Esther Benjamin
As mentioned in the overview section, many of the epitaphs found in these graveyards belong to a category I call “recurring by unattributed”. Here is moving example that also echoes the most famous Graveyard Poet. This stone is in Griswold, CT, but you can find several more with the same verse.
Anne Williams
There are many variations of The Classic message, admonishing the reader to take the lesson of the grave to heart and prepare for eternity. In Hampden Massachusetts this singularly short and direct version appears.
Nathaniel Ferry
Another epitaph in Granby has a fine quatrain of English Renaissance poetry.
Deacon William Eastman
Granby’s West Street Cemetery is one of the engaging cemeteries that never became disused. You can drive from the current, modern sections back through the grass and trees to the far corner where the stones of the earliest settlers stand. There I found a text from a poem by Isaac Watts, more commonly known as a prolific hymn-writer.
Abraham Brown
I recently visited the graveyards of Cheshire, MA,, a little cross-roads between Pittsfield and North Adams that still has several large farms and provides the visitor with some striking vistas of the east front of Mt. Greylock. It was originally part of Congregationalist Lanesborough, on the other side of the hill, but was settled by a Baptist colony from Rhode Island and eventually separated. There, in the North Cemetery I was struck by a stone that is truly sui generis; entirely original and outside the any of the familiar, traditional sources and images and messages I typically find in these graveyards. I need to go back and re-take this picture in better light, either at a more opportune time of day, or with a mirror. But it does show you how close the busy Route 8 runs past this quiet little graveyard.
Joseph Willcockson
In the course of many years collecting and studying early New England epitaph verse, I have found a surprising abundance of works by Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Johnson, Isaac Watts, Edward Young, and many lesser poets. Recently I was asked if Classical literature was also chosen for use on these Congregationalist gravestones. The answer is, ‘not frequently, but I have found a few examples.’ Here is one from Peterborough, New Hampshire, for which a passage from Virgil’s Aeneid was chosen.
Ebenezer Whiting
The poetry of Alexander Pope keeps turning up in these graveyards. Here is an epitaph that starts with a couplet from Pope, then an anonymous author proceeds to create some fascinating bespoke lines. The stone lies flat on its back in Russell, Massachusetts, at the edge of a knobby hill near the center of town.
Jane Sherril
The Cone Hill Cemetery in Richmond, MA, is very peaceful spot, mossy and well-tended, lying along a back-road, surrounded by woods. Here I found a wonderful passage by the eighteenth-century English poet Alexander Pope chosen for an epitaph.
Thomas Hamilton
In the Spring Hill Cemetery in Tolland, MA, lying right along Route 57, I found a stone with an interesting take on the tone and message of The Classic.
Lotan Hiscock
I have already posted about the Amanda Tinker stone in Worthington, MA. In the same graveyard I found a simple, unadorned stone with an intriguing Bible verse for its epitaph. I have not seen this particular line used on any other memorials.
Sarah Williams
The Pittsfield, MA, cemetery is an interesting source of early gravestones ( https://www.pittsfieldcemetery.com/ ). Pittsfield grew rapidly in the early 1800s and soon out-grew its earliest burying ground. Between 1840 and 1849, the town removed the interred to a new park-like ground. Here the oldest stones are arranged in two long trim rows, shoulder-to-shoulder, while the site of the old graveyard is now a traffic circle in the very center of the town. This stone contains not one but two verses from the great Graveyard Poet Edward Young.
Amanda Tinker
Last month, on a sunny and blustery October morning, a small group of gravestone scholars met in the Worthington Center Cemetery. Worthington is a beautiful little town, tucked between ridges of the east face of the Berkshire Barrier, the mass of hills that rises up from the Connecticut River Valley. There are many fine examples of carving —take a leisurely walk around the graveyard and you will experience a visual seminar on the early nineteenth-century willow and urn design. Here I found a touching epitaph taken from a once-popular hymn written by a interesting if somewhat forgotten author.