To today’s reader, epitaphs on old gravestones are often maudlin, sometimes heart wrenching. And the curious custom the writers had of describing their loss in trite or comic verse seems in today’s society, to trivialize the event.
Pity the poor pharmacist who may have sold medicine to M.S. Donald Robertson in 1848. Robertson’s epitaph fingered the seller forever as contributing to his demise: "He was a peaceable man, and, to all appearance a sincere Christian. His death was very much regretted—which was caused by the stupidity of Lawrence Tulloch of Clotherton who sold him nitre instead of Epsom salts by which he was killed in the space of three hours after taking a dose of it."
Others should have taken their physician’s advice—like Mr. Peter Daniels who died in 1746, after succumbing from a cold or possibly pneumonia.
"…Beneath this stone, this lump of clay,
Lies Uncle Peter Daniels,
Who too early in the month of May
Took off his winter flannels."
In a land of fireplaces and cookstoves, epitaphs show that fire took a mighty toll. It carried off Miranda Bridgman in 1797 at age 28:
"The rooms below flamed like a stove,
Anxious for those that slept above,
She ventured on ye trembling floor
She fell; she sunk; and rose no more."
Heated water caused killed little Samuel Barns, as his "death was Occasion’d by a Scald from a Tea pot…aged 7 Months."
Accidents, probably because their mere unexpectedness caused intense pain to the survivors, are often described in grim detail. Judge for yourself whether the following was a hunting accident or not:
"In Memory of
Mr Nath. Parks,
AEt 19, who on
21st March 1794
Being out a hung-
ing and conceal’d
in a Ditch was
casually shot by
Mr Luther
Frink."
Contemplate the ironic twist of fate that delivered Capt. Thomas Stetson to his death after he thought he’d found safe sanctuary:
"… killed by the fall of a tree Nov. 28 1820 AE. 68
Nearly 30 years he was master
of a vessel and left that
employment at the age of
48 for the less hazardous
one of cultivating his farm."
Passive trees took an active part in this man’s untimely death:
"Fear God
Keep the commandments,
and
Don’t attempt to climb a tree,
For that’s what caused the death of me."
Until this century, gravestones often documented wretched conditions endured by factory workers like Solomon Towslee Jr:
"Who was kill’d in Pownal
Vt. July 15, 1846, while
repairing to Grind a sithe
on a stone atach’d to the
Gearing in the Woollen
Factory. he was entangled.
his death was sudden & awful."
And the danger in early smoke-belching locomotives. Adin French, a 29-year-old,
"…came to his death by the
explosion of the Engine "John Smith" on the
Vermont and Canada Railroad, in Milton, Vermont."
A look at today’s inscriptions wouldn’t give a clue as to what caused the demise of the person underground. What we’ve gained in modern sensibilities, we’ve lost in the quaint, old epitaphs, peeks into people’s lives and what was important to them.
Source: “Over Their Dead Bodies, Yankee Epitaphs and History” by Thomas C. Mann & Janet Greene (1962 and 1990).