So young

When I visited Old Carlisle Cemetery, I found this tombstone. Charles Seebold was only 14 when he died in the Civil War. Other than the information on the stone itself about him being a drummer boy for the 1st US Cavalry, I have not been able to find out much about this boy.

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So, what do you do for a living?

Occupational indicators on stones are pretty uncommon. The careers that get recorded on stones most often are ones that change your title, such as doctors and military officers. Hands down, the most common occupation you will see noted on a tombstone is that of physician. But there are other people who really want you to know what they did when they were alive.

On the Samuel marker from Willoughby Village Cemetery, we find that Edward Samuel was a printer and Sidney Lehman (relationship to family unclear) was a professor. I’ve seen a few other professors, but Samuel is the first printer I’ve found so proud of his occupation that he put it on his tombstone.

Leonard Voorhies, educator, is buried in Euclid Cemetery.

Finally, we have The Honorable George E. Hoffer in Old Carlisle Cemetery.

I find this stone so compellingly interesting that I had to photograph it. It is very straightforward, no flowery language, just his title and name, birth and death years, two of his positions as a judge, and his wife’s name. His wife being listed after everything else deviates from the pattern I am used to seeing, which makes me wonder who designed and paid for the monument. Or maybe he requested it be this way…

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Consort

In memory of Clarissa M., consort of Eli Gilmore (Historic Hopewell Cemetery)

Walking through cemeteries with some friends, they noticed that some women’s tombstones, rather than having the typical pattern of saying “wife of” a particular man, listed the women as his consort. My friends and I discussed whether there was some particular significance to naming a woman as “consort” rather than “wife.” Perhaps the man and woman were not legally married, they mused.

Tombstones for Adam and Ann Titler (Old Carlisle Burying Ground)

A distinction does exist, but it is nothing so lurid as naming a mistress as such on her grave marker. After consulting a dozen or so cemetery symbolism websites, it appears that the word “consort” on a women’s tombstone usually indicates that she predeceased her husband. A “consort” was still most definitely a wife.

Jane, consort of Tobias Miller (Old Carlisle Burying Ground)

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Tempus fugit

The winged hourglass is one of the rarest but clearest symbols of mortality in a cemetery. Time flies, it cautions us, this life is but a brief span. Be prepared always for death.

David and Juliana Watts of Carlisle could not have communicated it better if they had selected a version of the classic New England epitaph for their memorial:

Remember me as you pass by,
As you are now, so once was I,
As I am now, so you will be,
Prepare for death and follow me.

Yet while the message of the winged hourglass can be quite serious, its gravity is lightened by its own visual pun. The designer of the Gaddis family monument in Columbus’ Union Cemetery was not all solemnity. The memorial contains an actual timekeeper in the form of a sundial atop the column that informs us playfully “I count none but sunny hours.” I trust that that is absolutely true.

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Broken Columns

Broken columns as monuments symbolize the end of life, usually specifically a life cut short.

It’s not a style of monument I find particularly aesthetically interesting unless there are other elements, so I realized I don’t photograph them very often. The first two photographed are both in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland and appear to be family monuments rather than to individuals. This next one, found in Old Carlisle Cemetery to Hugh Gordon who died at only twenty, seems to allude to the “life cut short” symbolism. (The GAR marker does not appear to be for young Gordon, who did not live long enough to fight in the Civil War. The adjacent side might be for another Gordon son who fought.)

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Going up

Anyone who has walked a 19th century cemetery has seen the single upright hand with three fingers and thumb folded down on the palm while the pointer finger gestures straight up, like on the tombstone for Kezia Edwards in Doty Settlement Cemetery. Just a few tombstones away, Nathanial Moore is remembered with the same symbol.

The hand, and specifically the outstretched finger, are a representation of the soul ascending to heaven. The example below is from the Olde Hudson Township Burying Ground.

Unfortunately, like other relatively thin pieces of cemetery sculpture, that outstretched finger sometimes gets damaged or broken off. The finger on Isaac Weakley’s stone in Old Carlisle Burying Ground seems awfully stubby.

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Revolutionary War veterans at Old Carlisle Cemetery

One of the things that struck me about the Old Carlisle Cemetery was the sheer number of Revolutionary War veterans. Leaving aside the cemetery’s most famous resident who participated in the American Revolution, Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley, there are over 50 veterans of the conflict buried here.

A monument erected by the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution lists the veterans “located and verified” in the cemetery.

I was just awed by this fact. I guess this is one of the ways that I am turning into a midwesterner. In this part of the midwest, if a cemetery has even one Revolutionary War veteran, it’s notable. I think the most I’ve seen in one cemetery in northeastern Ohio is five.

A number of the stones denoted with the Revolutionary War marker aren’t really readable or are even broken…

…but others are quite legible after all this time.

One even had a new stone placed next to the old.

I’m hoping that I’ll be able to do some further research on at least some of these soldiers.

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Mother and child

Just a quick post about some inscriptions I saw in the Old Carlisle Cemetery.

First we have Margeby Eckels (I wonder if this is supposed to be Margery, but it sure looks like Margeby). Her tombstone tells us she died May 7, 1856, aged 43 years and 10 days, and that “Her infant son sleeps by her side.”

The second is Sarah Ellen Melester, wife of William Melester, who was born in 1857 and died in 1888. “Her babe sleeps on her breast.”

My educated guess is that these women and their children died in childbirth or from complications soon after. I have seen references in books to women and their infants being buried together, but this is the first time I have seen the reference made on a tombstone. I suspect I’ll see this more in my explorations.

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On Names

We stopped this weekend at what I am going to call the Old Carlisle Cemetery, for lack of any consistency in naming I can find.  I had some vague recollection of the fact that the cemetery was there, which I’m going to chalk up to some otherwise forgotten trip with my father in my childhood.  We visited for the “Molly Pitcher” memorial because we had less than an hour to spare to make the five hour drive home.  The first thing I noticed was that there was no name on the three sides of the cemetery that we drove around..  There is no gate.  The sign listing the rules and hours includes no name.  The GPS didn’t know how to find that cemetery.  When I got home, I searched Google to correctly label my photos and discovered that no one agreed on what the place was called.  I’ve seen it referenced as Carlisle Cemetery, Old Cemetery, Carlisle’s Old Graveyard and Old Carlisle Cemetery.  This is a cemetery containing the graves of over 50 Revolutionary War veterans and dozens of veterans of later wars (I saw markers for veterans of the War of 1812, Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, and both World Wars in my walk of less than 1/4 of the cemetery) as well as Carlisle’s most legendary resident, the famous “Molly Pitcher,” but the place has no fixed name.

“Molly Pitcher” is actually not a woman’s name, but a nickname that was given to women who carried water to Revolutionary War soldiers on the battlefield. Molly was also a nickname for Mary, which seems to have further confused some of those who encounter the story. Then Mary LudwigHays, the wife of a soldier at the Battle of Monmouth, became the most famous “Molly Pitcher” of the war because she was credited with taking her husband’s place at a cannon when he was wounded. Hays married another man with the surname of McCauley after being widowed. Not everyone agrees that the legends about Hays’ war service are true, but the fact that she received a pension from Pennsylvania in 1822 “for services rendered” rather than, more usually, as a widow of a soldier.

Disagreement on names was the order of the day, because it turns out no one knows how Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley’s final surname was spelled.  The monument lists her as Mary McKolly/McCauley as well as having her married name of Mary Hays and her birth name as Mary Ludwig. Other sources online mention the spellings M’Kolly, McCalla, McCawley, and McAuley. This is not terribly surprising consider that spelling wasn’t standardized in the 18th century, but I had never seen that murkiness carved into a monument. To add to the confusion, I’ve also included a photo of the smaller stone behind the monument which identifies her as Mollie McCauly.

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