Pitcairn Wordless Wednesday

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Snow Wordless Wednesday

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Greenwood Wordless Wednesday

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Freeman Wordless Wednesday

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George Jacobs, Sr.

In the family cemetery on the Rebecca Nurse Homestead, there is a newer stone in the colonial style for George Jacobs, Sr. In documents regarding the Salem Witch Trials, he is described as an elderly (late 70s/early 80s) English colonist and farmer who used canes for mobility. During the 1692 Salem Witch trials, the afflicted girls, including his servant Sarah Churchill, accused Jacobs, his son George Jr., his daughter-in-law Rebecca, and granddaughter Margaret of being witches. George Jr. managed to evade arrest by leaving the Salem area. Margaret Jacobs confessed to witchcraft while being examined by the magistrates, naming her grandfather as another witch. Though Margaret later recanted her testimony and was in fact acquitted, her grandfather was tried, convicted, and sentences to die by hanging.

The executed witches were barred from burial in sacred ground and probably tossed in a common pit near the gallows, but Salem tradition has long held that some relatives returned under the cover of night to retrieve remains and bury them in secret. The Jacobs descendants claimed to have found George Sr.’s grave on the family farm in 1864. In 1950, developers discovered the grave while building on the property, and the bones were exhumed. While they cannot be verified as belonging to George Jacobs, Sr., the bones were those of an elderly man fitting his description. In 1992, 300 years after the trials, the bones were reinterred in the Nurse family cemetery on the Rebecca Nurse homestead in a 17th century style coffin.

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Consort

When we traveled to Boston and Salem in the fall of 2018, I was of course excited at the opportunities to explore some of the oldest cemeteries in North America. I also realized I needed to brush back up on my cemetery symbolism and language. As I’ve written before, when a woman is described as the consort of her husband on a gravestone, she usually predeceased him. If he predeceased her, the inscription may refer to her as a relict, an old-fashioned word for widow.

Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, Boston, Massachusetts

Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, Boston, Massachusetts

Old Burying Point, Salem, Massachusetts

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Real graveyard rabbits

When we visited Copp’s Hill Burying Ground in Boston, I looked over and suddenly noticed a small baby bunny sitting quietly near some brush and sniffing the air. After a few minutes, I could spot several of them, and one of the people at the graveyard told me you will see them quite a bit, because it’s a very protected area for them to live. So this whole post is just an excuse to show you adorable baby bunny photos. Without further ado, here are some of the real graveyard rabbits of Boston.

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Paul Revere

Paul Revere’s Ride
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,–
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm.”

Then he said “Good-night!” and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street
Wanders and watches, with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,–
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,–
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
Now he gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns.

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, black and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadow brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
>From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

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54th Massachusetts

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A Grave Concern: John Hancock

John Hancock was the first signer of the Declaration of Independence (not on July 4, but it was accepted that day by all but the New York delegation to the Continental Congress). Hancock received the honor of affixing his signature first as the President of the Continental Congress, and being the first to sign probably accounts more for the size of his name than seemingly apocryphal stories about his wanting to make sure the King of England could read it. He was the first governor of Massachusetts after the American Revolution and served as the president of that state’s commission to ratify the Constitution. Hancock died while serving in office as Massachusetts governor in 1793.

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