and_
sixty-three acres of prime farm land. A town~leader,
he served as a selectman and would later represent the
town in the legislature and would receive a commission
as justice of the peace. Janes was also a part time
"gravestone manufacturer."45 The earliest stones which
can be attributed to him are winged angels that began
appearing in the Northf ield graveyard" pToHabTy during
the 1770s; among the earliest dated of these stones is
the marker of his son, Ebenezer Janes, Jr (Fig. 24).
These early slate stones, which bear a strong resem-
blance to the "fish winged" angel stones of Ebenezer
Soule that are found in neighboring Hinsdale, New Hamp-
shire, suggest that sometime in the 1770s Janes came
under the elder Soule's influence (Fig. 25). Several
characerteristics found on contemporary angel stones of
the Soules are found on Janes's earliest stones: almond-
shaped eyes with split pupils, a split upper lip, wings
with scalelike feathers and stripes, and tightly curled
hair or wigs. During the 1780s and 1790s, Janes devel-
oped his own distinctive winged effigies characterized

Figure 25. Sara Doolittle, 1773, Northfield, Mass,
Attributed to Ebenezer Soule, Sr.

by very human-looking, puffy faces with long narrow
eyes and wavy hair and wildly flapping wings (Fig. 26).
Around 1800, he began to cut stones with male and
female portraits (Fig. 27). Despite his obvious art-
istry and technical proficiency, he placed few stones
outside of Northfield and the neighboring towns of
Bernardston, Gill and Warwick. It appears that for
this prosperous and prominent Northfield resident,
gravestone manufacturing remained a sideline.

For Janes's neighbors and contemporaries—John
Locke (1752-1837) and Solomon Ashley (1754-1823) —
gravestone cutting was a way of life and probably the
chief source of their income. Locke moved in the early
1770s from Woburn, in eastern Massachusetts, to Deer-
field, where he probably came into contact with a
member of the Soule family who trained him as a stone-
cutter.46 Surviving stones in Deerfield, Hatfield and
Whately as well as documentary evidence suggest he
began working on his own around_JL780. Like other
stonecutters who were masons, h^Tsupplemented his incoirn
by plastering and laying bricks. His earliest grave-
stones with anthropomorphic angel heads with feathered
wings and vine borders bear a striking resemblance to
the gravestones Beza and Coomer Soule placed in the
Deerfield burying ground, though Locke's flatter relief
overall, his more cursory articulation of the feathers,
his treatment of the pupils, and the angel's broader
proportions distinguished his angels from those of his
probable mentors (Fig. 28).

At some time in the late 1780s, Locke forjD_ed a
partnership with Solomon Ashley, the son of Deerfield's
former minister. Ashley was trained either in HijnsdaJLfi.
by Ebenezer Soule, Sr. around 1783 or in DeerfTeld by
Locke himself. The fact that Ashley's angel stones
were virtually identical to Locke's version and remain
hard to distinguish from it suggests strongly that
Locke may have been his master (Fig. 29). Clearly the
two worked together during the later 1780s and early
1790s, producing flocks of winged angels. During this
period Locke also produced a male portrait stone which
closely resembled his almond-eyed angels, and an
angel stone with blank eyes and no articulation of the
wing feathers, while Ashley produced gravestones for
children with coffins or six-pointed rosettes as the
central motif (Fig. 30). They placed their stones as
far south as South Hadley and Northampton and as far
north as Hinsdale, New Hampshire, but the river towns
immediately adjoining Deerfield and the rapidly growing

Figure 26. Elisabeth Stratton, 1789, Northfield, Mass,
Attributed to Ebenezer Janes.

a. 1770-80s

b. 1780s

c. 1790s d. 1800s

Figure 27. Effigies by Ebenezer Janes and date ranges,

Figure 28.

■MPs!

Samuel McCall, 1780, So. Deerfield, Mass.
Documented to John Locke (Hampshire County
Probate Registry, Box 95, no. 51) .

hill towns to the north and west formed their prime
market.

In addition to producing slate gravestones, the
shop offered marble markers. As early as 1787, Ashley
purchased marble from Elijah Phelps, the son of Nathan-
iel, who operated a quarry in Lanesborough, Massachu-
setts. * It is possible that Ashley received some
training in working marble from Phelps. It is docu-
mented that both Locke and Ashley began producing marble
gravestones with abstract effigies and angels in the
early 1790s. Some of their portrait stones, such as
those in Hatfield for Deacon Obadiah Dickinson and his
wives, that can be documented to different hands, are
indistinguishable and suggest common workmanship.52
Eventually, Ashley's marble stones evolved into haunt-
ing, stylized mourning figures, while Locke produced
primarily abstract angels in marble. Occasionally,
Locke put his abstract angels and unadorned heads on
slate stones, a practice which became more common after
he moved to Brattleboro, Vermont around 1797. 3

This experimentation by Locke and Ashley was not
an isolated development peculiar to their shop. During
the 1790s other stonecutters working in the region
produced alternatives to the anthropomorphic angel that
had become popular in the 1770s and 1780s. In Northamp-
ton, the Phelps shop, under the direction of Rufus
Phelps (1766-1826), produced rather abstract, incised
angel stones that marked a break with the naturalistic
carving that had distinguished the shop during the late
1770s and 1780s. Up the Connecticut River in the
area of Rockingham, Vermont, imaginative stonecutters
working in slate produced unusual stones that mixed
previous gravestone motifs and neoclassical devices
with soul discs, foliated carving, scalloping, hearts,
rosettes and birds. Despite the diversity of tech-
nique, training and materials, the work of all of these
cutters shared a rejection of the literal reproduction
of gravestone designs taken directly from southeastern
Massachusetts or Connecticut and an increasingly ab-
stract treatment of central motifs.

Abstract treatment of effigies and the presence of
folk motifs could also be found on the gravestones
purchased by residents of the Massachusetts river towns
from stonecutters outside of the Connecticut River
valley. Members of the Sikes family working in Belcher-
town, Massachusetts sold some of their stones decorated
with stylized spirit images or effigies, undulating

- 'V.

j*.>'Wlk:mst

Figure 29. Joseph Smith, 1798, Hatfield, Mass. Docu-
mented to Solomon Ashley (Hampshire County
Probate Records, vol. 20, p. 278).

a. Locke & Ashley,
1780-1800

b. Locke, late 1780s

c. Ashley, 1780s

d. Locke, 1790s

e. Locke & Ashley, 1790s f. Ashley, 1790s

g. Locke, early 1790s

h. Locke, mid-1790s

Figure 30. Effigies produced by the shop of John Locke
and Solomon Ashley.

vines, hearts and whorl rosettes to customers in Hadley
Hatfield, Northampton and Sunderland.56 These schist
stones did not lend themselves to precise detail, and
their carvers drew upon a more abstract ornamental
tradition from eastern Connecticut. Also distinguished
by stylized portraits, whorl rosettes, tudor roses,
vines and hearts were the marble gravestones of Roger
Booth (d. 1849) that leading families in Northampton.*
Hadley and Hatfield imported from southern Vermont. '
Elijah Phelps of Lanesborough also supplied marble
gravestones, and other stonecutters from the hill towns
east of the Connecticut River supplied customers along
the river with schist or granite gravestones during the
late 1780s and the 1790s.

It is difficult to decide what to make of this
sudden popularity of abstract treatment of effigies and
folk motifs. Though this development in the northern
part of Old Hampshire County remained a counterpoint to
the continued production of stones with winged angels
and to the introduction of neoclassical urns and more
naturalistic portrait stones, these gravestones do
represent a recognizable stage--a fourth stage--in
gravestone usage and carving in the Massachusetts river
towns. The use of marble and harder materials such as
schist and granite, which did not lend themselves to
cutting precise detail, probably encouraged the abstrac
rendering of stylized images. The slowly growing popu-
larity of marble stones, especially among the well-to-
do, supported the production of such portrait stones
and spirit images, for the customers may have bought
the stones because of the material as well as the
images. Advertisements in newspapers during the 1790s
and early 1800s make much of the materials used. The
specificity of the information on materials such as
"best blue stone, of the Bernardston kind" (slate from
the Bernardston quarry), "Lanesborough white marble,"
and "Middlebury Marble" contrasts sharply with the
complete lack of information in advertisements on the
decoration of the stones.58 In addition to the aesthe-
tic appeal of the materials, claims in the advertise-
ment^ for their durability may have encouraged their
use.59

Competition among stonecutters also contributed to
the innovation and experimentation. Newspaper adver-
tisements indicate that competition existed among local
stonecaryers and between established carvers and new-
comers.60 By reducing detail, eliminating foliate
borders and employing stylized effigies, stonecutters

such as Ashley and Rufus Phelps reduced the labor that
went into their stones and presumably made them less
expensive to produce and more marketable. At the same
time, use of folk motifs could produce distinctive
stones that would be distinguishable from the flocks of
winged angels. Competition in a developing commercial
environment rather than isolation and unchallenged
traditions seems to have produced these individualistic
stones rich in imagery.

Whatever the factors initiating and supporting it,
the flowering of the 1790s proved to be short-lived.
Neoclassical motif s--primarily the urn and willow--
began appearing in the region's graveyards in the 1790s
and marked the beginning of the fifth and final stage
in eighteenth-century stonecutting in the river towns.
In Deerfield, Greenfield and Sunderland, the urn motif
quickly came to dominate in the first decade of the new
century. Local cutters working in slate, such as Solo-
mon Ashley and Jonathan Allen (1766-1836) of Bernards-
ton, and their customers adopted the new motifs with-
out apparent hesitation. By the 1810s the urn motifs
penetrated the hill towns, while rosettes and hearts
assumed a distinctly subordinate and diminishing role
as secondary motifs. The speed with which the neoclas-
sical imagery was adopted probably resulted from the
intense competition among established local cutters and
their vulnerability to incoming eastern Massachusetts
stonecutters who could quickly set themselves up to
supply slate gravestones for local customers. 2 The
neoclassical stones not only bespoke the latest fashion,
but also could be inexpensively produced. 3

In those towns in which a preference for sandstone
gravestones continued to hold sway, the urn and willow
made a late and often rather brief appearance in the
1810s and 1820s. The shop in Longmeadow and other
stonecutters who worked in sandstone in the Springfield
area could still market stones with motifs that were in
many cases direct descendants of William Holland's
gravestones of the 1750s (Fig. 31a). Until around
1810, an imitator of the Sikes family's style continued
to supply residents of Granby, South Hadley and Wilbra-
ham with sandstone imitations of the Sikes family's
distinctive effigies. In Northampton during the 1800s
and 1810s, Rufus Phelps produced sandstone markers with
heads simply outlined and surrounded by wavy lines or
arched bands (Fig. 31c). The sandstone medium in which
these cutters worked and their customers' preference
for it temporarily protected the cutters from some of

a. Longmeadow shop

b. Sikes family imitator

c. Rufus Phelps, Northampton

Figure 31. Late effigy styles.

the innovations in motifs that grew out of the intense
competition among the stonecutters who worked in slate
in the county's northern towns. In particular, migrat-
ing stonecutters from eastern Massachusetts, who worked
in slate, avoided the sandstone quarries and preferred
to establish themselves in areas where they could obtain
a material with wich they were familiar. The urn would
eventually triumph even in the towns from Hatfield and
Hadley to Agawam and Longmeadow, for the shift in
motifs eventually transcended the shift in the prefer-
ence for particular materials. With the acceptance of
the urn and willow and the growing dominance of marble
as the material of choice, the Connecticut River valley
traditions in stonecutting passed from the river towns
of western Massachusetts.

As with other regional analyses of stone carving,
a study of the eighteenth-century gravestones and stone
carvers of the mid-Connecticut River valley helps to
refine the views of New England gravestone carving that
were created by the early focus on eastern Massachusetts
and also by the early fascination with iconographic
analysis. This study points up the often slighted
roles played by networks among craftsmen and by mate-
rials in shaping regional styles in stonecutting. It

also suggests the extent to which competition among
stonecutters may have influenced stylistic change.

In the Connecticut River valley the availability
of river transport, the similar training of stonecutters
and the distribution of the valley's sandstone created
an environment in which it was hard for the archetypal,
isolated folk craftsman to flourish, and few did in the
Massachusetts river towns. Stonecutters in the river
towns in Old Hampshire County were by and large skilled
craftsmen knit together by shared training and kinship
into networks that transcended parochial boundaries.
Their customers included merchants, ministers and pros-
perous yeomen farmers enriched by the valley's commer-
cial farming. Changing gravestone fashions from the
1730s to the 1770s were quickly communicated throughout
the valley by stones shipped from Middletown as far
north as Deerfield and by Middletown trained apprentices
and journeymen who traveled up the valley seeking to
establish themselves as local masters. Resident stone-
cutters in the river towns of Old Hampshire County had
to respond or watch their clients purchase stones from
these readily available alternatives.

The favored styles in gravestone carving shifted
over the course of a century as stonecutters and their
customers responded to changing fashions. The resulting
progression of styles from the unadorned, simply let-
tered markers to gravestones with urns and willows did
not closely parallel the evolution of styles in eastern
Massachusetts. Old Hampshire County stonecutters work-
ing in sandstone responded to stonecutting traditions
rooted in Windsor and altered by innovations from Mid-
dletown, Connecticut. Outside of Deerfield's burying
ground, winged death's heads made only a brief and
uneventful appearance in the 17J30s. The ebb and flow
of religious enthusiasm in what was the cradle of
religious revivalism in eighteenth-century New England
left no obvious impression on the region's funerary
art. The 1735 valley revival left not a mark on local
cutters' work, and the introduction of the cherub in
the 1740s was embraced by friends and foes of the Great
Awakening of the 1740s.

A taste for different materials and a shift in
materials did clearly influence consumers' preferences
and influenced motifs. In Deerfield, family ties to
Dorcester stonecutters created a preference for slate
gravestones in the 1720s and produced a burying ground
that has fifty-five stones with death's heads. After

1770f this preference for slate gravestones and the
availability of slate deposits opened the county's
northern towns to influences from eastern Massachusetts.
The shift in material introduced a new motif — the an-
thropomorphic angel — and broke the unity in the river
towns which had rested on the shared use of sandstone.
By the 1790s competition among local stonecutters, who
worked in slate, and newcomers produced a creative
flowering. It was curiously under these conditions of
competition in an environment shaped by population
growth and economic growth that the production of
stones with motifs usually associated with folk tradi-
tions and folk artists flourished. During the same
period the introduction of marble as a medium encouraged
the creation of stylized, abstract angels and portraits.
The medium in which stones were cut, as well as the in-
scriptions and iconography, thus appears to be part of
the message worth studying in an analysis of a region's
changing preferences in gravestones.

NOTES

The author wants to thank Peter Benes, Elizabeth
Fox, Laurel Gabel, William N. Hosley, Jr., Leigh Keno,
Amelia Miller, James Slater, Robert Trent, David Watters
and Philip Zea for their contributions to this article.
Special thanks to Daniel and Jessie Farber who supplied
some of the photographs, to Carol Perkins who did the
line drawings and to Robert Drinkwater who gave the
first draft a critical reading and shared his own
research on western Massachusetts gravestones.

1James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: Tiie. Arche-
ology Q£ £a£ly Am.e_r_Ac.3Jl Life (New York: Doubleday,
1977), p. 85.

^All Massachusetts towns west of today's Worcester
County were part of Hampshire County from 1662 to 1761.
In 1761 the far western towns were set off to create
Berkshire County. In 1812 Hampshire County was divided
into thirds to create today's Franklin, Hampshire and
Hampden counties. In this article the term "Old Hamp-
shire County" will be used to refer to the area pre-
sently covered by the counties of Franklin, Hampshire
and Hampden. The river towns of Old Hampshire County
on which this study focuses are Bernardston, Gill,
Greenfield, Deerfield, Whately, Hatfield, Northampton,
Easthampton, Southampton, West Springfield, Agawam,
Westfield, Northfield, Montague, Sunderland, Hadley,
South Hadley, Chicopee, Springfield, Longmeadow, Wil-

braham (originally a part of Springfield), and Enfield
and Suffield, Connecticut which were a part of Old
Hampshire County, Massachusetts until 1750. See map.

3Ernest Caulfield, "Connecticut Gravestones I,"
Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin, 16, no. 1
(1951), 1-5.

4Hampshire County Probate Records, vol. 6, p. 77.

5Peter Benes, The Ha_S_ks. q£ Orthodoxy! F_o_lk Grave-
s_Loji£ carving in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, 1689-
1805 (Amherst, Mass: University of Massachusetts
Press, 1977) , p. 38.

6Mehitable Partridge, 1730, Hatfield; Jerusha and
Eleazer Porter, 1726, Hadley.

7£. 5. Experience Nash, 1724, Northampton; Sgt. John
Marsh, 1725, Hadley; Dr. John Bernard, 1726, Hadley.

8Called stonecutter in deed dated 1747, Hampden
[originally Hampshire] County Deeds, vol. R, p. 129
(Springfield, Mass. Registry of Deeds).

9Harriette Merrifield Forbes, Gravestones o_f_ £ajJLy
Hew. England and ±te Ueji wJao. Made ThejQ, 1653-18QQ (1927;
rpt. New York: DaCapo, 1967), p. 55.

10Hampshire County Probate Records, vol. 5, p. 64.

■^Ernest Caulfield, "Connecticut Gravestones V,"
Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin, 21, no. 1
(1956), 1-21.

12Tne Thomas Bliss stone, 1733, Springfield, is by
an unknown Connecticut carver referred to as the "Glas-
tonbury Lady Carver." See Ernest Caulfield, "Connecti-
cut Gravestones IV," Connecticut Historical Society
Eullsiin , 19, no. 4 (1954), pp. 105-08. The Rev.
Daniel Brewer stone, 1733, and the Daniel Brewer, Jr.
stone, 1733, Springfield, are of a type that have been
attributed to the Johnsons but may be by an unidentified
carver working in their shop. For an example of the
type, see Caulfield, "Connecticut Gravestones V," p. 9,
figure 11.

^Ernest Caulfield, "Connecticut Gravestones VII,"
Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin, 25, no. 1
(1960), pp. 1-6.

14Caulf ield, "Connecticut Gravestones V," p. 11;
"Connecticut Gravestones VI," Connecticut Historical
Society Bulletin. 23, no. 1 (1958), p. 36; Hampden
County Deeds, vol. K, p. 381; Donald L. Jacobus and
Edgar F. Waterman, Hale. House, and Related Families
(Hartford: Connecticut Historical Society, 1952), pp.
38, 64, 65.

15Estate of Gideon Hale, 1777, Middletown Probate
District, File no. 1563 (Connecticut State Library;
cited hereafter as CSL) .

■^Kevin M. Sweeney, "Mansion People: The River Gods
and Material Culture," pp. 6-7, paper delivered at His-
toric Deerfield Colloquium on Material Cuture in the
Connecticut Valley, 1982 (copy at the Historic Deerfield
Library, Deerfield, Mass.).

17Israel Williams, 1741, Hatfield; William Ashley,
1742, Deerfield; Col. Samuel Partridge, 1740, Hatfield.

18Caulfield, "Connecticut Gravestones V," pp. 11-13;
"Connecticut Gravestones VI," pp. 33-39; James Russell
Trumbull, "Northampton Genealogy," unpub. vol. 3 of his
History of Northampton, p. 336 (Forbes Library, Nort-
hampton); Hampden County Deeds, vol. 4, p. 600.

19Caulfield, "Connecticut Gravestones V," p. 6.

20Joseph Hawley 2nd, "Account Book, 1724-58," p. 95
(Forbes Library, Northampton).

21Anne B. Webb, "On the Eve of Revolution: Northamp-
ton, Massachusetts, 1750-1775" (Ph. D. diss. University
of Minnesota, 1976), pp. 242-43.

22Hampshire County Probate Records, vol. 13, p. 4;
he died insolvent, Hampshire County Probate Records,
vol. 16, p. 110.

2~*E. g« Rev. William Williams tablestone, 1741, Hat-
field; Col. John Stoddard tablestone, 1748, Northampton.

24The Sarah Williams stone, 1770, Hatfield, is called
"curiously wrought" in a receipt signed by Capt. Thomas
Johnson in John Williams, "Journal and Account Book,"
n. p. (Northampton Historical Society).

25Hampden County Deeds, vol. Z, p. 19; e_. g. Nathan-

iel Sutlieff, 1760, Durham, in Allan I. Ludwig, Graven
Images: Hew. England stone Carving ajid. its Symbols,
1650-1815 (Middletown, Ct.: Wesleyan University Press,
1966), plate 192 A; see also Estate of Nathaniel Sut-
lieff, 1760, Middletown District File no. 3449 (CSL).

26Thomas Hale, 1750, Longmeadow; agreement to make
two pair of gravestones for the parents of Jonathan,
John and Noah Hale, ms. receipt, Feb. 21, 1757, signed
by William Holland (Springfield Public Library).

27Thomas B. Warren, "Springfield Families," vol. 3,
p. 755 (Springfield Public Library); Joseph Williston
was paid forty-one shillings, four pence for the Chris-
tian Williams stone, 1766, Hatfield, John Williams,
"Journal and Account Book," n. p. (Northampton Histori-
cal Society).

28Estate of Nathaniel Bliss, 1772, Box 16, no. 35,
Registry of Probate, Northampton; John H. Bliss, Gene-
alogy q£ iJi£ Bliss F_amily aJiojii iJie Year 155.Q. to 1M.Q.
(Boston: privately printed, 1881), pp. 54, 84.

29Forbes, pp. 117, 118, 127.

JUHampden County Deeds, vol. 13, p. 95; Hampshire
County Probate Records, vol. 13, pp. 83-84.

-,1Hampden County Deeds, vol. 29, p. 88; East Hart-
ford, First Church Records, vol. 1, p. 21 (CSL); Estate
of John Buckland, 1793, Box 22, no. 3, Registry of
Probate, Northampton.

£. .g. Hampden County Deeds, vol. 2, p. 431, vol.
13, p. 64, vol. 23, pp. 483-84. In 1752 Aaron Bliss of
Longmeadow is paid for the following: May 30, "making
brick," June 1, "carting clay," and July 10, "seting
Brick." See Samuel Colton, "Account Book, Journal A,
November 18, 1748 to November 28, 1753," p. 46 (Long-
meadow Historical Society). See n. 28.

33"Ezra Stebbins, May 4, 1773 By a pair of Grave
Stones for Mary Bliss 22/," entry in an unidentified
merchant's account book (Longmeadow Historical Society);
Estate of Jedediah Bliss, 1778, Box 16, no. 17, Registry
of Probate, Northampton; Ralph Stebbins Greenlee and
Robert Lemuel Greenlee, Hue Stebbins Genealogy (Chicago:
privately printed, 1904), I, 180.

34The stone in Figure 19 is backdated. It is of a

type probably made between the late 1760s and late
1770s. A 1773 date of manufacture is consistent with
the Mary Bliss stone in Longmeadow. It is the only
Mary Bliss stone which the author has located.

3^A Martin Root is paid b 20 for the stone for Rev.
John Ballentine, 1776, Westfield. See John H.
Lockwood, Westfield and Its Historic Influences/ 1669-
1SJL2 (Springfield, Mass: by the author, 1922), II, 159.
The Ballentine stone is clearly part of the production
of the Longmeadow shop. There is no record that Root
was a stonecutter. He was a life-long resident of
Westfield; the Ballentine stone and the others like it
were clearly made in Longmeadow. Root appears to have
been acting merely as a third party in this transaction.
See James Pierce Root, Root Genealogical Records, 1600-
1870. Comprising the General History si the Root and
Roots Families in America (New York: R. C. Root,
Anthony & Co. 1870), p. 329.

36Ezra Stebbins, Jr. was the son of a stonecutter
and the son-in-law of a mason, Aaron Bliss (1730-1810).
There is no proof that he cut gravestones. The family
genealogy provides no support for the supposition that
he was. See Greenlee and Greenlee, vol. 1, p. 246.
Forbes lists Ezra Stebbins (1760-1819) as a gravestone
maker (p. 130).

37 Forbes, p. 129. She lists Herman Newell (1774-
1833) as having signed gravestones, such as the stone
for Roger Ellsworth, 1811, Windsor, Ct.

38See Benes, pp. 123-30, 134-41.

391772 Deerfield Tax List, microfilm (Historic Deer-
field Library); Sarah Barnard, "Account Book," Septem-
ber, 1772, Nov. 24, 1772 (Pocumtuck Valley Memorial
Association, Deerfield; hereafter cited as PVMA) .

40Benes, p. 140.

41See n. 39.

42E. .g., Timothy Woodbridge, 1774, Stockbridge;
Abigail Woodbridge, 1772, Stockbridge; Hannah Williams,
1769, Lanesborough; Nathaniel Williams, Jr., 1769,
Lanesborough.

43Estate of Jonathan Allen, 1780, "paid Nathaniel
Phelps for grave Stones b 9-17-0," on April 11, 1786,

"List of Debts paid by the Executrix of the Estate of
Jonathan Allen," Box 2, no. 46, Probate Registry, Nort-
hampton.

44Betty Hobbs Pruitt, ed. T_h_£ Massachusetts Ia_x
Valuation List of 1771 (Boston: G. K. Hall and Co.,
1978), p. 458.

4^j. H. Temple and George Sheldon, History of the
Town ol Northfield, Massachusetts (Albany, n. y.: Joel
Monsell, 1875), pp. 319, 338, 364, 342, 364-65.

46George Sheldon, A History £f Deerfield, Massachu-
setts (Deerfield: Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Associa-
tion, 1895-96), vol. 2, pp. 231-32.

4 'Advertisement by John Locke in Greenfield Gazette,
July 2, 1795.

4°See ms. bill, John Williams to John Locke, Williams
Papers (PVMA).

49 Amelia F. Miller, TJie Reverend Jonathan Ashley
House (Deerfield: Heritage Foundation, 1962), p. 37.

-^Portrait stones of this type can be attributed to
both John Locke and Jonathan Allen (1766-1836) of Ber-
nardston. Neither carver's portrait stones can be
firmly documented at present.

51Hs. bill, Elijah Phelps to Solomon Ashley, Nov.
26, 1787, Ashley Papers (PVMA).

52See ms. bill, John Williams to John Locke, March,
1790, March, 1791, Box 4, Williams Papers (PVMA); Estate
of Obadiah Dickinson, Hampshire County Probate, Box 48,
no. 32.

5^William N. Hosley, Jr., "The Rockingham Stonecar-
vers: Patterns of Stylistic Concentration and Diffusion
in the Upper Connecticut River Valley, 1790-1817,"
Puritan Gravestone AJLfc 11, The Dublin Seminar for New
England Folk Life Annual Proceedings, 1978 (Boston:
Boston University Press, 1979), pp. 70-76.

54Advertisement by Rufus Phelps in Hampshire Gazette.
Sept. 1, 1802; Hampden County Deeds, vol. 27, p. 114;
Hampshire County Probate, box 113, no. 50, Registry of
Probate, Northampton.

55Hosley, pp. 66-78.

56Forbes, pp. 108-09; Ludwig, pp. 412-16; additional
work is being done on the Sikes family by Robert Drink-
water.

570ne of the stones was signed "R Booth, Sculpt.
Bennington." See Sue Kelly and Anne Williams, "'And
the Men who Made Them': The Signed Gravestones of New
England," MARKERS U: The Journal si £h_e Association
foj: Gravestone Studies (1983), p. 10.

58Greenf ield Gazette. July 2, 1795; Hampshire G_a-
zette. Aug. 24, 1812.

59Hampshire Gazette. Jan. 26, 1807.

60Greenfield Gazette. Sept. 18, 1794; GjLesulifild.
Gazette. July 2, 1795.

61Greenfield Gazette. Sept. 18, 1794; Sheldon, His-
tory q£ Deerfield. vol. 2, Genealogies, p. 17.

62For examples, see advertisements for Luke Carter,
Greenfield Gazette. Oct. 25, 1802, Alpheas Longley,
Hampshire Gazette. Nov. 19, 1805, and Samuel Doughtery,
Hampshire Gazette. Dec. 30, 1806.

63Hosley, p. 78.

Speaking Stones:
New England Grave Carvings and the Emblematic Tradition

Lucien L. Agosta

And know, reader, that though the stones in
this wilderness are already grown so witty as K^
to speak, they never yet that I could hear of,
grew so wicked as to lye.

— Cotton Mather, 16931

Most commentators on Puritan gravestone art agree
that New England Puritans, from the educated minister-
ial class to the laboring class responsible for the
gravestone carvings, were familiar with the popular
emblem tradition and were aware of specific English
emblem books, most notably George Wither's A Collection
of Emblemes (1635) and the enormously popular works of
Francis Quarles, Emblemes (1635) and Hieroglyphikes o^
the Life q£ Uaji (1638) ,z According to John W. Draper,
the works of Francis Quarles "became for a hundred
years the most approved expression of social and relig-
ious uplift among those Puritan readers whose powers
could hardly presume to the consumption of Paradise
Lo_s_£," while Rosemary Freeman, in discussing John Bun-
yan's use of emblems, has observed that "emblematic
habits of thought" had been thoroughly "fostered in the
Puritan mind by Quarles and Wither."3 In spite of
evidence for the popularity of emblems among Puritans
in England and the New England colonies, however, few
commentators on Puritan stonecarving have used the
emblem tradition as a perspective glass with which to
view the carvings. Including the carvings in the lar-
ger European emblematic tradition, however, helps to
explain the origins of the various epitaphic conven-
tions manifested on Puritan stones, many of which are
quite voluble with moralizing verse addressed to the-
deceased or to the viewer. In addition, the identifi-
cation of emblems and gravestones helps to explain why
the iconophobic Puritans paradoxically exempted from an
otherwise strict ban the profusion of images which fill
their burial grounds. More important, seeing the
stones as emblems provides a way of understanding how
they may have been interpreted by those who erected
them. In this essay, then, I would like to suggest
that the Puritans, trained in ways of se_eing_J?y the
emblem tradition, perceived their gravestones themselves
a^ emblems and derived from the emblematic conjunction
of epitaph and image the same kinds of moral, metaphysi-
cal, even mystical meanings which resonate in emblems

for those accustomed to viewing them. The communal
Puritan burial ground may thus be seen as an emblem
book with each separate stone a page in that book.

Due in part to the resilience of conventional
images, the emblematic stonecarving tradition persisted
in New England from the seventeenth through the eigh-
teenth centuries, surviving even the significant changes
wrought in Puritan culture by the Great Awakening and
by a growing nationalism. Though aware of the need for
qualification, I will use the term 'Puritan' to refer
to that part of New England colonial culture which
continued to carve and read gravestones as emblems
until the end of the eighteenth century when the intro-
duction of machine engraving, standardized urn and
willow images, and marble as a replacement for slate
ushered in a new set of gravestone conventions.

The slate markers carved by the Puritans and their
'Old' and 'New Light' eighteenth-century successors
share the features of the traditional emblem, which
combines picture and words that reciprocally intexpxet
each other. The emblem's meaning is more connotative
than denotative. Emblems suggest meanings which tran-
scend the images and verses which compose them; they
shadow forth the metaphysical or the unknown and thus
provide intimations of that which can only be intuited.
The emblem usually consists of three parts: the in-
scriptio or motto, which provides a general or abstract
meaning; the pictura or image, which provides concrete,
visual particulars; and the subscriptio or moral expo-
sition, which provides, usually in verse, the applica-
tion or exploration of the general idea. The emblems
in George Wither's Collection of Emblemes have all
three parts, though emblems in other collections may be
truncated. In Wither's emblem 27 of book iv, for
example, appears a picture of a death's head surmounting
a winged hourglass (Fig. 1). Surrounding this pictura
is the motto or inscriptio "Vive Memor Lethi Fugit
Hora" (Live mindful of death; time flies). Under this
illustration and motto appear the verses which moralize
the emblem, including the following lines:

This vulgar Figure of a winged glasse,

Doth signifie, how swiftly Time doth passe.

By that leane Scull, which to this houre-glasse

clings,
We are informed what effect it brings;
And, by the Words about it, wee are taught
To keepe our latter ending still in thought.

Live, ever mndfull tftbj dying.
For, Time u Al»*yet from thee $)in£.

| Wis vulgar Fignrt of a atngrd gUfft,
Doth (ignifie, how fwiftly Time doth paiTe.
By that lcanc f r«tf,which to this be*regt*fjt dinp,
Wc are informed what effe6 it brings;
AnH,l<ythc iVerds about it, wee are taught
Tettepe tmr Uttt< ending ft ill in thenrbt.
1\\r common h$nre~gUJje, of the Lift of iMtm,
Lxcerduh not the largeneiTe of a fr*n.
7 he '^"■d l.ke Mtnntu, flye away lo raft,
That, fttrei ate out,c're wee thinke w#»tA/arc part :
'Yea,ma-v nmcs,our n*t'r»i dtj is gone,
Pefor wcelool'd In it»<nedtUektMNmney
And,wbrre wee fought tor Bt*mw,*t tie fni,
Vv\e hndc the f/tyi quire rotreJ from the Sknt.

L t 'hefc Faorrffions >f timet pafiage.bec
feme-**"* eeri tor ever, Ltfd, to mee j
Tnar, I m y It'll bee guilt IcfTe of their crime,
Whii fui 1 fly confume their piecious Time:
And, mode my Dm** •, not with a flavirti feare,
Bur, with a thankfull ufc,of lifetime, here :
Not grieving that my 4;« away doe poftj
Eut,canng ta her, that they bee not loft,
And Ub'ring with Ducretibn, how I may
Redecme the Time, that's vainely flipt away.
So when that ■»"••«" comes, which others dread,
I uniifmav,d,Mlcl'mbcmy4w*«*i
With joyful' Hifes.my fUflt roduft commend,
In Stent, with a ftedfift /«** afcend j

And, whilfl I Atw? an, to m* iodjt,

Thnt dymj , 1 may live eternally.

Figure 1.

George wither, h Collection o£ Embl ernes
(1635), book iv, emblem 27.

This emblem from Wither's Collection was a popular
one in emblem books and appears, with variations, again
and again on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New
England stones. For example, on the stone~erected Tn
"1678 for Captain Jonathan Poole of Wakefield, Massachu-
setts, appears the image of a skull surmounting an
hourglass (Fig. 2). Wither's pictura is almost exactly
reproduced on this gravestone, except that the wings,
clearly attached to the hourglass in Wither, have becomf
ambiguous on the Poole stone: Do they belong to the
skull or to the hourglass, or to both? The stone also
includes crossbones, a coffin, and a pick and shovel,
schematized representations of the funeral procession
depicted in the background of the pictura of Wither's
emblem. As in the Wither emblem, the pictura on the
Poole stone is surrounded by an inscriptio or motto;
"Memento Te Esse Mortalem C ye 2" is inscribed over the
arch containing the pictura, and "Fuqit_jjora." is in-
scribed beneath. The image and motto on the stone are
followed, in true emblematic fashion, with a moralized
verse which emphasizes the transformations death and
time bring:

FRINDS SURE WOULD PROVE TO FAR UNKIND

IF OUT OF SIGHT THEY LEAVE HIM OUT OF MIND

& NOW HE LIES TRANSFORM1 D TO NATIVE DUST

IN EARTHS COLD WOMB AS OTHER MORTALS MUST

IT'S STRANGE HIS MATCHLESS WORTH INTOMB ' D SHOULD L

OR THAT HIS FAME SHOULD IN OBLIVION DY

This stone, and the many like it, could thus be read in
the same way that one would read an emblem by Wither or
Quarles.

Not all New England emblem-like stones have the
three components of the emblem as clearly delineated as
on the Poole stone. Though it is a very early or a
very unusual later stone indeed which has no pictura,
many stones have no inscriptio or motto and many,
especialy early stones, truncate the subscriptio into a
retrospective identification and chronology of the
deceased, omitting a moralized verse. Though the
stones vary in their adherence to strict emblem form,
they are nevertheless to be read as emblems. This
seems to be insisted upon by the carver of the Elizabet
Butterick stone, 1772, Concord, Massachusetts, whc
replaces the moralizing verse by a long retrospective
encomium to the virtues of this "Gentlewoman of Uncommc
Prudence" (Fig. 3). That we are to read this stone as
an emblem the carver has left no doubt. Above the

- ^^mggammmmmm

Figure 2. Capt. Jonathan Poole, 1678, Wakefield, Mass,

Figure 3. Elizabeth Butterick, 1772, Concord, Mass

pictura, a schematized portrait, he has inscribed the
word 'MOTTO1 and on either side of the portrait medal-
lion the words "Not as I will / But as Thou wilt."
Though the stone has no clear explanatory verse in the
tradition of Quarles and Wither, it nonetheless has a
feature which forces us to read the stone as an emblem
or, better, as an impresa, an emblem composed only of
motto and image. Similarly, the reader of the Rebecca
Bond stone, 1767, Concord, Massachusetts, is guided,
probably by the same carver, to an emblematic reading
by the placing of the word 'MOTTO1 over a portrait
flanked by "All is / Well!"

The emblems on Puritan stones may be divided into
two large classes according to whether or not they
include verse epitaphs. Those with epitaphs derive
their power from the conjunction of image and verse,
while those without rely primarily upon the immediacy
of a startling image. These two classes of Puritan
emblems reflect a similar division in the emblem tradi-
tion which early forked into two streams according to
which aspect of the emblem, the verbal or the visual,
the emblematist wished to emphasize. Those emblematists
who emphasized the verbal component of the emblem be-
longed to the epigrammatic or rhetorical stream of the
emblem tradition. Puritan gravestones featuring verse
epitaphs may be included in the epigrammatic stream as
well. On the other hand, those emblematists who empha-
sized the visual or pictorial component of the emblem
belonged to the representational or hieroglyphic stream
of the tradition. Most New England gravestones carved
before the early eighteenth century are in this stream
of the emblem tradition because they feature an image,
usually a winged death's head, uninterpreted by a moral-
izing verse or epitaph. For Puritan viewers of these
hieroglyphic stones, the verbally uninterpreted picturae
served as ideograms in a pictorial language for making
important religious truths accessible to all in the
community, even to children and to the illiterate, much
as did the bas-reliefs on medieval cathedrals.

The Puritans were heirs to an understanding of
emblems as hieroglyphics through their familiarity with
the works of Francis Quarles, who apparently accepted
the Renaissance humanist belief that a major source of
the emblem tradition was Egyptian hieroglyphics, which
were interpreted as f oreshadowings of divine things in
the mysterious language of God. In the preface to
Emblemes, Quarles asserts that "Before the knowledge of
Letters God was known by Hieroglyphicks. And indeed

what are the Heavens, the Earth, nay, every Creature,
but Hieroglyphicks and Emblemes of his Glory?"-' Quarles
called his second book of emblems Hieroglyphikes of the
LiJLs. Ql Uaji, and his preface to the reader called the
work "an Aegyptian Dish," though it was "dress'd on the
English Fashion," apparently a reference to the verses
he attached to each image. The makers of hieroglyphic
Puritan stones, then, were emblematists for whom the
uninterpreted pictura spoke internally to the hearts of
beholders.

Those featuring a conjunction of image and moral-
ized verse belong to the epigrammatic stream of the
emblem tradition. This stream has its source in the
Greek Anthology (sometimes referred to as the Planudean
Anthology) . that collection of ancient Greek tituli,
votive offerings, and elegiac tombstone inscriptions
preserved by various scholars through the ages, most
notably Maximus Planudes (c_. 1255-1305). Quarles and
Wither derived a number of their emblems from the Greek
Anthology through their borrowings from Andrea Alciati,
the first emblematist and the coiner of the term.
Alciati was so indebted to the Greek Anthology that
almost fifty of the 220 verses in his Emblematum Liiiej:
(1531) were either imitations or translations directly
from it, leading Mario Praz to assert that "between an
emblem of Alciati and an epigram of the Anthology there
is a difference only in name."

The verse epitaphs of epigrammatic New England
stones, the epigrams of the Greek Anthology, and the
emblematic verses of Quarles may all be divided into
three rhetorical types according to their varying speak-
er-auditor relationships. That they all employ similar
rhetorical conventions suggests a close familial rela-
tionship. The first type includes those verses in
which the speaker describes the subject of the verse in
third person. On the Hannah Goodwin stone, 1777, Ply-
mouth, Massachusetts, for example, a winged cherub
presides over the following epitaph:

A Soul prepar'd Needs no delays

The Summons comes the Saint obeys

Swift was Her flight & short the Road

She closed Her Eyes & saw Her God

The Flesh rests here till Jesus comes

And claims the Treasure from the Tomb. (Fig. 4)

The voice in this epitaph refers to Hannah Goodwin in
third person and directs the viewer into a sequential

reading of the emblem. The saint, represented in bliss
by the winged cherub carved on the stone, is described
as being now in the presence of God. The viewer who
contemplates the angelic image of Hannah Goodwin is
thus granted a glimpse of the celestial realm by the
speaker in the epitaph, much as Dante is guided through
Paradise by Beatrice. The viewer is then conducted
back into this world in the concluding lines of the
epitaph. Prepared by the celestial vision for the grim
contemplation of the grave itself, the viewer is left
with the assurance that death reigns over this realm
only until Jesus comes to reclaim "the Treasure from
the Tomb."

Figure 4. Hannah Goodwin, 1777, Plymouth, Mass.

Figure 5. Mary Brown, 1782, Plymouth, Mass.

The second rhetorical type consists of those epi-
grams, emblematic verses, and epitaphs which address or
apostrophize their subject. Numerous examples of apos-
trophe appear in the Greek Anthology, in Quarles1 em-
blems, and on New England stones. On the Mary Brown
stone, 1782, Plymouth, Massachusetts, the pictura. a
portrait of a woman wearing a locket and holding a
spray of flowers, represents a dead woman who is ad-
dressed directly (Fig. 5). The verse offers her the
consolations of the promised resurrection:

Sleep silent Dust till Christ our Lord
The Omnipotent, will speak the word.
Then Soul & Body both will arise
To endless joys above the Skies.

The voice which speaks through this stone counsels Mary
Brown to rest in hope of the resurrection when both her
body and her soul will flee from death's captivity to
share in the "endless joys" promised by her Redeemer.
Mary Brown confidently holds in her hand the symbol of
the promise that she, though decayed into "silent

Dust," will freshen and bloom again. The viewer, who
eavesdrops on the speaker's direct address to the dead
woman, shares in the hope with which she is consoled.

The third rhetorical type is composed of those
verses in which the subject, whether it be a statue, a
dead person, or a tombstone, speaks directly in the
first person to an auditor. The Paul Titcomb stone,
1773, Newburyport, Massachusetts, contains a verse in
which the speaker is quite voluble, even playful in his
address to the passerby:

You that pass by this place may think on me
For as you are so once you did me see,
What I am now will quickly be your Doom
My house is straight but by my side their' s room,
And if your dust should fall into my Grave
Tis no great matter every man should have,
His very dust and neither new nor more
For he that made it keeps it all in store.

(Fig. 6)

Paul Titcomb's verse interpretation of the dour skull
and crossbones by which he is represented is grimly
playful. After the traditional memento mori of the
First three lines, Titcomb's tone changes from the
admonitory to the consolatory: it matters not if the
dust of those soon to lie by his side mingles with his
own because God will sort it all out at the resurrec-
tion. Comforted with this realization, Paul Titcomb
can defy death by joking about it.

Though Puritan gravestones with epitaphs governed
by descriptive, apostrophic, and first personal rhetori-
cal conventions may all be read as emblems, the stones
with first personal epitaphs most direclty suggest the
nearly mystical way in which gravestone emblems were
used to connect this world with the next. According to
Peter Benes, first personal epitaphs represented "the
voices of what Cotton Mather liked to call the 'Invisi-
ble World. •"9 These voices communicated news from
regions towards which the Puritans were ever mindful of
journeying. Perhaps the Puritans so readily attended
to the voices of first personal epitaphs because of the
way in which emblems were perceived and interacted with
by those in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
accustomed to emblematic conventions, modern viewers
are no longer familiar with these conventions which may
grant a clearer access to the power and significance of
the stones.

I i< '•• Ik v i !>r i;n(\
I'm 'i 1 i ■ tu x i
I ox, \|

'■ h I ■
-l' his V

Figure 6. Paul Titcomb, 1773, Newburyport, Mass.

Mario Praz describes the ways that emblem writers
"made the supernatural accessible to all by materializ-
ing it" in emblems:

The fixity of the emblematic picture was
infinitely suggestive; the beholder little by
little let his imagination be eaten into as a
plate is by an acid. The picture eventually
became animated with an intense, hallucina-
tory life, independent of the page. The eyes
were not alone in perceiving it; the depicted
objects were invested with body, scent, and
sound: the beholder was no longer before
them, but in their midst. He was no longer
impressed only, but obsessed.10

The early emblematists were certainly aware of this
"iconomystical" animation of images which they could
accomplish through emblems. Paulo Giovio, an early
Italian emblem theorist, argued that an impress (a
truncated emblem) "should have just proportion between
body (pictura) and soul (incriptio) .n11 George Wither
is also within the tradition of seeing emblematic images
as being animated by the addition of verses. On the

title page of his Collection of Emblemesf he indicates
that his emblems are "quickened with metricall illus-
trations," and in his preface to the reader, he asserts
that the picturae alone are delightful only to "Chil-
dren, and Childish-gazers," but with the addition of
the moralized verses, "they may now be much more worthy;
seeing the life of Speach being added unto them, may
make them Teachers, and Remembrancers of profitable
things."12

Thus, Puritan stones may be seen as animated
through the collaboration of emblematic image and verse.
For the beholder who lets "his imagination be eaten
into as a plate is by an acid," the Puritan stones seem
endowed with a sort of consciousness, a mental as well
as a physical presence. This presence is most acutely
perceived in those stones inscribed with first personal
epitaphs where the speaker's image, whether it be a
death's head, a cherub, or a portrait, appears in the
tympanum with his or her words incised beneath. In
true emblematic fashion, this image is capable of becom-
ing "animated with an intense, hallucinatory life" if
viewed by one familiar with the workings of emblems and
in a receptive frame of mind.

This "hallucinatory life" of the gravestone emblem
is more intense than that assumed by other "speaking
pictures" in the emblem tradition because the stone is
directly associated with a dead body and with what was
believed to be a living spirit, while an emblem confined
to the pages of a book does not share this proximate
and potent association. The unique power of the stones
comes from the confusion in the viewer between artistic
convention and life itself, a confusion which the em-
blematist encouraged. Rationally the viewer knows that
the winged death's heads, soul effigies, or portrait
medallions speak in first personal epitaphs only because
the gravestone carver has adopted various artistic
conventions to endow them with mentality and speech.
On the other hand, as Praz indicates and as the emblem-
atists apparently intended, it is easy for a viewer to
lose that rational, denotative awareness of artistic
convention and to adopt in its place a nonrational,
connotative perspective which allows the dead individual

to speak through the image on tfte_stro~neT The viewer

then becomes unable to sort out the claims of life from
the claims of art. For such a viewer the illusion of
the image speaking and taking on a life of its own
assumes primacy because the stone serves as a lapidary
double for the dead. Through this illusion the dead

come to life and communicate about the afterlife
through their stones.

Apparently the Puritans were avid listeners to 1,^—
these voices which accosted them on their visits to the \ >
burying grounds. The eschatological consciousness of
the Puritans predisposed them to see the dead human
being prjjmar_ily_as an immortal spirit who had shed the
body but had nevertheless retained ties to those members -
of the body of Christ who have not yet died. These ^C
spirits thus return to admonish members of the ocmmunity
to look towards death and reunion with God through the
intercession of Christ. According to Dickran and Ann
Tashjian, the Puritans recogj^^d^tjie^r^yeyard as "a
ground of discourse between this world and the next
rather than a final resting place."1-3 Cotton Mather
seems to have been of that opinion when he encouraged
what he called "conversations with heaven":

The Saints, whose Bodies are Laid in the
Earth, are the Excellent ones in whom we are
to have a singular Delight, and are the Nobler
members of the Family, which we in a Lower
State belong unto. And they may be thus
convers'd withal. To bring some warmth into
us, & make our Hearts burn within us, Lett us
thus bring down the Rayes of Paradise upon
our souls. 4

This "intercourse with paradise" was to be accomplished i
most cogently in the Puritan burial grounds through the \
emblematic animation of images.

Thus, far from seeing emblems as "magical, mysti-
cal, monkish and Gothic," as Shaftesbury did, the Puri-
tans apparently saw them much as did George Wither,
offering "wholsome nourishment to strengthen the consti-
tution of a Good-life," so that those who "have most
need to be Instructed, and Remembered," and those "who
are most backward to listen to Instructions, and Remem-
brances, by the common course of Teaching, and Admonish-
ing," shall be "hereby, informed of tjieir Dangers, or
Duties . . . before they be aware."15 Accustomed to
and approving of emblems, the Puritans apparently had
relatively little difficulty transferring thej^ from
their emblem books into their burying grounds.10 The
iconophobic Puritans admitted symbolic representations
of the spirit world into their graveyards because they
perceived these images as emblems charged with instruc-
tional force.

An emblematic reading of Puritan stonecarvings
allows an approximate understanding of the significance
these stones may have had for those who originally
erected and viewed them. Like emblem books, the New
England burial grounds feature a variety of verse in-
scriptions and picturae on the stones, the predominant
images being winged death's heads, cherubs (or soul
effigies), and portrait medallions. By the beginning
of the nineteenth century, neoclassical urn and willow
stones begin to displace the traditional images, markinc
the end of the emblematic stonecarving tradition in New
England. The stones discussed below have been chosen
to demonstrate the emblematic interaction of first
personal epitaphs with a variety of images.

On the Abiah Holbrook stone, 1769, the Granary,
Boston, is a winged death's head followed by an inscrip-
tion identifying Holbrook as "Master of the South Writ-
ing-School in Boston" (Fig. 7), The pictura is com-
plemented by the following verse:

Still speaks th' Instructor from the solemn Shade:

"Ye living! learn the Lessons of the Dead.

Repine not that these dreary Vaults conclude

A Life of Labours for the Publick Good:

Calm sleeps the Flesh — Far distant, unconfin'd,

In Joys unbounded wakes th' immortal Mind."

The first line of the epitaph instructs the passerby
how to view the emblem, insisting that we perceive
Holbrook as speaking through the stone. Represented by
a stylized death's head to which animating features
have been added, Holbrook continues after death to do
what he did in life; he teaches "the Lessons of the
Dead" and shares the new knowledge he has acquired in
the world to which he has gone. He reflects, with some
pride, on his "'Life of Labours for the Publick Good'"
and gives and takes comfort in the belief that though
the flesh is confined to "'these dreary Vaults,'" the
mind (as befits an educator) wakes in unbounded joy.
Ultimately, the stone denies the power of death: the
teacher is not silenced; he does not despair; he revels
in his ultimate fulfillment; he directs his pupils in
his footsteps. In short, the teacher teaches still,
animated by his emblematic stone.

Another verse which specifically directs our read-
ing of the emblem may be found on the Mary Peirce
stone, 1776, the Granary, Boston. The stone is sur-
mounted by a foreshortened skull centered on crossbones

\10

Figure 7. Abiah Holbrook, 1769, the Granary, Boston,
Mass.

similar to the one found on the Paul Titcomb stone.
This dour pictura is accompanied by a memento mori
verse:

Behold: this little Pile enfolds my Limbs,
And puts a Period to my Time below.
Mortal attend: there's no mutation here,
Ere long you will Participate my Lot.

In this emblem, the dead woman speaks directly, and
peremptorily, to the passerby, a very frequent feature
of the Sta, Viator I first personal epitaphs recorded
in the Greek Anthology. In the verse Mary Peirce
demands that we view her entire grave — stone and mount
— as the pictura. The two parts of the pictura. the
first chiseled on slate, the second dug in earth,
interact so that the skull and crossbones on the stone
provides us with a glimpse of what lies beneath "this
little Pile" over which the stone stands. Together,
the verse and pictura preview or shadow forth, in true
emblematic fashion, a realm we do not yet occupy but
towards which we all are tending.

Though the idea of a talking skull is grotesque to
a modern viewer, it was not grotesque to contemporary
Puritans who, according to Peter Benes, apparently saw
the image as a pictorial representation of the spirit.
In The Ua_s_k_s Ql Orthodoxy f Benes argues persuasively
that these winged death's heads, often overlaid with
personalizing features, such as eyebrows and mustaches
and witty expressions, "did not represent 'death1 or
even 'death and resurrection,' but . . . the invisible
and immortal spirits which were separated from their
bodies by the event of death." They were souls "pic-
tured in an embryonic form before the general resurrec-
tion."17 Benes also notes in an earlier article that
certain New England carvers frequently added "tokens
and signs of intensity, life, and energy" to winged
skulls so as to animate them. "This they did," he
continues, "by carving nostrils in the skull so the
spirit could 'breathe'; a mouth, so the spijrit could
'talk'; and intense eyes so it could 'see.'"18 If this
is indeed the case, then the Holbrook and Peirce stones
are emblems invested with what Praz calls "an intense,
hallucinatory life."

The same may be said of the Sally Goodwin stone,
1781, Copp's Hill, Boston. A winged death's head sur-
mounts an inscription indicating, in addition to Sally
Goodwin's identity and chronology, the names of her
husband and parents. In the following verse, Sally
Goodwin speaks:

My hope is fix'd my Spirit's free,
Longing my Saviour for to See;
Such joy and bliss doth fill my soul,
Nothing on earth doth me controul.
My loving Husband and Infant small,
My Parents dear I leave you all;
My Soul doth wing the heavenly way,
My Saviour's call I must obey.
Read this and weep, but not for me,
Who willing was to part with thee,
That I may rest with Christ above,
In peace and joy and endless love.

Sally Goodwin's auditors form a smaller group than the
universal audience addressed by Abiah Holbrook and Mary
Peirce. Dead at twenty-five, Sally Goodwin informs her
husband, child, and parents that she abandoned them
only because she goes to one who has prior claims on
her. Though the stone remains even now a powerful
emblem, it must have been extraordinarily expressive

and consolatory for the family audience at whom it is
specifically aimed. The young wife and daughter returns
to assuage grief and to presage joy. She dissolves the
boundaries between worlds: the living and the dead
commune; eternity penetrates time; past, present, and
future coalesce; sorrow is mastered by joy; and private
grief is shared in a public, communal way.

The coalescence of past, present, and future may
also be seen on the Ruth Nicholson stone, 1789, Marble-
head, Massachusetts (Fig. 8). Surmounted by a beauti-
fully carved cherub or soul effigy are the following
verses:

A few more rolling suns at most,
Will land me on fair canans cost,
Where I shall sing Redeeming grace
And see my blessed Saviour's face.

■1

Figure 8. Ruth Nicholson, 1789, Marblehead, Mass,

The soul effigy has replaced the earlier death's head,
and, accordingly, the verse deals, not with the memento
mori theme, but with an expectation of bliss. Benes
argues that these "new angel designs," which begin to
predominate after the Great Awakening, depict the" same
spirits as are represented in the death's heads, except
they are now pictured "in a realized form after the
resurrection and after their translation into time-
resistant celestial beings."19 This seems to be the
case on the Nicholson stone. The sprightly cherub
appears as a resurrected spirit already in rapture, the
verse is anticipatory and apparently looks towards the
general resurrection and the end of time, and the
inscribed identification and chronology remind a viewer
of the presence of Ruth Nicholson's dead body. The
stone thus seems to deny the importance of human time,
to coalesce it. The body over which the stone stands
figures in the past, the epitaph looks to the future
for the general resurrection, and the soul effigy por-
trays present happiness.

Portraits too could be emblematized, a feature
prominent in the G.r e e k Anthology where verses appear
which were originally attached to statues and paintings.
George Wither uses his own portrait as his first emblem
in the Collection. As are all his emblems, Wither's
portrait is circled by a motto and followed by "The
Authors Meditation upon sight of his Picture," a moral-
ized verse employing the portrait as an introduction to
the nature of emblems:

A Picture, though with most exactnesse made,
Is nothing, but the Shadow of a Shade.
For, ev'n our living Bodies, (though they seeme
To others more, or more in our esteeme)
Are but the shadowes of that Reall-being,
Which doth extend beyond the Fleshly-seeing;
And, cannot be discerned, till we rise
Immortall-Objects, for Immortall-eyes.

In short, Wither uses his fleshly portrait as an emblem
for the immortal spirit which dwells obscured behind
the "Carnall-Screene."

The Puritans used portraits on stones in much the
same way. For example, on the Reuben Hunt stone, 1777,
Concord, Massachusetts, appears a schematized portrait
of a three-year-old boy in collar, waistcoat, and coat
surrounded by trees of life. The moralized verse on
this stone is particularly interesting because it in-

volves a dialogue between the boy's parents and his
spirit:

Say, lovely prattling, playful boy
Thy Father's hope, thy Mother's joy;
Why didst thou make so short a stay
But steal our hearts, & then away!
God gives & takes let men adore!
Death wafts me to th' immortal shore.

Appropriately, this child's epitaph imitates the ques-
tion-answer format of the catechism and the schoolbook,
though here it is the adult parents who go to school to
their dead infant. The question the parents ask in the
first four lines betrays their blind bereavement, their
inability to understand or accept the will of God. In
the last two lines the boy answers with a consolatory
reprimand for their lack of submission to God's will.
In death, the child has become father to the man;
granted oracular powers, Reuben Hunt speaks dispassion-
ately, with a gravity and authority far beyond his
years, because he has been transformed from the "lovely
prattling, playful boy" to an eternal spirit. Through
this emblematic portrait stone, then, Reuben Hunt re-
turns to grant his parents a glimpse of divine things,
an understanding of God's workings behind the "Carnall-
Screene. "

The winged death's heads, cherubs, and portraits
persist on New England stones into the nineteenth cen-
tury before being replaced by the ubiquitous images of
urns and willows. Some early urn and willow stones
retain the flavor of the emblematic tradition, though
most repeat, for a while, the old pious verses without
accomplishing the connection of pictura and verse char-
acteristic of emblem-stones. The Sarah Hine stone,
1804, Marblehead, Massachusetts, is an example of an
urn and willow stone which does attempt the emblematic
fusion of pictura and moralized verse, but it is one of
the few stones of its kind which do. The verse reads:

Sure never with my latest breath

Shall I forget your looks my tender friends,

I must leave thee

And go to Christ that died for me:

Rise up my friends, condole the loss

Of those that mourn this day,

A solemn march we make,

Toward the silent grave;

0 what a striking scene!

In this cold grave we pass,

To Day I'm seen by all my friends

But this must be the last.

Let friends no more my sufferings mourn

Nor dont my children be alarm' d;

Cease to drop the pitying tear,

I'm got beyound the reach of fear.

The urn on the stone is completely appropriate, since
the verse insists that Sarah Hine is no more to be seen
on earth. The urn thus conceals that which is mortal,
but Sarah Hine speaks to her friends and children of
her comfort beyond the grave, concerning herself with
earthly matters only up to her final leave-taking at
interment. Though the Sarah Hine stone may be consi-
dered an emblem, the majority of the urn and willow
stones cannot since in most of them the pictura has
become divorced from the verse.

When image and verse are no longer complementary,
even interpenetrated, there is^ no enrblem. An emblem
may, however, be composed of conventional and cliched
images or verses if the combined image and verse cliches
remain interdependent. Originality is not a precondi-
tion for an effective emblem or even for an effective
epitaph verse, as the poet Wordsworth maintains. In
his second "Essay upon Epitaphs," Wordsworth argues
that "it is not only no fault but a primary requisite
in an Epitaph that it shall contain thoughts and feel-
ings which are in their substnce common-place, and even
trite," as long as they are "perceived in their whole
compass with the freshness and clearness of an original
intuition." The writer "must introduce the truth with
such accompaniment as shall imply that he has mounted
to the source of things--penetrated the dark cavern
from which the River that murmurs in everyone's ear has
flowed from generation to generation."20 This the New
England carvers managed to achieve in the stones they
carved. The carvers were mediators between time-bound
mortals and immortal spirits who return to provide
common, received truths with an immediacy which allowed
their auditors to readmit them as revelations. Though
the souls of those who preceded their families and
friends in death often speak in formulaic and regular-
ized conventions through the stones, they nevertheless
bring comforting and coherent news from supernatural
regions, and for such news the Puritans were avid,
especially if it is true, as David E. Stannard claims,
that they "were gripped individually and collectively
by an intense and unremitting fear of death."21

For Puritan auditors the stones, with their famil-
iar images and verses, provided a consistent and coher-
ent vision of the world beyond. They made the invi-
sible intelligible by shadowing forth, in true emblema-
tic fashion, the mysterious realm towards which all
mortals travel. Viewing the stones they erected in
their burial grounds, the Puritans could share the
vision that George Wither claims to have been granted
through the mediacy of emblems God has planted in
nature:

Even so, me thinks, I see
A Glimpes, farre off, (through FAITH'S Prospective

glasse)
Of that, which after Death, will come to passe;
And, likewise, gained have, such meanes of seeing,
Some things, which were, before my Life had being,
That, in my Soule, I should be discontent,
If, this my Body were, more permanent;
Since, Wee, and all God's other Creatures, here,
Are but the Pictures, of what shall appeare.22

NOTES

This study results from my participation in a
National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar on fune-
rary monuments and Puritan iconography held at the
University of Massachusetts, Boston, in the summer of
1982. I am grateful to Ruth Butler for selecting me as
a participant.

■'■Quoted in Harriette Merrifield Forbes, Grave-
Stones ol £axly Eew. England and the Hen who Made Them,
1653-1800 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927), p. 7.

A number of commentators demonstrate that some
Puritan carvers apparently used emblem collections as
pattern books. See Dickran and Ann Tashjian, Memorials
for Children stl Change; Ihs. Art ol Laxly. Hew. England,
Stonecarving (Middletown, Ct.: Wesleyan University
Press, 1974), p. 176 and Figs. 119-20; Allan I. Ludwig,
Graven images: Kew. England Stonecarving and its Sym-
bjils, 1650-1815 (Middletown, Ct.: Wesleyan University
Press, 1966), pp. 263, 274.

3lhs Funeral Elegy and the Rise ot English Roman-
ticism (New York: New York University Press, 1929), p.
76; Rosemary Freeman, English Emblem BjioJts (New York:
Octagon Books, 1966), pp. 206-207.

4Photofacsimile edition of George Wither, A. Collec-
tion M Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne. 1£3_5_
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1975),
p. 235.

5Francis Quarles, Emblemes and Hieroglyphikes of
the Lile o£ Haja (London: William Freeman, 1710?).

6Quarles, p. 321.

7Mario Praz, Studies In Seventeenth-Century Imagery
(Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1964), p. 25.

8Though the linking of Puritan epitaphs with clas-
sical sources will seem odd to many, Allan Ludwig has
shown convincingly that classical and early Christian
iconography appears on Puritan gravestones. See Ludwig's
"Eros and Agape: Classical and Early Christian Survi-
vals in New England Stonecarving," in Puritan Grave-
stone Ar_t, ed. Peter Benes (Boston: Boston University
Press, 1977). Harriette Merrifield Forbes has also
demonstrated that certain of the mottoes inscribed
around the picturae on Puritan stones come from classi-
cal writers, particularly Ovid, Perseus, and Horace
(Gravestone.5 ai Early Hew. England, p. 25). This is
certainly not to say that New England carvers were
directly or consciously influenced either by Egyptian
hieroglyphics or by classical Greek epigrammatists in
the carving of stones. Instead, they came by these
influences through the emblem tradition. Examples of
the three rhetorical types of Puritan stones follow in
the text. Examples of the three rhetorical types of
epigrams abound in the Anthology and in Quarles' emblem
books and need not be cited here.

9Peter Benes, Tjj£ H&sKs Ql Orthodoxy: £oJLk Grave-
stone Carving in Plymouth County, Massachusetts. 1689-
1805 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
1977), p. 43.

10Praz, p. 170. Praz writes here specifically on
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Jesuit emblem books,
though this animating tendency characterizes the entire
emblematic tradition.

:.e in the Light si the
£mj2ie.m (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979),
p. 21.

12Wither, A Collection oi Emblemes. p. A2.

jLoi Children ol Changer p. 14.

14Quoted in David H. Watters, "With Bodilie
£y^s": Eschatoiogicai Themes in Puritan Literature and
Gravestone Ar_t (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981),
pp. 111-12.

15Jean Hagstrum, T_he. Sister Axis: The Tradition
Ol Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry from Dryden
to Gray (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958),
p. 123; Wither, "Preface," pp. A1-A2.

*•* Since both British and American Puritans were
iconophobes who feared the animation of images, the .
profusion of gravestone carvings in the burial grounds \
is perplexing to modern students of Puritan culture. j
Rationales for Puritan prohibitions against images were
offered by various Puritan divines, including Joseph
Mede, who, in TJie. Apostasy of. the Latter Times, argued
that "Images were made as Bodies, to be informed with
Daemons as with Souls: For an Image was as a Trap to
catch Daemons, and a device to tie them to a place, and
to keep them from flitting." See TJie Works q£ the
Pious snd Profoundly-Learned Joseph Mede, B.C. (Lon-
don: R. Royston, 1663-64), Bk. Ill, p. 779. Puritan
revulsion at Catholic and more liberal Reformation
iconography came from an intuitive recognition that it
is easy to cross over from the rational realm of artis-
tic and representational convention into an idolatrous
interaction with the image as if it were living and
animate. The central irony of Puritan tomb carvings is
that they facilitated what the Puritan iconophobes most
feared: the carvers and the Puritan viewers did cross
over into a perception of the stone images as endowed
with voice and human presence. In spite of the danger
of idolatry, however, the Puritans apparently made
animate images because, as Allan Ludwig claims, the
rational, mediate theology of Congregationalism was
insufficient to provide the common folk with a felt
connection betwen the mutable and the eternal. To feel
this nexus more fully, the Puritans placed animate
emblems in their graveyards. I would like to suggest
that their tolerance for this iconography stemmed at
least in part from their familiarity with the emblematic
tradition. Accustomed to seeing emblems in their in-
structional and devotional books, most were not dis-
turbed to see emblems in their burying grounds as well.

17Benes, pp. 52, 133.

l**Peter Benes, "The Caricature Hypothesis Re-
examined: The Animated Skull as a Puritan Folk Image"
in Puritan Gravestone Art, ed. Peter Benes (Boston:
Boston University Press, 1977), p. 66.

19Benes, The. Ma_s_lis. &L Orthodoxy, p. 133.

20The Prose Works q£ Hilliajn HordSMOtth/ ed. W.
J. B. Owen and Jane Worthington Smyser (Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1974), II, 78-79.

21David E. Stannard, The Puritan Hay Ql Death
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 79.

22Wither, "The Authors Meditation upon sight of
his Picture."

A Particular Sense of Doom:

Skeletal "Revivals" in Northern Essex County,

Massachusetts, 1737-1784

Peter Benes

Until the extinction of their native decorating
practices in the late eighteenth century, gravestone
carvers in northern Essex County, Massachusetts, pursued
a succession of characteristically regional styles that
followed a model developed by the Haverhill carver Lt.
John Hartshorn (1650-1734), and distinguished by the \
use of schist and by geometrically conceived "primitive"
spirit faces (Figs. 1-5). The style was initially
distributed in a handful of lower Merrimack River valley
towns such as Salisbury, Newbury, Rowley, Ipswich,
Haverhill, Bradford, Amesbury, and Andover; but through
the relocation of carvers, the style gradually dissemi-
nated into Rockingham and Hillsborough counties in
southern New Hampshire and into portions of Middlesex
and Worcester counties of Massachusetts (Figs. 6-7).
When Lt. John Hartshorn removed to Norwich, Connecticut
in 1720, a comparable Connecticut variant of the Merri-
mack school developed in Tolland, Windham, and New
London counties in eastern Connecticut where it survived
in derived forms until the early nineteenth century
(Figs. 8-9). 3

A comparison of the dispersed variants of the
Merrimack designs with those found at its point of
origin in northern Essex County reveals an interesting
difference. Each of the four dispersed offshoots is
characterized by a continuous evolution in which the
Hartshorn model undergoes increasing stylization, com-
plication, and animation. In Connecticut, for example,
a three-generation succession of carvers that included
Obadiah Wheeler (1673-c_. 1750), Benjamin (1691-1759)
and Zerubbabel (1733-1797) Collins, the Loomis family
(fl. 1760-1800), and the Manning family (fl. 1770-1800)
animated Hartshorn's spirit face into a distinctive
geometric angel noted for its large, round eyes and
heavy, down-turned mouth (Figs. 8-9). A comparable
animation of the Hartshorn face took place in the work
of other dispersed Merrimack school carvers such as
Jonathan and Moses Worcester of Harvard, Massachusetts,
Abel Webster of Hollis, New Hampshire, and a handful of
still-unidentified Hartshorn imitators who left stones
in southern New Hampshire and along the Maine coastline.
By contrast, the several Merrimack school carvers who
continued to live and work in northern Essex County

MASS

O Miles IO

Map 1. The lower Merrimack River valley of eastern New
England showing Essex County, Mass. and the
locations of towns cited in this study.

towns where Lt. John Hartshorn was initially active,
abandoned Hartshorn's face symbols and replaced them
with unrelated skeletal ones, presumably imitating
Boston and Charlestown models. In doing so they became
the only gravestone makers in New England to revive the
Massachusetts Bay skull image at a time (1737-1784)
when the image elsewhere was rapidly being animated
and/or replaced.

Any explanation of the short-lived popularity of
the Hartshorn model in the area where it originated
must bear in mind that time itself was a factor. "Aes-
thetic fatigue," as it has been called elsewhere, may
in part account for this reversal in local Merrimack-
school designs. Indeed, colloquial or naive styles
are replaced in Essex County several decades before
they are replaced in eastern Connecticut. But aesthetic
fatigue argues for a quicker evolution of existing
images rather than a revival of earlier ones. This
essay addresses the artistic intentions of the third-
and fourth-generation Merrimack-school carvers active
in northern Essex County and attempts to learn to what

extent, if any, compelling regional or particular cir-
cumstances may have influenced their delayed adoption
of the Massachusetts Bay skull.

Besides Lt. John Hartshorn himself (who continued
to make gravestones in Haverhill and Rowley until
1720), the second generation of local Merrimack school
carvers included Hartshorn's nephew-in-law, Richard
Leighton (1686-1749), who worked in Rowley; Richard
Leighton's father, Ezekiel Leighton (1657-1723), of
Rowley; Hartshorn's presumed apprentice, Robert Mulican
(1664-1741), who worked in Bradford; and at least two
and perhaps as many as four unidentified lesser, semi-
professional Hartshorn and Mulican imitators who left
stones in the second parish in Rowley (now Georgetown)
and in Topsfield. Before 1737 these carvers closely
approximated Hartshorn's spirit faces and duplicated in
some form Hartshorn's circular-maze, bell-shape, or
vine-and-leaf borders. Some imitations were clearly
more faithful than others; some are scarcely recogniz-
able as faces. All clearly display the primitive qua-
lity for which the Merrimack school designs and their
offshoots are known.

In 1737, however, a Bradford innkeeper tentatively
identified as Robert Mulican's son Joseph Mulican
(1704-60) introduced into local burying grounds a hand-
ful of stones emblematically and decoratively unrelated
to the Hartshorn model. Joseph Mulican is identified
as a stonecutter on the basis of two probate payments
and an inventory filed in 1768 by his widow Phebe that
cited gravestones in stock. Neither probated stone has
yet been recovered; however, he commonly received pay-
ments (presumably for providing stones) from estates
where stones attributed to him have survived. Made of
the usual schist, these stones were decorated with a
skull and wings or skull and trees images carved without
the customary double lines and ridges of stone. The
earliest examples lack teeth and are recognizable as
skulls from their hollowed eyes and wedge-shaped nose
sections. All have a prominent "mouth mark"--a line
or lines ostensibly representing the lower element of
the triangular nose but positioned to suggest a mouth.
The stones' lettering style (particularly the m and e_)
indicates they originated from the Mulican's shop;
clearly, someone in the shop had replaced the usual
Mulican decorative vocabulary with a new one.

GRAVESTONE DESIGNS QR LOCAL MERRIMACK SCHOOL

STONECUTTERS Q£ NORTHERN £S£££ CJ2IIUH, MASSACHUSETTS

EIRSX AMD SJ^OilD GENERATIONS

Figure 1. Birds and face by Lt. John Hartshorn, Haver-
hill and Rowley.

Figure 2. Stars and face by Robert Mulican, Bradford

Figure 3. Stars and face by Richard Leighton, Rowley.

Figure 4. Stars and face by an unidentified carver
active c_. 1730 in the second parish, Rowley
(now Georgetown) .

Figure 5. Rare stars and skull by Robert Mulican noted
for its triangular-section eyes.

GRAVESTONE DESIGNS
QE DISPERSED MERRIMACK SCHOOL STONECUTTERS
TiUED THROUGH EIETEL GENERATIONS

Figure 6. Stars and face by Jonathan Worcester, Har-
vard, Massachusetts.

Figure 7. Whorls and face by Abel Webster, Chester and
Hollis, New Hampshire.

Figures 8 and 9. Cherub faces by the Manning family,
Norwich and Windham, Connecticut.

Found principally in Haverhill and Bradford, the
Mulican shop's skull stones (£. 1737) were the first of
a series of related skull designs produced by Joseph
Mulican, by his brother Robert Mulican, Jr. (1688-
1756), and probably by Joseph Marble (1726-1805), over
a period of four decades. (Figs. 10-14). 1U The new
designs kept some Merrimack-school traits (maze borders,
geometric stars, schist stone). Initially, too, the
earlier Hartshorn "face" images co-existed with the new
series. By 1740, however, when the skull symbol had
displaced the Hartshorn face on most Mulican stones, the
skull had gained clenched teeth and had converted its
"smiling" mouth-mark into a "frowning" one (Fig. 12).
The result was a steadfast scowl that is found on
scores of stones in Bradford and Haverhill, and in
communities contiguous to them.

In the two decades that followed, the Mulican
skull evolved through a succession of variants distin-
guished by rounded- or oval- shaped outlines, long

GRAVESTONE DESIGNS
QE LOCAL MERRIMACK SCHOOL STONECUTTERS
TJLLBD AND FOURTH GENERATIONS t MULICAN/MARBLE SHQP

Figures 10 and 11.

Whorls and skull and winged skull,
c_. 1737 , and attributed to Joseph
Mulican, Bradford; designs include
"smiling" mouth-mark.

Figure 12. Detail of winged skull introduced by Joseph
Mulican after 1740 revealing the "scowling"
mouth-mark and explicit teeth.

Figure 13. Winged skull with "wig" or "bonnet" by the
Mulican/Marble shop, Bradford, before 1768,

Figure 14. Winged skull by the Mulican/Marble shop,
Bradford, 1770-84.

noses, and close-set eyes. It also acquired an interest-
ing secondary trait: on the stones of women, the image
was provided with a composite wig, sometimes made up of
as many as fourteen segments, but usually fewer. Later
versions of the wig were simplified and resemble bon-
nets; their use was so common that by 1750 a wig or
bonnet on a stone from the Mulican/Marble shop was an
unmistakable mark of a woman's headstone; the lack of
such a wig, a man's (Fig. 13).

After Joseph Mulican died in Bradford in 1768,
"wig skulls" were no longer produced in the Mulican
shop. At this point (1768) the shop began to carve a
new skull variant (Fig. 14). Distinguished by its
keyhole profile, prominent circular eyebrows, a squared
jaw, and a quizzical expression, this stone is the
presumed work of Joseph Marble and John Marble (1746-
1844). It is commonly found in Bradford, Rowley, and
Haverhill burying grounds in the years from 1766 to
1780 and represents the Mulican skull in its final
phase.

In the meantime, a comparable design reversal had
taken place in the work of a gravestone shop centered
in Newbury and Rowley, which produced distinctive "spec-
tacles" stones (Figs. 15-16). The principal workers in
this shop have tentatively been identified as Jonathan
Hartshorn (1703-?) and Jonathan Leighton (1715-?). One
of the three grandsons of Lt. John Hartshorn who sur-
vived the 1708 Haverhill massacre that took the lives
of the father, John, Jr., and three other brothers,
Jonathan Hartshorn is known to have been living in
Newbury in the 1750s and 1760s when most of the specta-
cles type were made. He is paid for gravestones by
Joseph Coffin of Newbury in 1764, and by James Pearson,
probably of Newbury, in 1742. (Neither pair of stones
has yet been discovered.) Jonathan Hartshorn married,
first, Sarah Cross of Methuen in 1729 where their five
children were born in the years 1730 to 1738. Two of
his children died in 1738 and were buried under crude
prototypes of the spectacles design in the Methuen
burial ground. He married, second, Mary Boynton of
Newbury in 1739; five children were born to Jonathan in
Newbury fron 1745 to 1752. 11 Jonathan Leighton in turn
was the son of the Rowley stonecutter Richard Leighton
and grandson of the carver Ezekiel Leighton, Lt. John
Hartshorn's brother-in-law by his fourth wife Mary
Spofford Leighton. "Jona. Lighton" is paid for grave-
stones by John Barker of Ipswich in 1740. In 1749 his
father Richard Leighton willed Jonathan one-half his

lands, meadows, and barn. Jonathan Leighton sold pro-
perty j-ji Rowley in 1761 and 1771, and later moved to
Maine.12

The reversal to skulls was accomplished somewhat
more slowly in the Hartshorn/Leighton shop in Newbury
than in the Mulican/Marble shop in Bradford. The source
design was Richard Leighton's attenuated, if crude,
version of the Hartshorn face. Following Richard Leigh-
ton's death in 1750, an unknown apprentice or appren-
tices (presumably Jonathan Leighton jointly with Jona-
than Hartshorn) worked the Leighton variant into a
geometric face found commonly in Newbury and Rowley
from 1751 to 1759 whose eyes were joined by a distinc-
tive, ridge. Through a gradual process of elimination
and substitution, the spectacles design was divested of
its Hartshorn characteristics and assumed a more conven-
tional appearance. At the same time the image itself
became more skeletal (Fig. 17). Whereas early versions
of the nose are suggested by a single vertical line,
later versions are drawn with the caret mark usually
associated with skulls (Figs. 18-19). After 1758 Harts-
horn/Leighton stones lost all their Hartshorn charac-
teristics and became explicit winged skulls whose ex-
pressions appear benignly amused (Fig. 20). These
skulls, only tentatively identified as the work of the
Leighton/Hartshorn shop in Newbury, were produced in
large numbers in the sixteen-year period between 1767
and 1782. By 1783 the shop had converted the skull
into an angel.

Map 2.

Distribution of 700 skull stones by the Mulican/
Marble and Hartshorn/Leighton shops, 1737-84.
475 (70%) are located in Bradford and Newbury.

GRAVESTONE £££I£ES_

0£ LOCAL MERRIMACK SCHOOL STONECUTTERS

TILLED AND FOURTH GENERATIONS: HARTSHORN/LE IGHTON SHOP

Figure 15. "Scowling" winged spirit-face by the Leigh-
ton shop, Rowley, 1747-50.

Figure 16. Winged spirit face or cherub with "specta-
cles" eyes by the Hartshorn/Leighton shop,
£. 1750-55.

Figure 17. Winged spirit face or cherub by the Harts-
horn/Leighton shop showing the substitution
of a skeletal nose, c.. 1750-55.

Figures 18 and 19.

Details of winged skull-faces by the
Hartshorn/Leighton shop, 1755-59,
showing the increasing skeletaliza-
tion of the "spectacles" design.

Figure 20. Winged skull by the Hartshorn/Leighton shop,
Rowley and Newbury, 1770-84.

Because their work was largely confined to a dozen
small- to middle-size coastal parishes located in nor-
thern Essex County, the domestic Merrimack school of
gravestone makers was serving a rural constituency that
was rarely in touch with Boston, but that was neverthe-
less aware of Boston's influence. An initial explana-
tion of the skeletal reversal is that third- and
fourth-generation Merrimack school carvers were divest-
ing themselves of embarrassingly provincial decorating
practices and assuming the styles of urban Massachusetts
Bay carvers. Ipswich, for example, which before 1735
had drawn about equally on local carvers and those in
Massachusetts Bay, after that date turned increasingly
to Boston, Charlestown, and Salem gravestone makers.
It is quite possible that Joseph Mulican in 1737, and
the Leighton/Hartshorn shop in 1758, consciously re-
worked their designs in response to competition from
gravestone makers working in "The Bay". This explana-
tion is reinforced by the fact that comparable imita-
tions of urban cultural and ecclesiological models were
undertaken by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century nor-
thern Essex County housewrights and meetinghouse buil-
ders and that the more sophisticated and fashionable
community of Ipswich, like Beverly and Salem, was the
channel for these innovations. In 1696 Haverhill de-
signed the pulpit, galleries, windows, doors, floors,
and stairs of its new meetinghouse "after the pattern
of the Beverly meeting house." In 1700 the new meeting-
house erected by Newbury duplicated (and, in fact,
probably imitated) the exact dimensions of the giant
Salem meetinghouse of 1670, including its hip-roof,
four-gable exterior contruction.1,3 Similarly, in the
choice of psalms, Ipswich First and Third churches,
were the first in northern Essex County to sing Nahum
Tate and Nicholas Brady's translations (their version
had been previously adopted by six Boston and Salem
churches); the two Ipswich churches were followed by
Newbury First in 1761; Haverhill First in 1764; and
Boxford First in 1767. 14 Here, then, is a familiar
pattern whereby fashionable urban cultural modes are
filtering or seeping into the Essex County hinterland
through a chain of imitations in which certain key
parishes (such as Ipswich First) play a leading role.

A fashion hypothesis has several drawbacks, however.
Not only did Merrimack skull carvers fail to duplicate
the secondary elements of their presumed Boston and
Charlestown gravestone models (borders, feather work,

lettering, skull outline, and eyebrows), but they boldly
reworked the skull design to their own special purposes
--for example, the wig variant. By way of contrast,
stonecarvers in Groton, Massachusetts, and Milford,
Connecticut, who clearly did imitate the designs of the
Charlestown carvers, Caleb and Nathaniel Lamson, accu-
rately reproduced these designs almost to the last
detail. Groton and Milford replicas of Lamson stones
can only be distinguished from Lamson originals by the
differing stone source of the imitators. Then there is
the social evidence. Prominent families in Andover,
Ipswich, and Newburyport frequently purchased angel
stones from the Lamsons rather than the Lamsons's more
common skull stones. If imitation of a Boston area
high style had in fact been a reason for abandoning the
Hartshorn tradition, there was at least as much reason
to imitate a fashionable Lamson angel as a fashionable
winged skull. No such angel imitations were attempted.

A better explanation for the reversal may be found
in the "mentality" of the northern Essex County parishes
that produced and patronized these designs. Was there
anything unique in the history of the region that might
have encouraged or inspired the use of winged skulls?
Three particular circumstances immediately stand out.
The first of these was the earthquake that was felt
throughout New England on the night of October 29,
1727. Although no fatalities were reported, the tremor
toppled chimneys, tolled bells, and woke a starled
people from their sleep. By all contemporary eyewitness
accounts, as well as modern geological and seismological
studies, the epicenter and the strongest tremors were
located near the mouth of the Merrimack River at the
confluence of what present-day maps call the Essex and
Bloody Bluff faults where loud explosions were reported
and fissures appeared in the earth. 5 Major after-
shocks were also recorded in the area, sometimes several
in the same day.

More lasting, perhaps, were the religious repercus-
sions. Ministers throughout New England, and particu-
larly those in parishes located in northern Essex
County, used the occasion to remind their congregations
of the disaster that took place at Port Royal in 1692
and to consider the October event as a divine warning.
Interpreting the earthquake as a divine "Voice" or
"Token of displeasure," ministers chastised their lis-
teners for having "gone a whoring from . . . [their]
God" and urged them to shun a list of sins that among
others included pride, sensuality, drunkenness and

Map 3. Map showing the location of the Essex and Bloody
Bluff geological faults which converge in the
town of Newbury, and which determined the epi-
centers of the 1727 and 1755 earthquakes. From
Robert Castle, et. al., Structural Dislocations
in Eastern Massachusetts.

unchastity. While ministers balanced their interpreta-
tion in terms of God's mercy (no serious casualties),
uncompromising imagery such as the dog turning to "his
own vomit," and the newly washed sow returning "to her
wallowing in the mire" was not uncommon in the sermonic
literature.

The results, perhaps, were predictable. As the
minister John Fox wrote, "never were the Body of this
People . . . thrown into the like Consternation. ' An
estimated five thousand New Englanders took communion
for the first time in the six months following the
event. And what was true of New England generally was
true particularly of a line of towns and parishes lying
along the eastern half of the Essex fault system that
stretches from the mouth of the Merrimack River south-
westerly to Worcester, where the intensity of the shock
had been greatest. In the six months following the
October earthquake, Haverhill First Church received 226
new communicants; Andover First, 158; Newbury Second,
147; Newbury First, 133. Admissions elsewhere in New
England ayeraged one-fifth to one-tenth these figures
or less. 9 So alive was the memory of earthquakes in
the fault region that when another powerful tremor

shook New England twenty-eight years later in 1755, a
number of Essex County churches experienced what might
be described as an "echo"— a sudden rise in church
admissions — the only area in New England to do so.20

The second circumstance was the diptheria epidemic
that struck New England, New Jersey, and New York in
the years from 1735 to 1737. Called "throat distemper,"
the epidemic first broke out in the household of a
Kingston, New Hampshire, farmer who had butchered an
infected hog. It soon spread south to Haverhill and
Newbury, and thence along the Boston-Portsmouth post
road to Salem. The epidemic ravaged the Merrimack
Valley more severely than any other sector of New
England. More than half the estimated two thousand
deaths resulting from this outbreak in Massachusetts
occured in Essex County, most of these in the county's
northern and eastern parishes. Byfield parish, for
example, lost one-third of its infant population and
one-seventh of its total population within a year;
Haverhill lost one-half its infant population; Rowley
lost one-eighth of its total population. Comparable

losses decimated the towns of Newbury, Ipswich, Rowley,
and Bradford. In the words of a contemporary Boston
verse writer:

To Newbury. 0 go and see,
To Hampton and Kingston
In York likewise, and Kittery
Behold, what God hath done.""

A third circumstance is the mid-century religious
revival in northern Essex County, or more accurately
the absence of this revival. Excepting what was then
the third parish in Newbury (Newburyport) , which admit-
ted 158 new communicants during the Great Awakening,
church admissions in northern Essex County parishes
were negligible during the peak revival years from 1741
to 1742, which saw parishes elsewhere in New England
admit scores and hundreds of new communicants. Haverhill
First, for example, which admited 226 new communicants
from 1727 to 1728, added only four new communicants
from 1741 to 1742. Newbury Second (West Newbury)
gained 147 in 1717-28, but only thirty-two in 1741-42.
Amesbury Second admJLtted 100 in 1727-28, but only thir-
ty-one in 1741-42. 3 The same pattern is found among
congregations elsewhere in the northern sector of the
county and in the towns and parishes that lay on the
Essex fault system, and it is accompanied by comparable
attitudes on the part of the clergy. Although a handful

of ministers invited itinerant evangelical ministers
such as George Whitefield and John Davenport to preach
in their pulpits, the lower Merrimack area clergy as a
whole was clearly inclined toward Arminian (formalistic)
sentiment. In a letter sent to their Boston colleagues
in December 1744r nineteen ministers out of thirty-five
in the Merrimack region announced publicly their deter-
mination to exclude Whitefield from their pulpits and
affirmed their opinion that enthusiastic preaching did
more harm than good.24 Only three clergymen took the
opposite view. Revival-generated separations took
place in only two parishes; Baptist denominations
emerged at relatively late dates and were few in num-
ber.25 So far as can be read through church admission
data and the known positions of practicing ministers,
therefore, the Merrimack area was antienthusiastic in
its orientation. Indeed, the area ultimately developed
its own style of Arminianism that in the early nine-
teenth century was identified as "Merrimack Divinity."26

Ill

The question to be considered, of course, is whet-
her these special circumstances — the 1727 earthquake,
the 1735-37 epidemic of throat distemper, the prevail-
ing postrevival Mer r imack-area Arminianism--had any
influence on iconographic and artistic choices made by
the Bradford innkeeper Joseph Mulican and by the pre-
sumed stonecutting partners Jonathan Hartshorn and
Jonathan Leighton. And, if so, whether these influences
were in any way stronger or more meaningful than aes-
thetic fatigue or shifts in fashion. To answer this (if
only on a tentative basis) it is necessary first to
refine our interpretation of Puritan gravestone skulls.
Now commonly regarded as symbols of death, the winged
skull symbols carved on colonial gravestones were proba-
bly perceived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centu-
ries as spirits released by death (hence the wings).
It is likely that they were ghosts in the traditional
sense of "giving up the ghost," and were equivalent in
meaning to other skull-based and face-based spirit
symbols and emblems, such as the trees and skull, bird
and skull, stars and skull, stars and face, trees and
face, and winged face. There is evidence to suggest,
moreover, that through a complex, superimposed folk
language of caricature and heraldry, eighteenth-century
New England stonecarvers sometimes expressed popular
hopes and fears and conventional religious attitudes
and expectations towards death and resurrection. Scow-
ling spirits presumably anticipated resurrection with

caution; blissful or ecstatic ones perhaps confidently
awaited it. In between were semiskeletal and semifa-
cial variations that exhibited mixed elements of both.

The shift by Merrimack school carvers to skull
emblems and to harsh caricatures within these emblems
can be interpreted in this folk heraldic context. Two
key dates are involved in the iconography: 1737 when
the Mulican shop introduced a skull stone (Figs. 10-11),
and about 1750 when Hartshorn and Leighton skeletized
their spectacles stones (Figs. 16-19). The 1737 date
is probably linked to the outbreak of throat distemper;
indeed, the initial Mulican skull stones mark the ear-
liest victims of the disease, principally children in
Haverhill and Bradford. Some relationship — still un-
clear in its details, but perhaps involving a community-
sensed recognition of a terrible tragedy, probably ties
the choice of the new skull design to the epidemic.
This follows a pattern found elsewhere in New England
where carvers introduced major design changes at moments
of unusual societal stress. In a 1747 epidemic, for
example, the carver Nathan Hayward of Bridgewater,
Massachusetts, introduced highly innovative variations
of traditional Plymouth County skull designs. Simi-
larly, the Soule carvers of Plympton, Massachusetts,
animated their "Medusa" stones after smallpox struck
Chatham, Massachusetts, in the years from 1765 to
1766. 27

The 1737 epidemic in Essex County, however, must
also be seen in its wider context. As has already been
pointed out, the October 1727 earthquake produced more
religious conversions in northern Essex County than
anywhere else in New England. But there may have been
a difference in perception, as well. This is hinted at
by the highly suggestive language of a 1727 letter by
Richard Waldron of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to his
sister in which he describes the experiences of "a Man
who lives about a mile distant from us," and who

immediately after the first Rumbling and
little Shock, heard a fine musical sound,
like the sound of a Trumpet at a distance.
He could not distinguish any Tune that he
knew; but perceiv'd a considerable Variety of
Notes. The Musick continued till after the
Second Rumbling . . . The Man's wife
heard what he did. 8

Perhaps not everyone in the Merrimack region believed

the world was coming to an end with a blast of a "Trum-
pet" on the night of October 29, but enough may have
that when the throat distemper epidemic struck their
communities then years later, their worst fears became
confirmed. From this viewpoint, the absence of the
1740-42 religious revival in the region can be seen as
a symptom of a continuing malaise. Having already
experienced conversions and renewals after the 1727
earthquake, Christian believers in northern Essex County
may have found few new converts to make among them-
selves. It might be said that the region found itself
in the unenviable predicament of sharing a prevailing
religious apprehension while having exhausted the col-
lective means of coping with it.

Precisely how a state of mind might be translated
into a specific gravestone symbol is now impossible to
say. In a surviving 1739 letter addressed to the
Bradford stonecarver Robert Mulican (1664-1741), a
buyer specified only names, ages, and death dates of
the deceased; no reference to pictorial symbols was
made, and no document has so far come to light that
provides any real insight as to Mulican's artistic
intention or that of his innkeepper son, Joseph. 9 We
can only presume that in their reversal to skull imagery
Joseph Mulican and the Hartshorn/Leighton carvers,
acting alone as naive artists or collectively with
their neighbors and communities, chose skeletal imagery
over the earlier Hartshorn imagery, in part because the
former was now in fashion, and in part because they,
the carvers, judged it more appropriately met the felt
needs and purposes of memorialization. Whatever our
interpretation, one fact stands out: the greatest
number of 1727-28 earthquake-related conversions, the
highest mortality rate in the 1735-37 throat epidemic,
and the only known instance in New England of a reversal
to skeletal gravestones all took place in northern
Essex County at roughly the same time period. If we
are correct in our belief that New England carvers
devised masks and caricatures in order to express popu-
lar hopes and expectations about death, the late intro-
duction of skull imagery in northern Essex County was
compatible with at least two and perhaps three histori-
cal circumstances that had uniquely affected this region
and that may have generated a particular sense of doom.
Articulated with the freshness, wit, and simplicity
that eighteenth-century gravestone artists brought to
their work, this doom (if indeed it was doom) is pre-
served in the haunting and intensely beautiful folk
effigies of the domestic Merrimack school.

NOTES

Thanks are due to Ralph L. Tucker of West Newburyr
Massachusetts, for furnishing key probate and genealogi-
cal data for carvers in northern Essex County; for
locating relevant seismological monographs; and for a
critical reading of the manuscript. This paper was
presented at the Association for Gravestone Studies
annual conference held at Bradford Junior College in
1980.

^•Ernest Caulfield, "Connecticut Gravestones XII:
John Hartshorne vs. Joshua Hempstead," Connecticut
Historical Society Bulletin. 3 2 (July, 1967), 6 5-7 9;
Peter Benes, "Lt. John Hartshorn, Stonecutter of Haver-
hill and Norwich," ££_£££ Institute Historical Collec-
tions, 109 (April, 1973), 152-64; James A. Slater and
Ralph L. Tucker, "The Colonial Gravestone Carvings of
John Hartshorne," Puritan Gravestone Axi JLI: 1978
Annual Proceedings o_f ihe. Dublin seminar £sll EfiW England
Folklife (Boston: Boston University Scholarly Publica-
tions, 1979), pp. 79-146.

2Peter Benes, "Abel Webster: Pioneer, Patriot,
and Stonecutter," Historical New Hampshire, 28 (Winter,
1973), 221-40; James L. and Donna Belle Garvin, "Step-
hen Webster, Gravestone Maker," Historical Ue_w. Hamp^
silir_£, 29 (Summer, 1974), 93-104. Harriette M. Forbes,
Gravestones o.f EarJLy. Re_w. England and. £h& E&n Who. M&&&
Them. 1653-1800 (1927; rpt. New York: Da Capo, 1967),
pp. 77-78; Allan I. Ludwig, Graven Images: New England
Stonecarving and its Symbols. 1650-1815 (Middletown,
Ct.: Wesleyan University Press, 1966), pp. 371-73;
Dickran and Ann Tashjian, Memorials for Children q£
change: The Aii ol Early Hew. England s.jtQnecarving
(Middletown, Ct.: Wesleyan University Press, 1974),
pp. 201-04.

3Forbes, 102-05; Ludwig, 380-89; 401-16; Tashjian
and Tashjian, 204-11; Ernest Caulfield and James A.
Slater, "The Colonial Gravestone Carvings of Obadiah
Wheeler," Proceedings £f the American Antiquarian S_q-
ciety. 84 (April, 1974), 73-103; James A. Slater and
Ernest Caulfield, "The Loomis Carvers: Connecticut
Gravestone Art XVI," Connecticut Historical Society
Bulletin. 48 (Fall, 1983), 143-68.

4Ernest Caulfield, "Connecticut Gravestones XIII:
Richard Kimball, Lebbeus Kimball, Chester Kimball,"
Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin. 40 (April,

1975), 33-45; "Connecticut Gravestones XV: Three Manning
Imitators," Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin, 43
(January, 1978), 1-16; "Connecticut Gravestones VIII:
Josiah Manning, Frederick Manning, Rockwell Manning,"

1962) , 76-82.

5George Kubler, The Shape ol Iime_«. ££Hia_r_k£ on the
history of things (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1962), p. 82.

6For evidence that Ezekiel Leighton carved stones
similar to Hartshorn's original style, see Sue Kelly
and Anne Williams, "'And the Men Who Made Them1: The
Signed Gravestones of New England," MARKERS 11 (1983),
45, 85.

7"Joseph Mulickon" was paid forty shillings for
gravestones in 1738 by John Sanders of Haverhill (Caul-
field, XII, p. 77), and by Stephen Morss of Newbury
(Essex County Probate Records, hereafter cited ECPR,
326:311). Joseph's widow "Phebe Mullikin" was paid two
pounds, five shillings, and four pence for "two Setts
of grave stones" by the estate of Ebenezer Osgood, of
Andover in 1768, presumably the same "Two Pair of Grave
Stones" that were inventoried in her husband's estate
at the same value (ECPR 345:25, 26). Cited in his
inventory as an "innkeeper," Mulican left "twelve Bow-
back't Chares" in his estate along with "Six black
Chares," "ten pair of Sheets," and no fewer than "twen-
ty Gallons" of "Rum and Spirits."

8Fifteen examples of Robert Mulican's early skull
stones are known: six in what were then Newbury pa-
rishes; six in Haverhill; and three in Merrimac. Four
of these stones have unusual triangular eyes. The
inscription date distribution of the group is: 1736
(2); 1737 (3); 1738 (6); 1739 (3); 1740 (1). Hartshorn
occasionally gave his faces jagged teeth or triangular
noses, but he is not known to have used a skull design
as such.

9Ralph L. Tucker and Fred W. Boughton, "By Their
Lettering Shall Ye Know Them," Newsletter Ql the ASSQCJ-
aiioji loj: Gravestone Studies, 8 (Spring, 1984), 7-9.

10Kelly and Williams, p. 87; Forbes, p. 129. Jo-
seph Marble is first paid for gravestones in 1776 (ECPR
352:197, Edward Barnard, Haverhill); John Marble is
first paid for stones in 1789 (ECPR 360:174, John Ela,

Haverhill). Both stonecutters left signed stones.

1]-Vital Records of Newbury (Salem, Mass: The Essex
Institute, 1911), 1:216; ECPR 341:357; Caulfield, XII,
p. 79. This is the same Jonathan Hartshorn who as a
child in 1710 scratched his name on the base of a
footstone now standing in the Ipswich burying ground
(Benes, "Hartshorn," p. 160).

12Forbes, p. 128; Amos E. Jewett and Emily M.
Jewett, Rowley. Massachusetts. "Mr« Ezechi Rogers plan-
tation." 1639-1850 (Rowley, Mass.: Jewett Family of
America, 1946), p. 141; ECPR 324:604; Vital Records of
Rj2Hl£y, Hs_s_s.a.c_h.u.s£i:Ls, ££ iJie end q£ iJue year 1QA2., 2
vols. (Salem, Mass.: The Essex Institute, 1928-31), I,
129; ECPR 328:614.

13D. Hamilton Hurd, History Cif £s_s_e_x. County. Massa-
chusetts (Philadelphia: Lewis, 1880), pp. 1947-48; The
First Parish. Newbury. Massachusetts. 1635-1935 (New-
buryport, Mass.: The First Parish, 1935), pp. 31-32;
Marian C. Donnelly, The New England Meeting Houses o.£
the Seventeenth Century (Middletown, Ct.: Wesleyan
University Press, 1968), p. 126. For a study of the
transmission of architectural styles through a sequence
of regional and local imitations, see Peter Benes, "The
Templeton 'Run' and the Pomfret 'Cluster': Patterns of
Diffusion in Rural New England Meetinghouse Architec-
ture, 1647-1822," Old-Time Hew. England, 68 (Winter-
Spring, 1978), 1-21.

14Henry W. Foote, Three Centuries cJL American
Hymnody (1940; rpt. Hamden, Ct.: Archon Books, 1968),
p. 160; Joseph B. Felt, History £i Xp.sw.i.ci!, Essexr and
Hamiltonf Massachusetts (Cambridge: C. Folsom, 1834),
p. 212; First Parish. Newbury, p. 35; B. L. Mirick,
History of Haverhill, Massachusetts (Haverhill, Mass.:
Thayer, 1832), p. 166; Sidney Perley, History q£_ Rqx-
f ord. Essex County. Massachusetts (Boxford, Mass: The
author, 1880) , p. 193. For a more complete study of the
movement of translations by Tate and Brady and by Isaac
Watts in eighteenth-century New England, see Peter
Benes, "Psalmody in Coastal Massachusetts and in the
Connecticut River Valley," The Bay and the River: 1S_8_1
Proceedings of ±M Dublin Seminar for lfew. England Folk-
life (Boston: Boston University Scholarly Publications,
1982), pp. 117-31.

15William T. Brigham, "Historical Notes on the
Earthquakes of New England, 1638-1869," Boston Society

q£ Natural History, Memoirs. 2:1; a contemporary account
appears in Thomas Prince, Earthquakes the Works fil Qq&
and Tokens ol Ms Just Displeasures (Boston, 1727).

160f thirty-three earthquake-related sermons pub-
lished in New England following the October tremor, ten
were composed by ministers of Essex County parishes;
three others were composed by ministers in Rye and
Portsmouth, New Hampshire. See Charles Evans, American
Rihlioaraphv (Chicago: Privately printed, 1903), list-
ings for 1727-28; William D. Andrews, "The Literature
of the 1727 New England Earthquake," £a£ly. American
Literature. (Winter, 1973), 280-94.

17 John Fox, God Jay his p.qw.££ causes the £^xiJa and.
its inhabitants ic tremble (Boston, 1728), p. 28.

18Robert 0. Castle, £i. al-r S_Ltii£i^XSl Pi s loca-
tions in Eastern Ma£sacil!l.S_££:t£ : A description fil £Jl£
major faults and mylonite zones that Xoiffi £n£ eastern
Massachusetts dislccaiiojl b£l£. Geological Survey
Bulletin 1410 (Washington, D. C: United States Govern-
ment Printing Office, 1976), pp. 3-4, 8-15.

19Essex North Association, C_ojaiiJj2MiJLQHS ££■ ths.
Kr.rTesiastical History q£ £s_s_£x. County, ftass^. (Boston:
Congregational Board of Publication, 1865), p. 290;
Abiel Abbot, History ot Andpver, £rj2ffi its settlement ifi
UL2_2 (Andover, Mass.: Flagg and Folsom, 1829), p. 77.
The east precinct in Middleborough, Massachusetts,
admitted twenty-six new members into the church in
1727-28; by contrast, this church admitted 162 in the
revival years of 1741-42 See Book q£ ine. First Church
Ol Christ in Middleborough (Boston: Moody, 1852).

20Salisbury Second Church admitted seventy-nine in
the years 1755-56 after averaging three or four new
communicants per year; Bradford First Church admitted
thirty-five, and Newbury Third Church (West Newbury),
twenty-seven in 1755-56. See Essex North Association,
p. 290.

21Ernest Caulfield, "A True History of the Terrible
Epidemic," Disease and Society in Provincial Massachu-
setts (New York: Arno, 1972), pp. 103-04, 110, 62,
279. See also, Felt, p. 196.

22Awakening Calls ifi Eatlv. Piety (Boston, 1738).

23Essex North Association, p. 290.

24 A Letter Irom T.w_o NeigJibsrjjig AssocJ3ti.PJls. £f
ministers in £he Country. . . . rel^tin^ £.0. .the.
admission of Mr. Whitef ield into their pulpitsf December
2&, 1744. quoted in Joseph Tracy, The Great Awakening
(Boston: Tappan, 1842), pp. 344-45.

250f the thirty-five parishes in northern and
eastern Essex County, only Topsfield, Gloucester First,
and Ipswich First openly favored the revival and invited
Whitefield on his 1744-45 tour of New England. They
were joined by two separating parishes: Newburyport's
Presbyterian Church and the separatists at Chebacco
parish in Ipswich. Amesbury Second, Andover First,
Beverly First, Bradford First and Second, Byfield,
Ipswich Second, Manchester, Newbury First through
Fourth, Salisbury First and Second, Methuen, and Boxford
Second all went on record against the revival.

Essex North Association, p. 185.

27Peter Benes, The Masks of Orthodoxy: Folk Grave-
stone Carving in Plymouth County. Massachusetts. 1689-
1805 (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts
Press, 1977), pp. 116, 136-37.

2°Letter from Richard Waldron, Portsmouth, N. H.,
to Madam Waldron his sister, in Boston, January 12,
1728; quoted in "A Letter Book of Samuel Sewall,"
Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, II, 6th
series (Boston, 1888), 232.

29Forbes, p. 15.

The Colburn Connections:
Hollis, New Hampshire, Stonecarvers, 1780-1820

Theodore Chase and Laurel K. Gabel

We began our study of the gravestone carvers of
the Lancastrian towns with an article on James Wilder
of Lancaster, Massachusetts.1 Paul Colburn appeared to
have taken on the mantle of James Wilder, and our
research reveals that Colburn became a highly influen-
tial carver in the region. Colburn came to Sterling
from Hollis, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire in
1784, three years after Sterling had separated from
Lancaster. Our field studies in Hollis yielded a large
number of stones which we at first attributed to Paul
Colburn. It gradually became apparent, however, that
there were several other carvers in Hollis, contempo-
raries of Colburn, most of them related to him by
marriage, and one with a carving style almost indistin-
guishable from his. As a result, we found ourselves
studying not simply the life and work of Paul Colburn,
but also that of four hitherto unknown stonecutters of
the 1790s and early 1800s. By examining their lives
and work, we discovered a great deal about the patterns
of intermarriage, apprenticeship, and craft succession
in the stonecutting trade. Documents reveal the eco-
nomic status of stonecutters in the period, and an
inventory of stones outlines significant patterns of
image used on stones for men, women and children.

PAUL COLBURN 1761-1825

The Colburn line in Hollis began with Paul's grand-
father, William Colburn, who in 1738 brought his family
from Concord, Massachusetts to Patch's Corner "in an
oxcart, guided by marked trees." This land was then
part of West Dunstable, Massachusetts. In the year of
his arrival, William Colburn was one of those who
signed a petition to the General Court seeking to have
West Dunstable set off as a separate town from Groton
and Dunstable. A new line was established between
Massachusetts and New Hampshire in 1741, and Hollis was
chartered as a New Hampshire town on April 3, 1746.
William Colburn was assessed the first parish tax in
1740 and was a member of the pulpit committee which
secured Daniel Emerson as the first Hollis minister in
1742. Two years later he signed a petition for the
protection of West Dunstable from the Indians. Paul's
father, William, Jr., was born in Concord in 1726. He
married Abigail Wheeler of Concord in 1757, and they

too settled at Patch's Corner in Hollis. William, Jr.
farmed the fertile land which brought the first settlers
to the town, leaving only to serve in the French and
Indian War. Paul, William and Abigail's first son, was
born in Hollis October 4, 1761, the second of seven
children.2

Paul Colburn was fourteen years old when his father
died in 1776. John Ball, who was also to become a
stonecutter, was living in Hollis at that time; he was
two years older than Paul. We believe that both boys
learned to carve gravestones, and perhaps apprenticed,
together for they later used almost identical designs
and lettering styles. While Colburn and Ball may have
been influenced by the work of the brothers Abel and
Stephen Webster, both of whom lived for a time in
Hollis, the Websters1 work in that town was confined to
the period prior to 1766, and hence Colburn and Ball
would have been too young to have served in their shop.
Abel and Stephen moved to Plymouth, New Hampshire in
1765 and 1766, respectively. In any event, Paul mar-
ried John Ball's sister Mehitable in 1780. In the
following year William Ball, brother of John and Mehi-
table, married Elizabeth Colburn, Paul's first cousin,
thereby drawing the two families even closer. Two
children, Mehitable and Elizabeth, were born to Paul
and Mehitable Ball Colburn while they were still living
in Hollis. Elizabeth, or Betsy, was born January 13,
1784. 4

Among the papers in the estate of Paul's father,
William Colburn, Jr., is a bond dated December 9, 1784
in which Paul is described as "of Sterling, Massachu-
setts, cordwainer." It seems evident, therefore, that
Paul moved to Sterling in 1784, although he did not
acquire land there until February 1786 when he bought a
parcel from John Kilburn containing 133 rods, a little
less than an acre. John Kilburn was the father of
Samuel (1783-1858) and Cheney (1796-1873) Kilburn, both
stonecutters at Sterling, Massachusetts. Samuel's home
and shop were less than a mile from Paul Colburn's
house. It is possible that Samuel Kilburn learned the
trade from Colburn. Paul Colburn's house still stands
on the Old Princeton Road near the top of Fitch Hill.
The 1798 Direct Tax Census for Sterling shows Colburn
as the owner of a dwelling valued at $80 and one acre
of land valued at $14. Some twenty years ago the
present owner found a quantity of slate stones buried
in the yard, some "with lettering on them," presumably
relics of Colburn's occupancy. Paul's shop was less

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Rutland • HOLDEN

Figure 1. Map of towns in which carvers resided.

than two miles to the south, near the Quag, as it is
called (being a small lagoon cut off from Washecum Pond
when a causeway was built for the railroad); the Town
and Country Restaurant now stands near the site. The
Worcester Registry of Deeds has no record of his acqui-
sition of the shop, but there is a deed dated January
8, 1806 whereby Paul Colburn, described as "of Holden,
stonecutter," for $30 conveyed to Israel Allen, a phy-
sician, "one certain shop, being and standing in Ster-
ling near Washecum Pond, so-called, in or near land
belonging to Abigail Wait which said shop I ha^e here-
tofore occupied in my business of stonecutter."

We have found little evidence of Paul's life in
Sterling, since many of the early records of that town
were destroyed by fire. It does not appear from the
records of the Court of Common Pleas or the Court of
General Sessions that he engaged in litigation or was
involved in any criminal proceedings. We know, however,
that he and his wife had nine more children, born at
frequent intervals from 1786 to 1798 and named for
various members of Paul's and Mehitable's families.
Notes found at the American Antiquarian Society indi-
cate that he had a seat in the side gallery of the

Second Church in Sterling, the Chocksett Meetinghouse.
He and his wife evidently left the Congregational
Church and became Baptists, for they are listed among
the forty-seven members of the First Baptist Church in
Holden as of December 31, 1807. At the Sterling
Historical Society we found an engaging recollection in
a centennial address given by William Frederick Holcomb
on June 15, 1881:

It would be no small treat now to hear the
Sterling choir of old-fashioned men and women,
boys and maidens, singling 'Old Hundred,1
'Cornonation, ' 'Old Lang Syne,' or the 'Dox-
ology1 as led by Paul Colburn or Cephas Newell
with fiddles, accompanied by a full orchestra
of strings and wind instruments as in former
times . . . There was one large (or double)
bass viol ... a single bass viol; and Paul
Colburn and Cephas Newell always led with a
fiddle.

Paul's father, William, died intestate so that his
real estate, valued at L100 "silver money the old way,"
was inherited one-third by his widow and two-thirds by
his children. Abigail disclaimed her interest in favor
of her children. Thus Paul acquired an interest in
Hollis real estate, and the assessors' records indicate
that he paid taxes thereon in 1781 and 1782, but not
thereafter.7 The widow's taxes for 1777, the year
after her husband died, were abated, presumably because
of her disclaimer. In 1783 Paul's mother, Abigail
Wheeler Colburn, married Gershom Hobart of Plymouth in
central New Hampshire, she being his third wife. They
subsequently lived in the neighboring town of Hebron,
and upon their deaths were buried in a now unmarked
grave in the Hebron Village Cemetery. Paul's oldest
sister Isabel married Reuben Hobart of Groton, New
Hampshire, another neighboring town; Paul's brother
William married Phoebe Hobart of Groton, and they are
believed to have lived in Lyme, New Hampshire; another
brother, Abel, married Elizabeth Bailey of Groton, and
they lived there. Accordingly, when Paul decided in
1807 or early 1808 to leave Holden, Massachusetts, he
had few remaining ties in Hollis, but many reasons for
moving to central New Hampshire.

And so in 1808 we find Paul in Hebron, assessed a
poll tax and a tax for owning one horse. In 1809 he
was again assessed a poll tax and a tax for two neats
(oxen) for a total of $1.35. In that year, school

district six was divided by a line "beginning at the
pond and running between Paul Colburn's and Mr. Chaf-
fin's," and Paul paid a school tax of forty-six cents.
In the following year his livestock had increased to
one cow, three neats and one horse, and he paid a tax
of eighty-three cents for the support of school district
seven. In 1811 he was chosen sealer of leather (one
remembers his original trade as a cordwainer). Town
records show that by 1814 his livestock had increased
to two oxen, two cows and two horses, and that he
continued to pay taxes in 1815. Both the tax records
and the absence of any recorded deeds suggest that Paul
Colburn never owned land in Hebron.

In September 1815 Paul Colburn and his wife, his
twenty-seven-year-old son Isaac with his wife and chil-
dren, his son William (who had married Achsa Phelps of
Hebron on August 15, only a few weeks before) and his
unmarried daughter, Isabel, started out from Hebron in
wagons to seek a new home in the west.xu They took
five years to reach that home in Loami, Illinois. On
reaching Olean, on the Allegheny River in the southwes-
tern part of New York, they found the river too low to
bring all their goods in boats. They sold their wagons
and teams, put their remaining goods and families on a
raft, and started down the river, reaching Pittsburgh
on Christmas Eve. Ice was forming on the river, and
they were compelled to stop there for the winter.

While in Pittsburgh they were joined by Paul's son
Ebenezer, who had been serving in the War of 1812 (as
had his brothers Abel and William). In the spring of
1816, sons Isaac and Ebenezer went up the Allegheny
River and made a raft of logs suitable for later use as
shingles, and partially loaded the raft with hoop
poles. They expected to go down the Ohio River in
June, but the season was one of unusually low water and
they did not reach Pittsburgh again until December.
All of them continued down river on the raft to Mari-
etta, Ohio, where they paused to engage in farming and
"other pursuits." Ebenezer married Julia Smith, of New
York, in Marietta and stayed on there temporarily, as
did William and his wife, while Paul, Isaac and Ebenezer
and their families continued down the river to Shawnee-
town, Illinois, where Paul, his wife Mehitable and
their daughter Isabel remained. Ebenezer and his new
wife went on to join her relatives in Monroe County,
Illinois.

In August 1820 tragedy struck when Isaac and his

wife died within two days of each other, leaving six
young children orphaned and alone in Louisville, Ken-
tucky. On November 1, 1820, Paul's wife Mehitable died
at Shawneetown. At about the time of her death William,
having closed up the family business in Marietta, em-
barked on a boat with his family, floated down to
Louisville and took on board four of his brother Isaac's
children. One of the other children had died and still
another had been placed in a good home. William arrived
in Shawneetown with his group on December 24, 1820, the
fifth anniversary of the family's arrival in Pittsburgh.

In March 1821 Paul Colburn, his twenty-five-year-
old daughter Isabel, his son William with his wife and
three children, the four orphaned children of Isaac,
and a Mr. Harris, started in Mr. Harris's wagon drawn
by four oxen for Morgan County, Illinois. They tra-
velled through spring rains and mud and across unbridged
streams for about five weeks until they came to the
south side of Lick Creek in what is now Loami Township
in Sangamon County, Illinois, where they found an empty
cabin. Too tired to proceed further, the Colburn family
decided to stay there.

Soon after their arrival William Colburn exchanged
his gun for a crop of newly planted corn and thus began
to provide for the family. Shortly after their arrival
William and his brother Ebenezer built a small horse
mill and for some years ground the grain of the neigh-
boring farmers. Subsequently they built a watermill on
Lick Creek, but this proved a failure and they erected
a steam saw and gristmill in 1836. Around this mill
grew up the village of Loami, where Colburn's Mill and
its successors became the most noted institution in the
area. Having succeeded in the long and arduous trek
west, established his family and helped to found a new
settlement in the wilderness, Paul Colburn died on
February 27, 1825 near the present town of Loami.

Despite the large number of stones in the grave-
yards of Sterling and surrounding towns which we attri-
bute to Paul Colburn, we have found only three, those
of Joseph Eveleth, 1790, Princeton, Nathan Whitney,
1803, and Nathan Cutting, 1803, both buried in Westmin-
ster, where the probate accounts contain specific en-
tries showing payments to Paul Colburn for gravestones
(Worcester, Mass. Probates A19398, A65066, A14990).
However, there are five other stones where the records
at the Worcester Registry of Probate show payments to
him in amounts clearly appropriate for his work:

A65475
A38530
A20531
A65633
A41528

Silent Wilde
Princeton, 1790
Prudence Manning
Lancaster, 1793
John Fessenden
Rutland, 1793
Jonathan Wilder
Sterling, 1797
Paul Moore
Princeton, 1799

Paul Colburn fel-8-0
Paul Colburn rec't fel-10-0
Paul Colburn $10.33
Paul Colburn &2-2-0
Paid Paul Colburn $9.00

The Nathan Whitney and Nathan Cutting stones carry the
urn and willow design (Fig. 2). The remaining six
stones are similar in style: an oval face set between
wings in the tympanum, embellished with foliage in bas
relief. This we have called the "face with wings"
design (Fig. 3).

We have attributed one other major style to Paul
Colburn because of the similarity of lettering and
design elements to those of the probated stones, because
of the large quantity of stones carved in this style in
Sterling area burying grounds and because they all fall
within the period of his residence there. This third
style portrays a face in a niche or arch, made familiar
by the earlier work of the Park family of Groton,
Massachusetts (Fig. 4).

Figure 2. Nathan Whitney, 1803, Westminster, Mass.

<* j I

; ' i

L i j*

Figure 3. Mary Morse, 1801, Boylston, Mass.

Figure 4. Elizabeth Temple, 1796, Boylston, Mass,

100

We were mystified to find a pair of Colburn face
with wings and face in arch stones as far east of
Sterling as Lexington, Massachusetts — those of Deacon
Joseph Loring, 1787, and of his wife Kezia, 1789.
Deacon Loring had purchased a farm in that part of
Lancaster which became Sterling and conveyed it to his
son John in November 1764, presumably as a wedding
present, for John married Elizabeth Howe of Concord in
January of that year. John was the oldest son, and
when his parents died no doubt it was he who arranged
to have their gravestones cut by his fellow townsman,
Paul Colburn. Two of John's children, Becky and Betsey,
who died in 1786 and 1800, respectively, are buried in
the Cookshire Cemetery in Sterling with Colburn stones
marking their graves. The stone done for Becky is of
the face in arch variety and that done for her sister
Betsey, who died at the turn of the century, is, appro-
priately enough, of the urn and willow design."

JOHN BALL 1759-1840

Our search for the work of Paul Colburn took us to
many beautiful graveyards in Hillsborough County in
southern New Hampshire and to Middlesex County, Massa-
chusetts border towns such as Pepperell, Townsend,
Dunstable and Ashby. In these graveyards we found
literally hundreds of stones, representing all three of
the Colburn designs discussed above (face with wings,
face in arch, and urn and willow). All of these stones
fall within the period when Colburn was known to be
working in Sterling, and a search of the records at the
Hillsborough Registry of Probate and at the Middlesex
Registry disclosed not a single payment to Paul Colburn
for these gravestones or anything else. They did dis-
close, however, five payments to a John Ball for grave-
stones:

101

03729 Nathaniel Griffin

Temple, 1790 62-5-0

01498 Wyseman Clagett

Litchfield, 1784 63-16-2

08204 John and Molly Seccombe

Amherst, 1796 63-18-0

13703 Captain James and Mary Lawrence
(Msx) Pepperell, Mass., 1800 $15.25

09553 Thomas Whiting

Amherst, 1801 $14

There were also probate payments in appropriate amounts
to John Ball in eight other instances:

04481 Josiah Hodgman, Merrimack, 1787 63-0-0

02933 Ralph Emerson, Hollis, 1790 68-8-0

05583 Daniel Kendrick, Hollis, 1790 61-19-13

09058 Benjamin Tenney, Temple, 1790 63-8-0

05365 Samuel Jewett, Hollis, 1791 61-12-0

02477 John Duncklee, Amherst, 1792 62-14-0

03183 David French, Bedford, 1793 64-0-4

08266 Eldad Spafford, Temple, 1806 63-0-11

And in Bedford, New Hampshire we found a handsome
double stone, with Ball's urn and willow design, for
the Reverend John Houston and his wife. The account
filed in his estate (Hillsborough, N. H. Probate 04527)
contains the following entry dated October 1803: "by
gravestones for the Rev. John Houston and for Madam
Houston $15.00; for transporting said stones from Hollis
and setting them up $4.00." As indicated above, all
three styles are represented by these stones. The John
Seccombe stone in Amherst, marking the grave of John
and his wife Molly, includes both the face with wings
and the face in arch designs, thus linking these two
designs indisputably to the same carver (Fig. 9).

The census, tax and vital records show that there
were a number of men by the name of John Ball who lived
in southern New Hampshire between 1780 and 1800. The
administrator's account in the estate of Captain James
Lawrence provided a clue that John Ball of Hollis was
the carver:

For going to Hollis to speak for gravestones for dec'd

$ 1.00
Pd to man team to bring gravestones from Hollis
and helping set them up $ 2.00

Pd John Ball for gravestones $15.25

Pd David Shattuck for setting them up .25

102

Examination of the Ball family genealogy and of Hollis
town records indicates that there were only two John
Balls in Hollis, our John and his son, who was not born
until 1788. Deeds of various parcels of land to John
Ball of Hollis in 1794, 1798 and 1802 all describe him
as a stonecutter as do the deeds by which he sold his
land in 1806, in one of which his wife Molly joined to
release her dower rights.14

The Ball family, like Paul Colburn's family, came
from Concord, Massachusetts. Mrs. Forbes's notes at
the American Antiquarian Society indicate probate pay-
ments to a Nathaniel Ball of Concord in the 1730s.
This would have been John's grandfather. John's father
Ebenezer was born in Concord in 1721, was married by
Rev. Daniel Bliss to Sarah Gookin in 1746 and moved to
Hollis, where their first child Ebenezer, Jr. was born
in February 1749. We should like to have found that
John's father Ebenezer was himself a stonecutter, thus
establishing from whom John Ball and Paul Colburn
learned the trade. But our efforts to confirm that
either Ebenezer or Ebenezer* Jr. was a stonecutter have
thus far proved fruitless.17

A further word about John's father, Ebenezer the
first, may be of interest. He was chosen as a surveyor
of highways by the town meeting from time to time and
engaged in various real estate transactions in Hollis.
He may have been the Ebenezer Ball who was one of
sixty-four grantees of the town of Granby, Vermont.
He was one of thirty-four Hollis men in a regiment of
600 raised in 1755 and commanded by Colonel Joseph
Blanchard to aid in the expedition against the French
forts on the west shore of Lake Champlain, serving as a
private, or sentinel, under Captain Peter Powers. He
enlisted on May 1 and was discharged on October 22.
Attempts to place John Ball's father in the war of the
Revolution probably confuse him with his son and name-
sake, Ebenezer the blacksmith, who answered the call on
April 19, 1775, was a member of Captain Reuben Dow's
company in Col. Prescott's regiment at Bunker Hill, and
saw further service in 1776 and 1777. The elder Ebene-
zer's other three sons, Nathaniel, William and, as will
appear later, John, also saw service in the
Revolution.19

John Ball the stonecutter was the sixth child of
Ebenezer and Sarah Gookin Ball, born in Hollis January
7, 1759. He married Mary (or Molly) Chamberlin, daugh-
ter of Samuel Chamberlin of Hollis, on April 24, 1782.

103

They had eleven children, all born in Hollis between
1783 and 1804. We found many bits and pieces in the
Hollis town records from which we endeavored to recon-
struct the life of John Ball: the birth dates of his
brothers and sisters and of his own children; his
marriage; his appearance on the tax rolls in 1781 at
the age of twenty-two and continuing annually there-
after through 1805; his appointment in 1793 as constable
and collector of taxes for the east side of the town,
for which he was to receive fourpence on the pound
collected; his election as tithing man in 1794 and
1801; and as a surveyor of highways in 1805; drawn as a
petit juror in 1795 and 1796; appointed with eight
others in 1796 to promote the "decent and laudable
purpose" of seeing that his neighbors marched two-by-
two at funerals in the town; and in 1801 his name
appears along with ninety-three others (including Solo-
mon Wheat, Sr., whom we shall meet again) as a signer
of the articles of association of a religious group
dedicated to prayer meetings and general moral uplift
(a contemporary newspaper article describes the group
as "a Philanthropic Society formed to support the gospel
without taxes").20

The town records with respect to John Ball's ser-
vice in the Revolution are somewhat confusing. He
appears in a list of Hollis militia under Joshua Wright
as of January 26, 1775, when he had only just reached
the age of sixteen, and in a list of the militia in
June of that year; but unlike his brothers Ebenezer and
Nathaniel, he was not one of the ninety-two men who
marched to Concord on April 19. He was one of the
"several soldiers belonging to Hollis that went into
the army to Canady July 1776 as apprised by the Commit-
tee of Safety for said Hollis," being a member of
Captain Daniel Emerson's company in Col. Joshua Win-
gate's regiment of volunteers. Though recruited for
service in Canada, the regiment went no further than
Ticonderoga. Ball's signature appears on a receipt
dated Mount Independence 19 September 1776 for billeting
and mileage lls.3p. and on another receipt dated 7
October 1776 for one month and twelve days of service.
The roll of Captain Daniel Emerson's company in Col.
Wingate's regiment as mustered and paid by Azar Davis,
Muster Master, July 1776 lists John Ball as receiving
in advance wages and bounty &9-18. At another point
the records indicate that John Ball was paid &12 for
about six months' service in this campaign. Ball is
shown as one of the Continental soldiers from Hollis
enlisted in 1777 for a period of three years. But the

104

return for the Fifth Regiment in New Hampshire, Col.
Nichols, shows John Ball of Hollis in Captain Frye's
company, Col. Scammond's regiment, and enlisted for
eight months. Worcester, in his History M the Town QL
Hollis. New Hampshire summarizes John Ball's eight
months of military service in 1777 as including the
Battle of Saratoga, the Battle of Monmouth, the Pennsyl-
vania Campaign and winter at Valley Forge. l

Further light, and some darkness too, is cast upon
the life of John Ball by examining the various deeds in
which he was either a grantee or a grantor. The ear-
liest of these is a deed dated April 28, 1783 from his
father Ebenezer granting to a syndicate of seven men,
including John Ball and Solomon Wheat, in consideration
of fa5 "all such mines, mine ores, minerals or other
hidden treasures of the earth that may be dug up or
found upon, in or under the surface of the earth in my
the said Ebenezer Ball's land or farm in Hollis."22
The history of Hollis contains no suggestion that there
were any hidden treasures within its bounds. However,
John's circumstances appear to have been such that he
was prepared to gamble a bit, for the records of the
Court of Common Pleas indicate that he had given a note
for B7-9-6 on February 21, 1780 to Daniel Boyle, a
carpenter, which he was unable to pay. Boyle brought
suit and obtained judgment for fc4-6-7 and court costs
of fal-17-10, and execution issued March 3, 1784. In
any event, this 1783 deed indicates an early interest
on the part of John Ball in what, like slate, may be
extracted from the earth.

In this connection a lease dated October 20, 1786
from Jonathan Wetharbee of Harvard, Massachusetts to
John Park, Sr. and Jr., Thomas Park and Daniel Hastings
of a portion of the famous Pin Hill slate quarry in
Harvard is of interest. This indenture refers to "Mr.
Marble and Ball's part of the quarry." Mr. Marble was
presumably either Joseph or John Marble, father and
son, both stonecarvers of Bradford, Massachusetts. We
have found no lease or deed of land in Harvard to John
Ball, but this is not significant since leases were at
that time rarely recorded. A deed from Joseph Stone of
Harvard to Israel Reed and Thomas Park, stonecutters,
dated December 1794 refers to "blue stone in Pine Hill
except what lays opposite of Ball's quarry."2-3 We have
recorded forty-six gravestones in the Sterling and
Hollis areas with a "B" or "JB" quarry mark on the back
(Fig. 5a). The slate appears to come from Pin Hill.
Nearly all of these stones seem to have been carved by

105

Paul Colburn or John Ball. The conclusion is almost
irresistible that John Ball leased a portion of the
quarry and shared its produce with his brother-in-law.

We have found in southern New Hampshire thirty-
four gravestones of the late eighteenth and early nine-
teenth centuries with "W on the back (Fig. 5b). The
stone for Mindwell Brigham, who died in 1784 and is
buried in Northboro, Massachusetts appears to have been
carved by Paul Colburn; this stone has the letter "C"
on the back. We have found a variety of such quarry
marks. It is tempting to assign them to individual
carvers:

B or JB for Ball (or Colburn)

C for Colburn

dh or H for Daniel Hastings

H for Luther Hubbard (another Hollis carver)

S for Ithamar Spauldin

W for Wheat (also Hollis carvers)

•MjJ*"'

'■■■■/■,.

Figure 5a. Rachel Pierce, 1791, Pepperell, Mass,

106

Figure 5b. Martha Farrar, 1798, Pepperell, Mass.

Figure 5c. Aza Spaulding, 1815, Merrimack, N. H.

107

Likewise the marks T, ?p or T are seen on many
Park stones and }C on stones carved by Spauldin.
However, an occasional exception makes any such connec-
tions doubtful. For example, there is a handsome stone
carved by Ball in Bedford, New Hampshire with a Park
quarry mark and a probated Park stone with a "W" on the
back. This letter also appears occasionally on Ball's
stones, and so, even though the "H" on Hastings stones
are of an earlier period, the "H" on stones of Hubbard's
time cannot be established as related exclusively to
Hubbard (Fig. 5c). Some of these marks may simply
identify the quarryman. At this stage of our research
we can only say from a study of these symbols that
carvers seem to have had professional associations with
each other and occasionally exchanged or shared their
quarry rights or slate supply.

On April 1, 1790 John Ball acquired from his
father for L150 the homestead farm in Hollis, contain-
ing about forty-five acres. In 1794 by deed in which
he is described as "stonecutter" he acquired land ad-
joining that of his brother William from Daniel Emer-
son, Jr. and Solomon Wheat for L3-6-18, and on March
28, 1798 he acquired from Peleg Lawrence for $566 two
parcels of land, with the buildings thereon, lying on
the road leading from Hollis to Pepperell. Almost
exactly a year later he sold the homestead and the land
which he had acquired from Emerson and Wheat "excepting
gold, silver and led ore in or under the surface"
(still clinging to the hope that treasures might be
found there). One of the two parcels acquired from
Peleg Lawrence consisted of ten acres on the east side
of the road. We believe that Ball built his house
there and that this is part of the attractive enlarged
cottage at 84 Main St. The other parcel, consisting of
one acre, lay on the other side of the road; records
suggest this as the location of his shop.

In January 1802 Ball acquired from Josiah Hoar
nine acres in the western part of Hollis, and in May of
the same year he bought from William Hale another ten
acres of land about three-quarters of a mile southwest
of the meetinghouse. In the latter part of 1806 Ball
started to dispose of his land, beginnning with the two
parcels which he had purchased from Peleg Lawrence.
The grantee was his apprentice Luther Hubbard and the
consideration was $833, represented by five notes pay-
able over a period of five years and secured by a
mortgage on the property. In September he sold another
parcel and in December the last of his land in Hollis.

108

At this point John Ball and his wife Molly disappear
from the records of that town.25 There is some juris-
prudence involving a Lucy Ball, single woman, of Hollis,
to be found in the records of the Court of Common Pleas
involving suits for support of an illegitimate child
(Vol. 12, pp. 184-93). John and Molly Ball had a
daughter Lucy born in 1790. John's brother Ebenezer
had a daughter Lucy born in 1785. We have found no
record of any other Lucy Ball living in Hollis in 1810,
so the plaintiff in this case appears to have been
either the daughter or the niece of the stonecutter.

On April 30, 1806 John Ball purchased two large
tracts of land in the northwest corner of Vershire,
Orange County, Vermont, one consisting of 100 acres for
$1200 and the other of 190 acres for $800. On January
9, 1807, still describing himself as a stonecutter of
"Holies, New Hampshire," Ball sold 100 acres for $525.
The large tracts involved and the fact that he disposed
of more than one-third of the land less than a year
after he bought it may indicate that Ball entered into
these transactions as a matter of speculation rather
than for farming the land himself. We do not know just
when the Ball family moved from Hollis to Vershire, but
it must have been early in 1807, for he was one of
those who asked that town to establish a separate
school district, and an article for that purpose ap-
peared in the warrant for the August 14, 1807 town
meeting. None of the petitioners attended the meeting
and accordingly the article was dismissed.26

Nor do we know why the Ball family moved from
Hollis to Vershire. John appears to have been a person
to whom religion was important, and it may be that he
was attracted by Stephen Fuller, who had married Phebe
Thurston of Hollis and had been called to be the first
minister of the Church in Vershire in 1788. Fuller was
beloved by his congregation and stayed in Vershire
until his death on April 12, 1816. It may be of signi-
ficance that John Ball and his family moved to Thetford
at about that time.27

In 1808 a general revival of religion in the town
of Vershire, commencing in February and inspired by a
preacher named Wright who was passing through, resulted
in bringing fifty new members into the small church.
Perhaps John Ball was one of these. In any event, a
manual of the church published in Windsor in 1863 lists
John Ball in a catalog of church members as of 1814,
indicates that he was received into the church by

109

profession of faith in 1801 (the year in which he and
others established the Philanthropic Society in Hollis)
and that, subsequent to 1814, he "moved away." More
important, the manual lists John Ball as a deacon.

It appears from the town clerk's records that on
January 27, 1808 the town constable served notice on
"John Ball and family now residing in the town of
Vershire to depart said town." A similar notice was
served on many other families. The action of Vershire,
and later of Thetford, in "warning out" John Ball and
his family shortly after they had settled in town is
explained by Charles Latham, Jr. in his Short History
cj: Thetford;

The poor traveling from place to place seem
to have become a matter of growing concern.
In 1797 the state legislature passed an act
which, while making each town chargeable for
its poor, empowered justices in each town to
examine new arrivals and if necessary order
them to 'remove to the place of his or her
former settlement*. Under the provisions of
this act, the town of Thetford voted in August
1805 'that the selectmen be directed to warn
all Persons who may come into said town to
reside to depart said town without discrimi-
nation* in order 'to prevent their gaining a
legal settlement or becoming chargeable to
said town'. That September began the first
of a series of actions in which the selectmen
ordered the constable to serve writs on people
to leave town. In the next six years a total
of 58 persons were ordered to leave town;
several of them were women; among them were
at least two, Adolphus Fellows and Joseph
Lord, who had previously lived in town. This
'warning out* was a standard practice at the
time in both Vermont and New Hampshire. Ap-
pearance on a warning-out list is a fairly
good indication that the person named has
recently arrived in town, but it was not
indicative of present or probable destitution.
It is left to the reader to decide what the
practice teJLls about the New England social
conscience. °

Neither Ball nor his family left town as a result
of that warning, and less than three months later, at
the March town meeting, John was chosen a grandjuryman

110

and a highway surveyor. Tax collector's deeds in April
1809 discharging tax liens imposed on almost 200 acres
of land indicate that John Ball had failed to pay a tax
of one cent per acre imposed by the Vermont legislature
at its October session in 1807 to defray the expense of
erecting a state prison, that a public auction was held
on April 4, 1808 and that Ball thereupon redeemed his
property for the trifling sum of $2.80. 9

In 1811 Ball sold a ten-acre parcel to Isaac
Senter. Four years later he and Senter engaged in a
land swap, the stated consideration in each deed being
$550. On November 24, 1815 John Ball, still described
as a stonecutter, disposed of the rest of his land for
$900. He thus received a total of $1525 for land that
he had bought for $2000--hardly a successful specula-
tion.30

We do not know precisely when John Ball and his
family moved to Thetford but it must have been shortly
thereafter, for on May 18, 1816 an order to leave
Thetford was served on them. Again the order was not
carried out and again John Ball proved his respectabi-
lity by becoming a Deacon in the church. (The church
records have been destroyed by fire, but he was so
described in a deed dated November 27, 1817 and on his
gravestone.) On October 6, 1817 he acquired nine acres
of land in East Thetford with a small house which had
been built some years before by William Heaton. This
house, or the original structural members, still stands
and is much like the house which Ball had owned in
Hollis. It was removed some 800 feet westerly up the
hill when Interstate 91 and the exit ramp at Route 113
were built. On November 27, 1817 Ball purchased from
Henry Gillet for $150 an adjacent piece containing
about four acres. He mortgaged this property back to
Gillet to secure a note representing half the purchase
price. The note was payable January 1, 1819, but Ball
again mortgaged the property on April 5, 1819, this
time to Joseph Hosford to secure payment of a note for
$100. On February 17, 1823 Ball borrowed $200 from his
brother, Nathaniel Ball of Hebron, New Hampshire. On
April 2, 1823 he used $130 of this money to pay off a
mortgage on the original nine-acre parcel held by Wil-
liam Latham and Thomas Kendrick, and in the following
September he gave his brother a mortgage on the entire
property to secure the $200 note.

John Ball's son John married Phila Pomeroy of
Vershire in January 1810. Their first child, Elisha

111

P., was born August 10, 1810 in Vershire. John, Jr.
was chosen a highway surveyor in 1811 and enlisted in
the War of 1812. He continued a resident of Vershire
after his father and mother had left and is shown as a
resident in the 1820 census. Four of his nine children
were born there. He must have moved from Vershire some
time in 1820 after the census was taken, for his son
John William is shown as born in Thetford in that year.
On January 23, 1826 his father conveyed to him for $200
both parcels of the land which the father had thereto-
fore acquired in Thetford, totaling some thirteen acres,
reserving the right for the father and mother and their
daughter Mary to live in the house during their respec-
tive lives and reserving also "use of the woodhouse and
Pen adjoining the house." John Ball and his daughter
Mary were still living there in 1835 when the property
was mortgaged to William Ball of Hebron, New Hampshire,
John's nephew. 2

John Ball's wife Molly died February 6, 1827. 33
It is evident from a letter written on September 26,
1828 by John Ball to his nephew and namesake (then of
Lansingburgh, New York and later of Grand Rapids, Michi-
gan) that both Molly and her husband had been ill for
some time and that life had been far from easy for
them.34

Thetford, Sept. 26, 1828

John Ball Esq Sr —

Through the goodness [of] God I am yet in
the land of the living. I have had several
sick turns the summer past of the disentary
diarea & colick that I did not expect to se
this day, but I am some more comfortable now.
Mary was sick of a fever last fall & has been
in a very low state of health ever since, we
are not able either of us to sit up more than
half the time yet we have had to do chiefly
alone for 5 or 6 weeks excepting washing
baking &c. John's little Mary comes in at
night makes our beds & sleeps with her aunt.
They fetch in our wood & water, we are not
able to hire & it has been & is now very
sickly here & very difficult getting a girl.
John & his family was very sick last fall &
sick with a feever at one time. He has to
work very hard. He does everything for us
that we can expect--Eben was at home last

112

winter. He got me up a good wood pile & did
considerable more. Your father was over last
summer & made me some help. Saml sent me a
present of several dollars not long since.
By reason of such help I have kept a long
till the present time without calling upon
the town but how soon I shall come to the
disagreeable task I do not know — Why it is,
whether on the account of the name or nature
& disposition or all that it is so, but I
feel a greater nearness to you than to my
nephews in general. You must therefore excuse
me if I use freedom in writing. You may
think strange that I have gotten reduced to
poverty but a short history may remove the
difficulty. I had not much property fifteen
years since. In this fifteen years I have
lost nine years of labor myself.

Your aunt was sick about one year before
she died. Mary has been unable to do any
labor. As much as three years out of six I
have had 300 dollars to pay to the doctors &
hireing young women more than two years & a
large bill for necessaries besides about 200
dol I lost by men going a way in my debt. I
hope I do not mention these things in a way
of complaining thinking about my hard lot,
for I receive daly mercies Infinitely greater
and more numerous than all my chastisements &
afflictions that it does appear to me that I
ought to consider all my trials as light
afflictions, they are so much less than my
iniquities deserve. I was much disappointed
that you did not come & se me when you was
over last. The coat you gave me when you was
in Coledge was the best coat I had till I
rec'd another from you last week for which I
am greatly obliged to you for which I hope
you will be rewarded in the great rewarding
day. Your Sr [sister] was here last week.
Your friends were well in Hebron. Your Sr
brought me some flower, some fresh meat &
some honey. I have reason to bless God for
all liberality I receive from my friends for
were it not for that I must fare very hard.
I hope you will write to me by the bearere my
grandson respecting your [afjfairs of life
but especially what are your hopes of futur
happyness. Mary & I send our love to you &

113

kindest respect to Mr. and Mrs. Powers. I am
afraid you will be weary in reading Uncles
letter. This from your Uncle & friend and
well wisher.

John Ball

John Ball Esqr

Mrs. Ferrin said she thought you put up a
pair of [?] with the coat but if you did they
somehow got lost. It is very difficult get-
ting wheat here. I thought if I could have
gotten the money of sending by my grandson
for half hundred of flower but I understand
it is very dear with you. I often think of
the wheat loves your Sr said they had in
Lancenburgh.

John B§11 died on May 25, 1840 at the age of
eighty-two. 5 He and his wife are buried in the beau-
tiful Hillside Cemetery in Thetford. The road beside
the graveyard winds down the hill and crosses the
Pomponoosic River through a covered bridge to the little
hamlet of Union Village. John and Molly lie beneath a
small marble marker on which appears the epitaph which
John had himself used so many times as a gravestone
carver:

Friends and physicians could not save
Their mortal bodies from the grave
Nor can the grave confine them here
When Christ shall call them to appear

John Ball, Jr. lived until March 29, 1847, when he
died at the age of fifty-nine. He is buried in the
North Thetford Cemetery. His sister Mary did not fare
well after the deaths of her father and brother John.
She is listed in the 1850 census of Thetford as one of
"seven elderly paupers" in the household of Dennis
Howard. The Ball house in Thetford remained in the
hands of the sons of John Jr., John W. and Merrill,
until the latter acquired full title in 1860, conveying
it out of the family three years later.36

The inventory which we found among the probate
:s of John Ba!
:ling informa
ing items appear:

papers of John Ball, Jr. disclosed what was for us some
startling information.3' In this inventory the follow-

114

Farm and buildings $650

Stone Quarry $ 20

Shop, Teakles [tackle], Tools $ 10

Grave Stones and Stone for Grave Stones $ 20

So John Ball's son was also a carver of gravestones, as
was his oldest son, Elisha P.38 As indicated above,
John Ball's grandfather, Nathaniel Ball of Concord,
appears to have been a stonecutter. If we were able to
establish that John's father Ebenezer followed the same
trade, we should have another family like the Lamsons
of Charlestown, the Parks of Groton and Harvard and the
Stevenses of Newport, in which the craft was carried on
in four or five successive generations of the same
family. In fact, Thomas Ball, the famous American
sculptor born in Charlestown, Massachusetts on June 3,
1819 known for such Victorian memorial masterpieces as
the Lincoln Emancipation Group in Washington and the
equestrian statue of George Washington in the Boston
Public Gardens, and the Chickering monument in Mount
Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, was descended from John
Ball, brother of Nathaniel, our John's grandfather.

It seems fairly certain that John Ball continued
to carve gravestones after he gave up his business in
Hollis and moved to Vermont. He still described himself
as "stonecutter" in the deed dated October 5, 1815 to
Isaac Senter. We found a number of stones in the
Thetford area which appear to have been done by him
(for example, that of Mrs. Eunice White 1809 in Vershire
Center). We do not know when he gave up stone carving.
It may have been in 1826 when he sold his real estate,
presumably including the shop, to his son, John, Jr.,
who was then thirty-two years old. John Ball's 1828
letter to his nephew contains no reference to his work
other than the obscure sentence: "I had not much
property fifteen years since; in this fifteen years I
have lost nine years labor of myself." John Ball, Jr.
was undoubtedly trained by his father, and this sentence
may suggest that he took over his father's business
long before 1826.

THE WORK OF COLBURN AND BALL

In pursuing the Colburn connections, we gathered
data from almost 1100 stones in three different states.
The information collected in this inventory was arranged
according to the towns we visited. For each stone we
recorded the name of the deceased, the date of death,
age at death, the location of the stone by town and

115

Face in an Arch Face with Wings

100

50-

1.5% Males
16 +

47% Females
16 +

51.5%
Children

76% Males
16 +

22% Females
16 +

r- 2% Children

Figure 6. Distribution of designs.

specific burying ground, and the design category of the
tympanum carving. As indicated above, it was soon
obvious that there were three major design groups: a
face in an arch, a face with wings, and an urn, willow
or urn and willow combination.

Three hundred eighty-five, or 35%, of the total
markers inventoried were of the urn and willow design.
These were produced collectively by Colburn and four
other carvers with Colburn connections. Except to
illustrate the Colburn and Ball style, the urn and
willow stones will not be discussed here. Instead we
shall concentrate on the remaining 700 stones, all of
the face in arch or face with wings design, which
represent the pre-1800 or pre- urn and willow work of
Colburn and Ball.

The face in arch design turned out to be used
almost exclusively for women and children (Fig. 6). A
remarkable 98.5% of the 423 face in arch stones are for
children and females over the age of sixteen. Thus the
face in arch design is clearly considered a feminine
style. Women and children appear to be linked by
common treatment in the late eighteenth-century social

116

structure. Conversely, the face with wings design is
used for adult males in 76% of the examples studied.
Although definitely considered a masculine design,
there was more cross-over usage, with 22% of the face
with wings design found on stones for women. Thus,
while it was occasionally appropriate to use the so-
called male design for women, the converse was almost
never the case.

All of the inventoried stones for adults were
checked for possible probate entries. This meant exam-
ining the original documents or microfilm copies on
file in five different probate districts. Although
time-consuming, this search of primary sources did
yield a record of eight payments to Paul Colburn and
fourteen to John Ball, as well as numerous probate
entries showing payments to various other carvers having
Colburn connections. The probate search was vital in
establishing the existence of the stonecutter John Ball
of Hollis and in distinguishing his work from that of
Paul Colburn.

The work of these two carvers is almost identical.
Consider, for example, the stone of Paul Moore, 1799,
Princeton, for which Colburn was paid $9.00, and the
stone of Josiah Hodgman, 1787, Merrimack, for which
Ball was paid b3 (Figs. 7 and 8).

Paul Colburn carved in the Sterling area of Worces-
ter County between 1784 and 1808. His work is concen-
trated in the area to the west and north of Sterling,
with relatively few stones to the east or south. This
more western distribution seems to be fairly typical of
carvers working on the fringes of Boston's influence.
John Ball lived and carved in Hollis, twenty-five miles
north of Sterling, from 1783 to 1806. His work, al-
though more evenly distributed north and south than
Colburn's, is also heaviest in the west and relatively
scarce in the towns to the east of Hollis. All of the
probated Colburn stones are in the vicinity of Sterling,
while all of the stones probated to John Ball are in
the vicinity of Hollis (Fig. 1).

Let us now examine the three major styles of Paul
Colburn and John Ball. First, the face in arch style.
There are no probated face in arch stones to illustrate
because, as we have seen, this was almost exclusively a
design for women and children. Few women, and no
child, had an estate to probate. But there is no doubt
that the face in arch was a Colburn/Ball style. As we

117

H f\ ic r 7 k i)

l.im.1 I> \1 |, moor
f///r^ r/r-A,
r H ). "j i )

'PiMillSHRH

m a i

Figure 7. Paul Moore, 1799, Princeton, Mass,

118

(

Figure 8. Josiah Hodgman, 1787, Merrimack, N. H.

119

Fritted

in memory of M-| (
Jovian Hoik; man,

ir/?o rM//r/r/rr///,/) //fr,
S r p' \x sj$% in
(he 40" YetiY of

have already pointed out, evidence is in the form of a
probated "double stone" for John and Molly Seccombe in
Amherst, New Hampshire, the husband's half marked by a
face with wings and the wife's with a face in an arch
(Figs. 9-11). The more common separate markers for hus-
band and wife support the same finding: the husband's
stone bears a face with wings, the wife's a face in an
arch. The husband is almost always on the left side of
the stone and the wife on the right. This is how the
couple faced God at their marriage and likewise in
death and resurrection. 9

"»""»"«P»!ll»#PP»»lpP"' I I I

'>> > > > i > j i'.\

"■"« '■

memory of Mi: John
Mrs. Molly Seer 01 n be

Mi: Sec u omlK^Mix Seeeomb

■■■■■■■

Figure 9. John and Molly Seccombe, 1796, Amherst, N. H,

120

.../->>>"-"

Mr.mory of
S,hihiH I ,r.<

In Memory (
IJiriiy If ^rn 1,1

• X /» , /

Figure 10. Samuel (1756) and Mary (1760) Leeman,
Hollis, N. H.

{)

v /

,■ /; /

'm<:( "ii;n

Figure 11. Stephen (1775) and Mary (1786) Harris,
Hollis, N. H.

121

There are many examples supported by probate evi-
dence of the second design group, the face with wings
(Fig. 3). Although there are minor variations in style
(Ball tended to use slightly more elaborate backgrounds,
pie-crust detailing around the tympanum and memento
mori additions, while Colburn produced a greater quan-
tity of simple stones), the overall design remained
relatively standard. Many of Colburn's carvings have a
smoother, more highly polished look, almost as if the
faces were sculpted in ice and then allowed to melt
ever so slightly. This characteristic is associated
with a particularly fine-grained slate. His faces
convey a diminutive, more delicate proportion.

The third major design group consists of urn and
willow stones (Fig. 2). Again the work of the two
carvers is very similar, with Colburn favoring a
slightly less ornate style. Ball's willow boughs com-
monly sprout two sprigs near the base, Colburn's more
typically one. Both carvers frequently used bevelling
as a means of dividing the tympanum from the tablet,
and a smoothly indented arch for the urn.

The arrangement of the inscription in the work of
both carvers is similar: frequently it begins "ERECTED
In Memory Of," has "who departed this life" in italics,
and the final work "Age" sometimes begins with a capital
"A" or more frequently with an enlarged lower case "a."
Italicized words are carved in exactly the same manner;
characteristic are the open "p" and open "h" (Fig. 12,
by Ball; Fig. 13, by Colburn).

Both Colburn and Ball occasionally produced unique
stones. That for William Harris in Sterling, for ex-
ample, has an armorial emblem in the tympanum. The
initials "IB" appear on the back of the headstone and
"B" on the footstone. The Rev. Joseph Davis stone in
Holden combines a portrait in an arch with a willow
tree. The lettering on these two stones is similar and
demonstrably the work of Paul Colburn.

In the cemetery behind the town hall in Amherst,
New Hampshire is a large table stone, supported by four
granite posts, marking the grave of Rev. Daniel Wilkins,
pastor of the church for twenty-three years. He died
February 11, 1784. At its annual meeting less than a
month later the town voted B4-5-1 to defray his funeral
charges, directed the selectmen to "provide gloves for
the Bearers" and chose a committee of three to erect a
monument over his grave. The town records contain no

122

6W //^.i mtrrW bmmfth $h vhn{\
mat r-ifwffy.% r/ia Lvhey Jm (lot! :

/ ^ /v /// A/ s / tf/.v/ //tfj coiuitn /'(lilrali).

Figure 12. Matthew Thornton, 1787, Merrimack, N. H.

m/o/w nnntk. who rftfd »

iVar Smomhs U *
4 rin v

r.»fcsi*.>.

Figure 13. Daniel Mirick, 1792, Princeton, Mass,

123

report of that committee or evidence as to whom payment
for the work was made, but the stone itself carries the
statement that it was erected by the town, as well as a
lengthy and rather fulsome account of the beloved pas-
tor, prepared no doubt by the committee itself. The
lettering includes the large "a" and the open italic
"p" and "h" which are characteristic of John Ball's
work. The stone bears no design — only lettering — but
it is tempting to cite this as another unique product
of Ball's shop.

Colburn and Ball produced some delightful, though
usually simple, children's stones. See, for example,
Colburn's stone for Daniel Mirick (Fig. 13). The foot-
stones of both carvers are sadly noncommittal. Most of
them are plain, and those with designs are not unique
enough or sufficiently standard to be useful as an
identifying factor.

It is interesting to speculate on the source of
gravestone designs and the possible influence of other
carvers. Few late eighteenth-century stonecutters
worked in isolation. There is ample evidence to suggest
that carvers borrowed freely, adapted, refined, com-
bined, and consequently created their own style which
seldom remained static. In fact, the three designs
which we have been discussing were commonly used by
virtually all carvers in this area during the latter
part of the eighteenth century (Figs. 9-11). The Parks
were probably the most dominant carvers in both Hollis
and Sterling in the 1780s and 1790s. Their work is
seen in great numbers in both areas (Fig. 10). Groton,
Massachusetts is central to both Hollis and Sterling
(Fig. 1). Colburn and Ball were undoubtedly influenced,
if not actually instructed, by the Parks. There is
also an undocumented carver — quite probably of the Park
school — whose work is highly visible in the Hollis area
in the late 1770s and 1780s and also seems stylistically
connected with that of Colburn and Ball (Fig. 11).

Although an extended discussion of epitaphs is not
within the scope of this article, a few used by Colburn
and Ball are of interest. On the stone which Colburn
carved for Nathan Cutting, 1803, Westminster, the in-
scription informs us that he "died in a surprizing and
effecting manner" and the epitaph explains more expli-
citly:

Lo! Where this silent marble weeps
Our neighbor, friend and brother sleeps

124

Insanity and death are near alli'd
He gave the wound by which he died.

Both Ball and Colburn used this epitaph on many of
their stones:

Youth like a vernal flower appears

Most promising and fair;
But death like an untimely frost

Puts all in silence there.

On Matthew Thornton's stone in Merrimack, 1787, done by
John Ball (Fig. 12), the epitaph "Wrote by the deceased"
reads as follows:

One lies inter'd beneath this clod,

That always did obey his God;
And willingly resign'd his breath,

For Christ his Lord has conquer 'd death.

Paul Colburn used these prophetic lines on a stone in
Boylston, Massachusetts:

The Stars shall fade away, the Sun himself
Grow dim with Age, and Nature sink in Years;

But the Soul shall flourish in immortal Youth,
Unhurt amidst the War of Elements,

The Wreck of Matter, and the Crush of Worlds.

JOSIAH COOLIDGE WHEAT 1775-1815

In our pursuit of Paul Colburn's work in Hollis,
where we found so many stones that we later discovered
were the work of John Ball, we came upon a large and
elaborate monument with a portrait face framed in an
oval and the floral design, architectural columns and
tablet characteristic of Ball and Colburn (Fig. 14).
The inscription reads:

ERECTED

In Memory

of Doctor

JOHN JONES

who departed this life

July 14, 1796 in the

Year of his age

In youth he was a scholar bright,

In learning he took great delight;

He was a Major's only Son,
It was for love he was undone.

125

■■KM
Figure 14.

John Jones, 1796, Hollis, N. H,
126

We found a description of "Doctor" Jones and of the
intriguing last line of the epitaph in a biographical
sketch appearing in Worcester's Histoxy. Ql UsUJLs.
According to tradition, Jones was the son of a wealthy
British military officer of good family, born in England
early in the century. He led a wandering life until he
came to Hollis soon after the Revolution, when he built
a cottage in a remote part of the town and devoted
himself to the growing of fruit trees, shrubs, herbs
and flowers. He supported himself by preparing medi-
cinal herbs and various nostrums, which he peddled in
Hollis and neighboring towns, thereby acquiring his
title of "Doctor." In his youth he had an unfortunate
love affair, as a result of which his mind became
unsettled, and he thereafter lived an eccentric and
wayward life. He told the entire story in a ballad of
forty stanzas which he used to sing to himself in his
isolated cottage and which, after his death, was sung
for many years by the young people of Hollis and neigh-
boring towns. It appears from the ballad that his
father and mother were opposed to his marrying a young
woman who they thought to be "of low degree." Angered
at this opposition, the young lady's father refused to
permit his daughter to marry Jones, and after this
forced separation the girl pined away and died. Her
brother returned the engagement ring to Jones, who
attended her funeral as the chief mourner, as the
ballad has it,

And after that distracted run,

And so forever was undone,
And wandered up and down, alone.

Worcester's account concludes as follows:

There were at the time, in Hollis, three
young men to whom the doctor was strongly
attached, and whom he called his adopted
sons, viz., Thaddeus Wheeler, Jun., Timothy
Emerson, and J. Coolidge Wheat, the last
named, by trade, a stonecutter and maker of
gravestones. During the life of Jones, and
under his eye and direction, Wheat had made
for him a large, neatly finished gravestone,
fully completed and lettered, except the date
of his death, with the epitaph inscribed upon
it, furnished by the doctor, and copied from
a stanza of his ballad. By his will dated
January 1, 1791 the little estate that the
doctor left was given to his three adopted

127

sons, with the single condition, that Wheat
should finish and set up his gravestone.

An examination of the probate papers in the estate
of John Jones confirms the accuracy of the reference to
his will, and other evidence which we found in the
course of our investigation, including deeds and the
papers in his own estate, confirmed that J. Coolidge
Wheat was indeed a stonecutter (Hillsborough, N. H.
Probate 05378). However, since he was only twenty-one
years old at the death of his patron and since the
stone gives every evidence of having been done by a
mature craftsman, there is reason to doubt that Wheat
was solely responsible for the work. In fact, it will
be noted that Worcester himself states that Wheat "had
the gravestone made" for Doctor Jones. We believe that
the stone was done or supervised by John Ball, who was
by then an accomplished carver.

We believe that Josiah Coolidge Wheat probably
worked in Ball's shop. Some support for this belief
may be found in the probate records for Ralph Emerson
of Hollis, who died in 1790, payments being shown to
John Ball of &8-8-0 and Josiah Wheat bl-4-0 (Hillsbo-
rough, N. H. Probate 02933), and of John Smith of
Peterborough who died in 1801, in whose estate payments
show $6.89 to Josiah C. Wheat and $3.97 to J. Ball
(Hillsborough, N. H. Probate 08268). The tympanum on
the Emerson stone is badly defaced but appears to have
been of the face with wings design. The Smith stone
has a stiff and angular face in an arch surmounting a
circle; and the design is in other respects quite
unlike the work of Ball or Wheat.

The stone of Martha Farrar, 1798, Pepperell has
"W" on the back. The administrator's account in the
estate of her husband Joseph 1802, which was allowed
April 18, 1804, contains an entry indicating a payment
of $26 to Coolidge Wheat (Middlesex, Mass. Probate
7312). Since son Coolidge was only a child at that
time, the stone must have been carved by, and the
payment intended for, the father, J. Coolidge Wheat.

These Hillsborough County Probate estates show
payments to Josiah Coolidge Wheat for gravestones:

0469 Joseph Beard, New Boston, 1799 $ 9.00

0325 Sarah Glover, Francestown, 1807 6.50

09105 Katherine Thurston, Hollis, 1809 8.50

02556 James Dinsmore, New Boston, 1814 13.82

128

and the following non-specific payments:

05614 Hannah Kendrick, Hollis, 1805 $18.75

05392 James Jewet, Hollis, 1808 9.50

All of these stones are of the urn and willow style.
The price, $13.82, is carved on the Dinsmore stone.
The James Jewet stone, like that of Martha Farrar, has
a "W" on the back.

A comparison of the Sarah Glover stone, done by
Wheat, with the Thomas Whiting stone, probated specifi-
cally to Ball, readily shows the affinity between the
two carvers and reinforces the surmise that Wheat worked
for a time in John Ball's shop (Figs. 15-16).

Josiah Coolidge Wheat was born April 18, 1775 in
Hollis, the son of Solomon and Sarah Ball Wheat. He
was named after his paternal grandfather Josiah and his
grandmother, Ruth Coolidge Wheat. In tracing his gene-
alogy we discovered a number of relationships which
tied him to the Ball and Colburn families. Both his
grandfather Josiah Wheat and his father Solomon, like
John Ball's father and Paul Colburn's father, were born
in Concord, Massachusetts. Solomon became an orphan,
probably in 1759 when he was ten years old, and in 1764
was taken by his uncle Thomas Wheat to Hollis, where he
grew up, became a prominent citizen, served as a lieu-
tenant in the Revolution, held town office as clerk and
selectman and occupied a fine house on Main Street.
Uncle Thomas had married Mary Ball of Concord, John
Ball's aunt, and Solomon married as the first of his
three wives Sarah Ball, sister of John Ball, of Mehi-
table Ball Colburn and of the William Ball who married
Elizabeth Colburn.
related to both carve

Josiah Coolidge Wheat was thus
rs John Ball and Paul Colburn.

There are other points of connection between the
Wheats, Paul Colburn and John Ball. Solomon Wheat, the
father of J. Coolidge Wheat, was initially described in
deeds as a cordwainer, though later as a "gentleman,"
and the papers in his estate (Hillsborough, N. H.
Probate 09718) suggest that even after he had gained
wealth and status he continued as a cordwainer, for a
list of his debts shows amounts owed to C. P. Farley
for sole leather, upper leather, dressing sheepskins,
dressing calfskin, black grain upper leather and hide
Calcutta leather. His son Solomon, Jr. was also a
cordwainer. Thus it is possible, even likely, that
Paul Colburn learned his original trade of cordwaining

129

^ r

"~~\

In rncmorv of
Miss Sarah Glover,
DaiigMer of
Mr 1 lenrv r Mrs
1 lnnn?h Glover,
who died
[ Sept. 13. 1 8 o y;
;w-cd 4^ Years.

^ '

Figure 15.

Sarah Glover, 1807, Francestown, N. H.
130

»l

;

Ih incmoiA ol Cap
I I iom \s i i i \ c,

w ho (lcp.il K -(I (his 1il(

l)( (

I /

I 8 (

aged «>y Years

f <;

Figure 16. Thomas Whiting, 1801, Amherst, N. H,

131

from the Wheats. 2 We believe that the homestead of
Solomon Wheat, Sr. was adjacent to John Ball's land and
shop, and J. Coolidge Wheat's own house (now 5 Ridge
Road) and shop were very near the house and shop of
John Ball (later owned by Luther Hubbard).

Josiah married Sarah Cummings of Litchfield, New
Hampshire, sister of his older brother Solomon's first
wife, Hannah. Josiah and Sarah had seven children.
The oldest was Coolidge Wheat, who was born in Hollis
in 1797. Josiah appears on the tax rolls annually from
1797 until his death in 1815, with the exception of
1802-04, 1806-08, and 1811. In 1801 the town voted to
abate his taxes and not to tax him for the ensuing
year . 4

Josiah acquired three acres of land in Hollis from
his friend Timothy Emerson, Jr. by deed dated February
8, 1792 which described him as "minor yeoman." On
January 30, 1797 in consideration of $45 he sold three
acres, with the buildings thereon, to Benjamin Fletcher,
the deed describing Wheat as "stonecutter."45

Josiah Coolidge Wheat died April 9, 1815 at the
early age of forty. His widow declined appointment as
administrator of his estate (Hillsborough, N. H. Pro-
bate 09634) and his father Solomon was appointed and
gave bond in the amount of $1000. The inventory filed
in the estate shows one-quarter acre of land, a shop
and old barn valued at $80 and personal estate of
$276.93 of which $143.14 is represented by unfinished
gravestones, described as follows:

60 feet gravestones unfinished $ 24.00

6 DoDo 2.40

136 Do smoothed 102.00

22 Do lettered 14.74

1 box stonecutters tools 2.50

Claims against the estate in the amount of $980.72 were
presented. The administrator represented the estate as
insolvent in October 1815. Commissioners were appointed
and a vendue was held, resulting in proceeds of
$298.98. After payment of $80 for the widow's support
and $81.64 for preferred claims, only $137.34 was left
for creditors. The administrator was licensed to sell
the real estate, and the shop and quarter acre of i^nd
were bid in by Josiah's son Coolidge Wheat for $21.

132

COOLIDGE WHEAT 1797-1849

Three weeks after his father's death Coolidge
Wheat placed the following advertisement in the Farmer's
Cabinetf a weekly newspaper published in Amherst:

STONE CUTTING

THE STONE-CUTTING business will be continued
by the subscriber, at the shop of Josiah C.
Wheat, lately deceased. Those who had left
orders with him for grave-stones, which were
not executed, are requested to renew them to

COOLIDGE WHEAT
Holies. April 29, 1815

This advertisement was repeated in the issues of May 6,
May 13, and May 20.

Coolidge Wheat was born December 19, 1797. ' The
Wheat Genealogy by Silas Carmi Wheat and Helen Love
Scranton says that he was married twice and "by profes-
sion a marbleworker. he was also a musician and played
many instruments."48 He is listed as head of a family
in Hollis in the 1820 and 1830 census. At some time
after 1830 he moved to Montpelier, Vermont, where he
died July 27, 1849. Henry Gilman Little in his Hollis.
New Hampshire 1Q. ,Y e a r s Ago says that he lived in the
northern part of the town, next to Ethan Willoughby and
that he "had a taste for lighter things, as was shown
by the dash of horse-jockey in his composition." Little
goes on to say:

I listened on training day to Coolidge Wheat
and other musicians while they discussed, as
they drank, the question of what kind of
liquor was best to blow their wind instru-
ments. One could blow best on West Indies
rum; another on brandy; and still another,
who was already pretty 'full,' could blow
best on gin. 9

We found two handsome stones in New Ipswich, New
Hampshire with the urn and willow design, both signed
by Coolidge Wheat. That of Susanna Wilson, 1815, bears
a legend just above the ground, "C. Wheat, Holies, N.H.
1817." The other stone is that of Francis Appleton, on
which the legend reads "C. Wheat, Holies, N.H. $27.00."
We discovered a stone in Thompson Cemetery, Tyngsboro,
Massachusetts for Capt. Nathaniel Holden, 1817, "Exec.

133

Daniel Emerson, 1820, Hollis Center, N. H,
134

by C. Wheat, Holies, NH." The table stone which marks
the grave of Noah Worcester, 1817, in the Main Street
Cemetery in Hollis has this legend at the top: "En-
graved by C. Wheat for J. Worcester, Jan. 1832." The
stone is bare of decoration but offers a rich genealogi-
cal resource, for it recites not only the decedent's
ancestry but his numerous progeny as well. It must
have been ordered by Noah's son Jesse. The handsome
stone for Daniel Emerson, 1820, in the Hollis Center
Cemetery (Fig. 17) bears the inscription "Exc. by John
Park, Jr. & C. Wheat." John Park, Jr. was in the
fourth of five generations of stone carvers in a family
in which at least twelve members made gravestones. The
signatures suggest the possibility that there may have
been an earlier association between the Wheats and the
Park family shop.

LUTHER HUBBARD 1782-1857

One more Hollis carver of this period remains to
be discussed, Luther Hubbard, who, it will be remem-
bered, was an apprentice of John Ball and bought his
house and shop to continue the business when Ball left
Hollis. Charles S. Spaulding gives a succinct account:

Major Luther Hubbard, son of Thomas and Lois
White Hubbard, was born in Hollis, August 13,
1782. He married Hannah Russell, of Carlisle,
Mass., December 18, 1806, and settled at the
Page Wright place, Butterfield Hills, Hollis;
he purchased this place of John Ball, of whom
he learned the stone cutting trade, which he
worked at during his life time. Mr. Hubbard
acquired the title of Major, although he
never held a Major's commission. In 1834,
Mr. Hubbard moved to Kendall Mills at North
Hollis, residing here until the fall of 1836,
he then removed to near Riddles in Merrimac,
from here he went to Manchester about 1845,
residing here uiitil his death, with his son,
Thomas Russell.50

The account goes on to recite the names and birth dates
of Major Hubbard's children and to state that he died
in Manchester, New Hampshire March 2, 1857, while his
widow survived to die at Manchester June 21, 1870. A
Hubbard genealogy adds the following information:

The abutments on which rested the bridge over
the Nashua at Runnel's Mills were constructed

135

by him, and were the only ones that stood the
test when the ice gave way in the spring,
while the bridge was below the falls. He was
a good husband and father . . . Monumental
stones finished by him may be seen in the
cemeteries of Hollis, Nashua, Litchfield,
Groton, Brookline, Amherst and Milford, where
he was well known and highly esteemed. He
probably never had an enemy.51

Perhaps in order to capitalize on the recent death
of Josiah Coolidge Wheat, his competitor in Hollis,
Luther Hubbard inserted the following advertisement in
the Farmer's Cabinet:

GRAVE STONES

The subscriber acquaints the public, that he
keeps constantly on hand a stock of GRAVE
STONES, and will prepare them to orders on
short notice, either at his shop in Amherst,
near David Stewart, Esq. house, or at his
shop in Hollis.

Luther Hubbard
June 20, 1816

This advertisement appeared in the June 22 issue. The
same advertisement with a small engraving of an urn and
willow gravestone and signed "Luther Hobart" appeared
in the June 29 number and again a week later. In the
issues of July 20 and September 7 the notice was the
same but the signature reverted to "Luther Hubbard" and
the cut was changed to that of a tipsy gravestone and a
getting sun.

The Hollis town records indicate Hubbard as a
taxpayer from 1805 until 1829, his name sometimes being
spelled Hobart, Hobard and Hubert. He was elected a
surveyor of highways in 1812, 1823 and 1829, hogreeve
in 1816 and 1817; and in 1827 he received one vote for
governor's council. Like so many of the stonecutters
whom we have studied, Luther Hubbard ran into debt. He
bought his house and shop from John Ball with a purchase
money mortgage. On December 31, 1814 he again mortgaged
the property, this time to Nathan Thayer to secure a
debt of $200. In January 1821 he mortgaged the property
of Benjamin Farley to secure an indebtedness of
$105.30, and on April 1, 1823 he placed a first mortgage
on the property in favor of Josiah Conant to secure
repayment of $200 and a second mortgage for $100 to the

136

Philanthropic Society. Thus the Society founded in
1801 by a group which included both John Ball and
Solomon Wheat as well as Josiah Conant truly lived up
to its name. 2

The Hillsborough, N. H. Probate records indicate
payments to Luther Hubbard for gravestones in five
estates:

Deacon Josiah Conant, Hollis, 1807
Timothy Lawrence, Hollis, 1815
Asa Spaulding, Merrimack, 1815
Deacon John Ball, Temple, 1815
Hannah Ball, Temple, 1814

$12.50
12.25
33.25

29.65

Figure 18. John Ball, 1816, Temple, N. H.

137

Deacon John Ball was the son of our John Ball's uncle
Nathaniel and therefore his first cousin.53 The pro-
bate account has these entries: "Paid Luther Hubbard
for gravestones $29.65" and "For hauling up said grave-
stones $3." The stone for Asa Spaulding in the charming
Turkey Hill cemetery has an "H" on the back (Fig. 5c).
We found two very similar stones, each with the same

quarry mark and undoubtedly done by Hubbard one for

Colonel Daniel Warner in Amherst, 1813, and the other
for Sarah Standly in Francestown, 1814 (where the "H"
appears on the footstone). And Hubbard must have done
the marker for his son Thomas, who died July 21, 1815
aged twenty months and is buried in Hollis.

All of these gravestones carry the urn and willow
pattern and are, as one might expect, in the tradition
of John Ball's shop. Thus in the Conant and Standly
stones the central panel is flanked by the familiar
architectural columns, although in the former the carver
has added an ornamental shaft of lozenges in the side
panels. This diamond pattern, and panels decorated
with a simple column of crosses, we soon recognized as
standard indicia of Luther Hubbard's work (Fig. 18).
He continued to achieve the same crisp lettering, with
the open "h" and "p" in italics, which had been charac-
teristic of John Ball's carving.

Thus our pursuit of Paul Colburn led us inexorably
to four other stonecutters who carried on their craft
in the attractive New Hampshire town of Hollis. Four
of these five craftsmen traced their family origins to
Concord, Massachusetts and were interrelated. With the
exception of our initial subject, Paul Colburn, none of
these artisans appears to have been listed in hitherto
published gravestone studies. We also found stonecut-
ters in succeeding generations of the same families.
And in the course of our study we encountered dozens of
others, only a few of whom we knew about. 4 While this
paper cannot claim to present a definitive study of any
of these carvers, it does suggest, we think, the impor-
tance of genealogical research in gravestone attribu-
tion and the important results which such research can
produce.

138

NOTES

This paper was prepared for the Association for
Gravestone Studies, and parts of it were presented were
presented at the annual conference of that Association
in June, 1983. A fuller version of the paper is on
deposit in the archives of the Association for Grave-
stone Studies at the New England Historic Genealogical
Society. Beside those whose assistance is specifically
acknowledged in later notes, we should like to thank
the following for their interest and help in the prepar-
ation of this article: Lucy Beebe and Ellen Nichols of
Hollis, New Hampshire; Ruth Hopfmann and Barbara Dudley
of Sterling, Massachusetts; Daniel Farber of Worcester,
Massachusetts; Charlotte McCartney and Marian J. Fi-
field of Thetford, Vermont; the town clerks of Thetford
and Vershire, Vermont; Philip A. Hazelton of Hebron,
New Hampshire, and most particularly, Pamela Bryson,
who cheerfully typed countless versions of this mono-
graph.

lnJames Wilder of Lancaster, Stonecutter," New
England Historical and Genealogical Registerf 136

(April, 1983), p. 87.

2For William Colburn, Sr. (1689-1769), see Charles
S. Spaulding, An Account £f Some o_f the Eaxly Settlers
ol West Dunstable. Monson and Hollis. &. 1L. (Nashua, N.
H.: Telegraph Press, 1915), p. 34; Samuel T. Worcester,
History ol the X&un ol Hollis, He_w. ijajopshire. (Nashua,
N. H.: 0. C. Moore, 1879), pp. 34-35, 46, 57, 42, 51,
96. For William Colburn, Jr. (1726-76), see Concord,
Massachusetts Births, Marriages and Deaths 1635-1850
(Boston: Beacon Press, n. d.) , p. 117; Spaulding, p.
97; George A. Gordon and Silas R. Coburn, Descendants
q£ Edward Colburn/Coburn (Lowell, Mass.: Walter Coburn,
1913), no. 55; estate of William Colburn, Jr., Hills-
borough, N. H. Probate 01521. We have found no evidence
to support the conclusion that Elias (b. 1762) was a
son of William and Abigail; Abigail and Hannah appear
as daughters in the will of William Colburn, Jr.

3See articles by Peter Benes, "Abel Webster, Pi-
oneer, Patriot, and Stonecutter," Historical New Hamp-
shire. 28 (1973), p. 221, and James L. and Donna-Belle
Garvin, "Stephen Webster, Gravestone Maker," Historical
New Hampshire. 29, p. 93.

4Frank D. Warren, comp., Descendants of J_o_h_n ILaJJL
£l£ Watertown (Boston: n. p., 1932), Part 1, no. 265;

139

Worcester, pp. 365, 370; Spaulding, p. 82. In a Hollis
antique store we discovered a framed family register
made in 1845 showing the issue of Betsy Colburn and
Eliphalet Kendall; Betsy's birth is recorded as January
13, 1784.

5Hillsborough, N. H. Probate 01521; Kilburn to
Colburn, Feb. 17, 1786, Worcester, Mass. Deeds, bk. 99,
p. 297; Colburn to Allen, Jan. 8, 1806, Worcester,
Mass. Deeds, bk. 160, p. 411.

"Gordon and Coburn, no. 139; Sterling Church Re-
cords, p. 168; notes in Colburn file, Sterling Histori-
cal Society.

7The New Hampshire State Library in Concord has
copies on microfilm of most New Hampshire town records
prior to 1835; a card index of names mentioned provides
quick access to the appropriate records..

®For tax payments, see Hollis, N. H. town records
(N. H. State Library microfilm), vol. 4, pp. 455, 494,
339. For Abigail's marriage and death, see Spaulding,
p. 97; Ezra S. Stearns, History of Plymouth. N. iL.,
Vol. II (Cambridge, Mass.: University Press, 1906);
John Keniston, "Plans of Village and Pratt Cemeteries"
(ms., New Hampshire Historical Society, 1930). For the
marriages of Paul Colburn's siblings, see Gordon and
Coburn, nos. 55, 141-42.

9Hebron town records, 1808-15 (N. H. State Library
microfilm) .

10Paul's son Abel had married Achsa's sister Deb-
orah Phelps of Hebron in 1811, and Paul's daughter Mary
married a brother, Adna Phelps. John Carroll Power,
History &£ ih£ Early settlers oj[ Sangamon Countyr Illi-
nois (Springfield, 111.: Edwin A. Wilson & Co., 1876),
states that Adna was born in Hebron in 1792, moved to
Loami, Sangamon County in 1844 and died in 1852. Two
of Adna's children intermarried with other members of
the Colburn family in their generation. See Power for
the story of the westward movements of the family.

11Charles Hudson, History of Lexington. Vol. II
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913); Charles Henry Pope,
Loring Genealogy (Cambridge, Mass.: Murray and Emery,
1917), nos. 84, 201.

12(Chicago: Inter-state Publishing Co., 1881).

140

13The account in the estate of Thomas Whiting
(Hillsborough, N. H. Probate 09553) contains an entry
dated November 8, 1802, "Paid E. Ball for gravestones
$14." John Ball's father and brother, both Ebenezers,
were probably dead by this time. John's son Ebenezer
was only six years old; his nephew Ebenezer was twenty-
one, but we have found no evidence to indicate that he
was a stonecutter. The Whiting stone appears to be the
work of John Ball. The next entry in the account
reads, "Paid E. Rea for digging grave $1.50." We think
that the initial letter in the preceding entry is an
error and have accordingly included this stone in the
list of specific payments to John Ball.

14Hillsborough County, N. H. deeds: Emerson and
Wheat to Ball, February 4, 1794, bk. 62, p. 407; Laur-
ence to Ball, March 28, 1798, bk. 62, p. 409; Hoar to
Ball, January 2, 1802, bk. 62, p. 411; Hale to Ball,
May 20, 1802, bk. 62, p. 412; Ball to Hubbard, Aug. 16,
1806, bk. 71, p. 113; Ball to Merrel, September 17,
1806, bk. 75, p. 383; Ball to Cumings, December 9,
1806, bk. 77, p. 233.

15The administrator's account in the estate of
Thomas Flagg, Jr., of Weston, 1733, contains an entry,
"Nathaniel Ball for gravestones b 5-7-0" and in the
estate of Robert Ward of Charlestown, 1736, a non-
specific payment to Nathaniel Ball of Ll-18-6 (Middle-
sex, Mass. Probate vol. 20, pp. 62 and 372). We have
been unable to locate either of these stones.

16Warren and Ball, nos. 41, 104, 261, 266; Concord
Massachusetts Births, Marriages ajid Deaths, pp. 36,
104, 166; Worcester, p. 365.

17John*s father Ebenezer is described in deeds as
"yeoman" and appears regularly on the tax rolls of
Hollis from 1750 until 1791. It is said that he died
after 1790 by Dorothy Stivers Brown and Forrest David
Brown, comps., The. B_aXLs in the Ball-Stivers Line.
(Lewisburg, Pa.: n. p., 1976), I, 21, and it is very
likely that he did, but we have not as yet found the
date of his death. His son Ebenezer, Jr., John's
brother, is described in deeds as "blacksmith." He
first appears on the tax rolls in 1770, and an Ebenezer
Ball, Jr. is listed on the rolls every year thereafter
until 1796, when the listing becomes simply "Ebenezer
Ball." There is no Ebenezer Ball, Sr. or Jr., in the
1800 census for Hollis. Both may have died before that
year. Certainly Ebenezer, Jr. died before February

141

1803, for in that month his brother, our John Ball, was
appointed guardian of the blacksmith's son David
(Hillsborough, N. H. Probate 0494), presumably so that
David, not yet twenty-one, could join in a release of
interest in his late father Ebenezer's estate. In this
deed, which is dated May 28, 1804, the blacksmith's son
Ebenezer, then twenty-three, is described as "late of
Hollis, Gentleman" (Hillsborough, N. H. deeds, bk. 90,
p. 297).

18The document, dated October 10, 1761 and signed
by Governor Wentworth, provides that the town may have
two animal fairs and, when it reaches fifty families, a
market; grants must be taken up and five acres planted
for every fifty acres within five years; tall white
pine trees are to be preserved for the King's navy, and
an annual rent of one ear of corn is to be paid the
first ten years and one shilling thereafter (New Hamp-
shire State Papers, vol. 26, p. 195).

19For Ebenezer Ball, Sr. (1721-96), see Hollis
town records, vol. 1, p. 247; vol. 4, p. 40; Worcester,
p. 99; Chandler E.Potter, Military History .of New Hamp-
fihJxe 1623-1861 (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publish-
ing Co., 1972), part 1, p. 132. For Ebenezer Ball, Jr.
(1749-before 1803), see Hollis town records, vol. 6,
pp. 135, 147, 154, 191, 196, 179, 181, 182, 211, 330,
331, 333, 335. For Nathaniel and William Ball's role
in the Revolution, see Hollis town records, vol. 6, pp.
9, 79; new. ijaippsluxe. state. Papers,, vol. 14, pp. 32,
206; Worcester, pp. 128, 147.

20Vital statistics: Hollis town records, vol. 6,
pp. 236, 283, 237; vol. 1, pp. 321, 264; Worcester, p.
365; taxes listed annually in town records, vols. 3-5;
constable and collector, vol. 5, pp. 306, 323, 331;
tithing man, vol. 5, p. 357, vol. 3, p. 14; surveyor of
highways, vol. 3, p. 73; petit juror, vol. 5, pp. 361,
374; funeral procedure, vol. 5, p. 378; Philanthropic
Society, vol. 6, pp. 341, 51; Worcester, p. 248.

21Hollis town records, vol. 6, pp. 178, 180, 195,
88-90, 133, 197, 109; New Hampshire State Papers, vol.
14, pp. 346, 573; Worcester, pp. 170-76.

22Hillsborough, N. H. deeds, bk. 11, p. 220.

23Worcester, Mass. deeds, bk. 143, p. 46; bk. 124,
p. 109.

142

24Hillsborough, N. H. deeds: Ebenezer to John
Ball, April 1, 1790, bk. 29, p. 105; Emerson and Wheat
to Ball, February 4, 1794, bk. 62, p. 407; Lawrence to
Ball, March 28, 1798, bk. 62, p. 409; Ball to Powers,
March 21, 1799, bk. 56, p. 222.

25Hillsborough, N. H. deeds: Hoar to Ball, Janu-
ary 2, 1802, bk. 62, p. 411; Hale to Ball, May 20,
1802, bk. 62, p. 412; Ball to Hubbard, August 16, 1806,
bk. 71, p. 113; Hubbard to Ball, Aug. 20, 1806, bk. 71,
p. 132; Ball to Merrel, September 17, 1806, bk. 75, p.
383; Ball to Cumings, December 9, 1806, bk. 77, p. 233.

26Vershire, Vt. deeds: Langdon to Ball, April 30,
1806, bk. 7, p. 22; Langdon to Ball, April 30, 1806,
bk. 7, p. 23; Ball to French, January 9, 1807, bk. 7,
p. 138. Vershire town clerk's records for August 14
and September 14, 1807.

27Ha_njia.l Ql Congregational Church o_f Vershire
(Windsor, Vt.: Vermont Chronicle Press, 1863); Boston
Transcript, July 27, 1931, no. 1835, p. 4.

(West Topsham, Vt.: Thetford Historical Soci-

ety, 1972), p. 24.

2^Vershire town clerk's records for March, 1808.
Vershire deeds: Titus to Ball, April 17, 1809, bk. 8,
p. 408; Titus to Ball, April 19, 1809, bk. 8, p. 407.

JUVershire deeds: Ball to Senter, November 26,
1811, bk. 9, p. 109; Ball to Senter, October 5, 1815,
bk. 9, p. 398; Senter to Ball, October 4, 1815, bk. 9,
p. 397; Ball to Spears, November 24, 1815, bk. 9, p.
407.

31Thetf ord, Vt. town clerk's records for May 18,

1816. Thetford deeds: Tucker to Ball, October 6,

1817, bk. 10, p. 90; Gillet to Ball, November 27, 1817,
bk. 10, p. 116; Ball to Gillet, Nov. 27, 1817, bk. 10,
p. 117; Ball to Hosford, April 5, 1819, bk. 10, p. 300;
Lathan and Kendrick to Ball, April 2, 1823, bk. 11, p.
224; John to Nathaniel Ball, September 9, 1823, bk. 11,
p. 225.

32Addie M. Ball, Additions and. Corrections ±q
Descendants oil John BjaJLl qjL Watertown (North Amherst,
Mass.: n. p., 1942), no. 580; notes in Ball file,
Thetford Historical Society. Vershire, Vt. town
clerk's records for March, 1811. Thetford, Vt. deeds:

143

John Ball to John Ball, Jr., January 23, 1826, Bk. 11,
p. 502; John Ball, Jr. to William Ball, February 13,
1835, bk. 13, p. 46.

33Robert L. Bacon, Register £f_ Persons Buried in
the Cemeteries si the Iqmh q! Thetford, Vermont 1768-
1976 (East Thetford, Vt.: n. p., 1977), p. 4; B_all-
Stivers Line, p. 21.

34The letter is among the papers of John Ball
(1794-1884) in the Clarke Historical Library of Central
Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, Michigan.

See n. 32.

36See n. 32. U. S. Census 1850 M432, Thetford
926:43. Thetford, Vt. deeds: estate of John Ball, Jr.
to John W. and Merrill Ball, bk. 16, p. 280; John W. to
Merrill Ball, April 8, 1860, bk. 19, p. 498; Merrill
Ball to Adeline H. Webster, 1863, bk. 20, p. 231.

^'Vermont State Archives, Bradford, Vt. Probate
District, vol. 8, p. 177.

382he. Grafton County Gazetteer (1886), p. 545,
states, "Elisha P. Ball, a stonecutter, moved with his
family to Lyme in 1844. He died May 20, 1871, aged 61
years. "

194.

Anna Merz, "Symbols and Sermons in Stone," Con-
:ut Nutmegger. vol. 11, no. 2 (Sept. 1978), p.

Pp. 334-38.

41Silas Carmi Wheat and Helen Love Scranton, Wheat
Genealogy (Guilford, Ct.: Shore Line Times, 1960), nos.
318, 30, 85, 32.

42For Solomon Wheat, Sr., see Hillsborough, N. H.
deeds: bk. 7, p. 217; bk. 22, p. 26; bk. 29, p. 41;
bk. 43, p. 149; bk. 48, p. 415. For Solomon Wheat,
Jr., see bk. 87, p. 149; bk. 43, p. 108; bk. 88, p.
275.

43See Bertha Hayden's account of old Hollis houses
on deposit with the Hollis Historical Society and the
Hollis Town Library. She refers, on p. 93, to notes on
the Wheats's stonecutting shop, but we have been unable
to locate these notes. She does refer, p. 13, to

144

Solomon Wheat who "used to make gravestones of slate."
While we have found no support for this statement, if
it is true, then Solomon Wheat could well have been the
master connecting Colburn, Ball and Josiah Wheat.

44Wheat Genealogy, nos. 317-18, 877; Hollis town
records, vols. 5 and 3, vol. 3, p. 33.

^Hillsborough, n. H. deeds: Emerson to Wheat,
February 8, 1792, bk. 41, p. 49; Wheat to Fletcher,
January 30, 1797, bk. 42, p. 170.

4*>Hillsborough, N. H. deeds: Solomon to Coolidge
Wheat, January 27, 1820, bk. 127, p. 220.

4^Josiah Coolidge Wheat had two other sons; one of
them, Josiah Alfred, married Susan Danforth of Amherst,
N. H., and her brother Jesse Danforth, Jr. married
Josiah Alfred's sister Sarah in 1824 (Wheat Genealogy,
nos. 882, 878). We found the stone of Mrs. Dorothy
Parker, 1823, in the Hillcrest Cemetery in Litchfield,
N. H., signed at the base, "Engraved by J. Danforth
Amherst. "

48Wheat Genealogy, n. 877.

49(Grinnell, Iowa: Ray & MacDonald, 1894), p. 57.

p. 180.

51Luther Prescott Hubbard, Descendants o_f George
Hubbard from 1600 to. 1872 (New York: L. P. Hubbard,
1972), p. 12.

52Hollis town records: taxes, vol. 3; surveyor,
vol. 3, pp. 197, 343, 533; hogreeve, vol. 3, pp. 241,
256; governor's council, vol. 3, p. 446. Hillsborough,
N. H. deeds: Ball to Hubbard, August 16, 1806, bk. 71,
p. 113; Hubbard to Ball, August 20, 1806, bk. 71, p.
132; Ball to Thayer, December 31, 1814, bk. 104, p.
136; Ball to Farley, January 1, 1821, bk. 131, p. 85;
Ball to Conant, April 1, 1823, bk. 137, p. 632; Ball to
Philanthropic Society, April 1, 1823, bk. 137, p. 633.

53Warren, nos. 41, 102, 104, 257.

54Elisha P. Ball, Lyme, N. H. (1810-71); John
Ball, Jr., Thetford, Vt. (1788-1847); J. Brown, Amherst,
N. H. (1830s); Brown & Eastman, Derry, N. H. (1840s);
J. B. Campbell (1850s); M. Coniche, Amherst, N. H.

145

(1830s) J. Danforth, Amherst, N. H. (1820s); C. Daby
(or Darby), Worcester, Mass. (1830s); M. Davis, Nashua,
N. H. (1830-50); B. Day, Lowell, Mass. (1830s); Nathan
Farley, Concord, N. H. (1820s); Nelson Farley; William
Farnsworth, Groton, Mass. (c. 1800); Joseph W. Goddard,
Lancaster, Mass. (1810); Wm. Goddard, Lancaster, Mass.
(1811); Isaac Hartwell, Sterling, Mass. (1840s or
earlier); Daniel Hastings, Newton, Mass. (1749-1803);
E. Kendall and Stephen Kendall, Littleton, Mass. (after
1800); Josiah Kidder, Sterling, Mass.; Cheney Kilburn,
Sterling, Mass. (1796-1873); Samuel Kilburn, Sterling
and Concord, Mass. (1783-1858); T. Lewis, Harvard,
Mass. (1810); John Marble, Bradford, Mass. (1764-1844);
Joseph Marble, Bradford, Mass. (1726-1805); Abel Moore,
Lunenburg, Mass. (1805); B. Morse (1818); D. Nichols,
Lowell, Mass. (1840s); Benjamin K. Park; John Park,
Groton, Mass. (1731-93); John Park, Jr., Groton, Mass.
(1761-1811); John Park, Groton, Mass. (1787-1848);
Thomas Park, Groton, Mass. (1745-1806); Life Parker,
Pepperell, Mass.; Adna Phelps, Groton, N. H. area
(1792-?); I. Reed, Jr., Harvard, Mass. (1818); David
Sawtell, Shirley and Groton, Mass. (1820s); Ithamar
Spauldin, Concord, Mass. (1795-1800); A. Stone, Groton,
Mass. (1838); I. N. Stone, Harvard and Worcester, Mass.
(1840); Abel Webster, Hollis, Plymouth and Kingston, N.
H., Danville, Vt. and Chester, N. H. (1726-1801); Step-
hen Webster, Chester, Hollis and Plymouth, N. H. (1718-
98) .

146

"And the Men Who Made Them":
The Signed Gravestones of New England
1984 Additions

Sue Kelly and Anne Williams

The following entries contain newly recorded signed
stones by carvers included in the list in MARKERS XI.
The authors invite submissions of additional data as it
is recorded, for inclusion in an annual updating of the
original list.

J. B_.

Joseph Godfrey, 1750, Morton, Mass. (Timothy Plain
Cemetery); slate; fair. "J. B."

MiCJHAEL BALJDH1H (1719-87), New Haven, Ct.

Martha Landon, 1775, Southold, N. Y.; sandstone; excel-
lent. "Michael Baldwin N Haven"

ZERUBBABEL COLLINS (1733-97), Lebanon, Ct. and Shaftes-
bury, Vt.

Femmitie Snyder, 1789, Albany, N. Y. (Albany Rural
Cemetery); marble; stone on ground. "Z. Collins Sculp"

JOHN JUST £E2£R., Boston, Mass.

Abigail Burbeck, 1790, West Bath, Me. (West Bath Ceme-
tery); slate. "John Just Geyer feet. Boston"

JAftES. EEtt 11 (1751-1835), Wrentham, Mass.

Susannah Drake, n. d., Upton, Mass. (Grove Street Ceme-
tery); slate; excellent. "J. N."

£. and/or £. S_LKES_, Belchertown, Mass.

Archelaus Anderson, 1790, Chester, Mass. (Bromley Road
Cemetery); schist; excellent. "E. S."

BEZA £0_U_LE (1750-1835), Middleborough, Mass. and Brook-
lyn, Ct.

Esther Ross, 1777, West Brookfield, Mass.; slate; good,
"by Soule"

Jemima Lincoln, 1786, Warren, Mass. (Pine Grove Ceme-

147

tery); slate; good. "B. S."

Zeruah Mighells, 1796, Putnam, Ct. (Aspinwall Ceme-
tery); slate; good. "Beza Soule"

Ezra Dean, 1798, Putnam, Ct. (Aspinwall Cemetery);
slate; excellent. "Made by B. Soule June 21st 1799"

Levina Wood, 1800, West Brookfield, Mass.; slate; good.
"Engraved by B. Soule"

William Thomas, 1805, West Brookfield, Mass.; slate;
excellent. "Engraved by B. Soule"

SIEYEH SPALDING, Killingly, Ct.

William Phillips, 1792, Plainfield, Ct. "By S. Spalding"

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

Ruth Gibbs, 1784, Newport, R. I. (Common Burying
Ground); slate; excellent. "J. Stevens"

Three Children of Godfrey Wenwood, 1780-84, Newport,
R. I. (Common Burying Ground); slate; excellent.
"J. Stevens"

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

Deacon Daniel Deane, 1801, Norton, Mass. (Pine Street
Cemetery); poor. "E-W"

?, ?, n. d., Assonet, Mass. (Lawton Cemetery); unadorned
base fragment. "By E. Winslow, 2, $14."

LOCATION GUIDE

MAIHJE

West Bath: John Just Geyer

MASSACHUSETTS

Assonet: E. Winslow

Chester: C. and/or E. Sikes

Norton: Ebenezer Winslow; J. B.

Warren: Beza Soule

148

West Brookfield: Beza Soule

Albany: Z. Collins
Southold: Michael Baldwin

149

150

Index of Carvers and Illustrations

Allen, Jonathan, 26, 28, 37

Arms, John, 13

Ashley, Solomon, 28, 30, 33, 35, 37

Ball, John, 94, 101-25, 128, 129, 137

Ball, John Jr., 114-15

"Bat Carver, The," 9

Bliss, Aaron, 11, 18,

Bliss, Abel, 20

Bliss, Mary, 23

Bliss, Nathaniel, 19

Brown, Mary, 55

Buckland, John, 18

Butterick, Elizabeth, 51

Clark, John, 4

Colburn, Paul, 93-101, 103, 106, 115-25, 129

Collins, Benjamin, 71

Collins, Zerubbabel, 71

Colton, George, 21

Doolittle, Sara, 29
Dwight, Henry Esq., 8

Emerson, Daniel, 134
Emmes, Nathaniel, 6

Farrar, Martha, 107
Foster, James, 6

Glover, Sarah, 130
Goodwin, Hannah, 54
Griswold, Edward, 3
Griswold, George, 3, 4
Gunn, John, 7

Hale, Gideon, 9, 12, 24

Hale, Thomas, 17

Harris, Stephen and Mary, 121

Hartshorn, Lt. John, 72, 73, 74, 77

Hartshorn, Jonathan, 77, 79, 85, 86

Hastings, Daniel, 105, 106

Hayward, Nathan, 86

Hodgman, Josiah, 119

Holbrook, Abiah, 61

Holland, William, 11, 12, 16, 22, 24

Hubbard, Luther, 106, 135-38

151

Janes, Ebenezer, 27, 28, 29, 32
Janes, Ebenezer Jr., 28
Johnson, Joseph, 9, 11, 14
Johnson, Thomas I, 6, 9, 10
Johnson, Thomas II, 11, 14
Jones, John, 126

King, Mary, 8

Lamson, Caleb, 82
Lamson, Nathaniel, 82
Leeman, Samuel and Mary, 121
Leighton, Ezekiel, 73, 77
Leighton, Jonathan, 77, 79, 85, 86
Leighton, Richard, 73, 74, 77, 78
Locke, Henry, 28
Locke, John, 28, 30, 33, 35

Manning family, 71, 75

Marble, John, 105

Marble, Joseph, 75, 105

McCall, Samuel, 32

Mirick, Daniel, 123

Moore, Paul 118

Morse, Mary, 100

Mulican, Joseph, 73, 76, 77, 81, 85, 87

Mulican, Robert, 73, 74, 87

Mulican, Robert Jr. 75

Nash, Joseph, 4, 5
Nicholson, Ruth, 63

Park family, 99, 105

Phelps, Elijah, 11, 27, 33, 36

Phelps, Nathaniel, 11,14, 22, 27

Phelps, Rufus, 37, 38

Pierce, Rachel, 106

Poole, Capt. Jonathan, 51

Seccombe, John and Molly, 120

Sikes family, 33, 37

Smith, Joseph, 34

Soule, Beza, 24, 28

Soule, Coomer, 24, 27

Soule, Ebenezer Sr., 22, 24, 27, 28, 29

Soule, Isaiah, 28

Soule, Ivory, 28

Soule family, 86

Spauldin, Ithamar, 106

Spaulding, Aza, 107

152

Stancliff, James, 6
Stancliff, William, 6
Stebbins, Ezra, 11, 22
Stebbins, Ezra II, 11, 22
Stratton, Elisabeth, 31

Temple, Elizabeth, 100
Thornton, Matthew, 123
Titcomb, Paul, 57

Webster, Abel, 71, 75, 94
Webster, Stephen, 94
Westcarr, Dr. John, 5
Wheat, Coolidge, 133-35
Wheat family, 106
Wheat, Josiah Coolidge, 125-32
Wheat, Solomon, 105
Wheeler, Obadiah, 71
Whiting, Thomas, 131
Whitney, Nathan, 99
Wilder, James, 93
Williams, Mrs. Christian, 17
Williams, Israel Jr., 10
Williams, Margaret, 25
Williams, Sarah, 15
Williston, Joseph, 11, 16, 17
Worcester, Jonathan, 71, 75
Worcester, Moses, 71

153

CONTRIBUTORS

Lucien Agosta teaches in the English Department of
Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas. His inte-
rests range from gravestones to children's literature.

Peter Benes is a leading authority on New England
material culture. He is the founder of The Dublin
Seminar for New England Folk Life, and editor of its
annual proceedings. The author of many articles on
gravestones and stonecutters, his best-known work is
Tim M&akjs q£ Orthodoxy.

Laurel Gabel and Theodore Chase are both officers of
the Association for Gravestone Studies. Mrs. Gabel
heads the Association's Research Bureau, is a member of
the New England Historic Genealogical Society and a
member of the Board of the Friends of Mt. Hope Cemetery
in Rochester, New York. Mr. Chase is a trustee of the
New England Historic Genealogical Society and a member
of the Council of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Sue Kelly and Anne Williams are the authors of A. Grave
Business. They are currently working on a handbook for
gravestone study.

Kevin M. Sweeney is Administrator-Curator of the Webb-
Deane-Stevens Museum in Wethersf ield, Connecticut, and
Visiting Lecturer in American Studies at Trinity College
in Hartford. He holds a Masters in history from Yale
University where he is a doctoral candidate. For seve-
ral years he has lectured on and written about the
architecture, furniture and gravestones of the Connecti-
cut River valley.

David Watters teaches at the University of New Hampshire
and is the author of "With Bodilie Eyes." He is cur-
rently writing a book on early New England rituals and
literature.

154

Also of Interest from

University Press of America and

The Association for Gravestone Studies

Markers II

Edited by David Waiters

0-8191-4538-6

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