 Well, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all for coming. As you all know, there's a cemetery in every town. And whether it is a colonial burial ground from the beginning of our country or the modern memorial garden on the outskirts of the city, it holds the history of that town. It tells the story of people, their attitudes towards death, and the industries in which they worked. The cemetery can even show us the geology of the local landscape. These outdoor museums to the average man hold a wealth of information that is accessible and open to the public. The stones reveal the stories, even the mysteries of the town, through the monuments to the people who live there and whose stories are written in stone. Our speaker today is Tamara Kande, who is the president of historic gravestone services in New Salem, right up the street. And she's been preserving gravestones for over 20 years in cemeteries across the US and Canada. Previous projects include an African American cemetery created by freed slaves in Sharpsburg, Maryland, and gravestones for early settlers in Burial Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts as they prepared for their 400th year anniversary in 2020. Our speaker serves on the board of the New Salem Cemetery Commission, which seems to be very appropriate. And she's an active member of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, the Stone Foundation Preservation Trade Network, and of course, the Association of Gravestone Studies, where she previously has served on the board and chaired the conservation committee. So I think we're going to have an interesting talk today on some of the stories she's found hidden on the stones. And please welcome our speaker. Thank you, thank you. As she said, I'm going to give you a little tour here. I'm going to start with the beginning of cemeteries in America and kind of how we moved through and some of the symbolism that we find there. And then I'll tell you a few stories I found in the cemetery. Can you find that? So we start off with colonial burial grounds. And these were usually next to a meeting house and associated with that meeting house. It was made up of single graves, usually not family plots necessarily. We look at them, the placement of the stones may seem random. It might be there's missing stones. Someone didn't get a stone or and the wooden marker is long gone or there's a big rock or something that they couldn't move. The stones there are usually local, made from local stones. They're what we consider a tablet. It's kind of just a square piece of stone that goes about a third of it down in the ground to hold it up. And so if they come up against ledge or something they can get moved around a little bit. The beginning imageries were the death hat as we called it or sole effigies that kind of morphed into. And this is what we see. There's Jackson Hill and Levright. Stones usually faced west in the beginning. The body would have a headstone and a footstone. The body would be in between the headstone and the footstone as if you were lying in bed with a headboard and a footboard. You don't stand on the body to read the stone. The writing would be facing west and on the footstone facing east so that the body could rise up and see the rising sun on judgment day. I don't know if you can tell here but these stones aren't actually facing west. They're facing east. Someone came through and turned all the headstones around. And we know that because we can see the two little footstones for these guys in front of their headstone and not behind their headstone. So I'm assuming those headstones were just switched around. And the motifs would be that death hat. The first stones were for people. Had imagery that for people who maybe didn't read. You can tell from this it was about death. Death was always around us. I mean you could get a cut on your finger. Next thing getting green and goodbye Charlie. We have that Adam skull, that mortality that we're shown in Italian Renaissance shows up with the crossbones. No, that's not for a pirate. Although I get asked that many times. The other stone is a very famous family of carvers. These beautiful, beautiful stones that they made. And we can tell them by the side panels and just the styles that they use. But here's the winged skull. And this one's for William Thompson. Or I should say Reverend William Thompson who was the minister and brain tree. He was also a Reverend in Old England. And if you see at the bottom it says that he was famous in both Englands. So new and old. This is one of the oldest stones I've worked on 1666 and that's an original stone. For the people that could read, they gave us warnings and they talked to us today as much as they talked to the people that were there then. Pasovi stop and cast an eye as you are now, so once was I. As I am now, so you shall be. Prepare for death. Follow me. The imagery is starting to change a little bit. We started to put faces with those wings. It became more the image of the person that was buried under this stone. I'd like you to note that these three stones are all for men. They have beautiful wings, they have beautiful hairdos. This one is just gorgeous. Men wore wigs, women didn't wear wigs. Women usually were stuck in a doorway with their hair pulled back in a bun and no wings. This one young girl does have her hair down so we can see, but because she was a young unmarried woman. She holds the ring, which is eternal, and she holds the hourglass. And this shows up in their imagery all the time. The hourglass was a very important symbol not because it was their clock at home. They certainly didn't have one on the dinner table and they didn't want to flip it over every time the sand went through so they knew when it was six o'clock that dinner, you lived by the light. You woke up when the light was out, you worked during the light, you went to bed when it was dark. You know, the hourglass they saw every Sunday for approximately eight hours at church. In the front of the pulpit there'd be a little shelf and a little hourglass there. One elder would get up and talk for a while and then he'd flip the glass over and talk for a little while longer. Then another would get up and another would get up. Eight hours, they'd stop and take a break. They stared at that hourglass a long time. So it became a very popular image. And I just want to correct some of the thoughts here. People come across these words in the cemetery and they're sometimes confused. Consorts and they think it's his mistress. It's not his mistress. No one was going to pay, because you paid by the letter and the size of the letter. So if somebody's gonna put this on there, it wasn't going to be telling your secrets. No, concert just met wife and she died first. Relic, like any relic, the wife belonged to the male and when he died, he left his relic behind. So you'll find these two words on stones for women. And slowly we start to change our attitude and we get to the willow and urn. This was the beginning of the 1800s. They start having the great awakening and the changing of attitude. And it's the death and the willow tree presents life. So it's kind of that duality of life that comes along and the images change. And the stone begins to change as we get railroads and canals. We have stones moving around. It's not so much the local stone anymore. This is Quincy. You can see that these stones have been moved around probably by the Victorians who liked everything neat and orderly. But as the Victorians started bringing in the white marble and different imagery, they started mixing it in with the colonial stones. But then they decided, now maybe this looks kind of still Mishmashiyu. And they wanted something different. It was as early as 1711 that Christopher Wren suggested maybe we should move these cemeteries outside the city and put a little wall around it, plant some trees, make some little walkways. And that's exactly what they did. They moved them outside the city and they started putting walkways and plantings and special things around them. Mostly you'll find a couple slates in there but mostly it was moving towards marble. We were moving away from that death head and that darkness of death. And they started to talk about being carried away to heaven or gone home or something like that. We see the images change. The dove comes in, the veil pulled back. The angel carrying the soul up to heaven. The hands welcoming us in. We'll meet again. And the butterfly and the caterpillar come in. And there's something interesting about this because I don't know if you know when a caterpillar gets in his cocoon. He doesn't just grow wings and some legs. He changes into a complete goo. He's no longer a caterpillar or a butterfly. He's just this goo in there. And then he kind of reformulates and becomes a butterfly. And I heard recently on this TED talk that they wanted to know this transformation. What does the caterpillar remember when it's a butterfly? So they took these caterpillars. They had a control group. Then they had another group. And they exposed them to some kind of really stinky chemical and like a blue card or something to identify the smell. They waited for them to change. They became butterflies. And instantly these butterflies remembered that smell. And they were pushed away by the smell as soon as they saw the red card. They were like, ooh, no, that's the stinky stuff. So is that the soul that's come through that transformation and still keeps with us? And how much did the Victorians know about this? I mean, they were scientific. They were looking. How much did they know about what was really going along when they picked this symbol? But I just find it kind of interesting. Gone, gone, but not forgotten. We get the hands come around at this time, pointing up, pointing down, gone home. Pointing down does not mean you went to the other place. It's God pointing at you, calling you home. She's gone and left her parents here tomorrow. Gone, gone forever, never to return. Poor Elvira in here. She was broken in half. She's in the middle of getting repaired here. We start to begin this other movement in cemetery, the Rural Cemetery. And these are photographs from Mount Auburn out towards Boston, very famous cemetery. Beautiful place to go, even if you just like trees and birds for get-headstones. You want to be there on May 1st when all the migrating birds are coming through. You'll see the Indigo Bunny. You'll see the Scarlet Tanager. It's just an incredible place. And this is where we started moving towards, these park slash cemeteries. This was designed by Olmstead, the same kind of theories that he used in Central Park in New York. And it was to take us out of that cemetery thing and that death thing, but give us this beautiful place to be and to commune with our loved ones, sculpture, waterfalls, fountains, ponds. It's the later 1800s we get. Some people refer to as white bronze. These are actually made out of zinc. They came in multiple pieces. You picked it out of a catalog. You could get any combination and any design. You could put it together however you wanted it, double-wide, taller, shorter, fatter. Mr. Bassett here had a bust of himself made for the top of his. Now I find it a little interesting. This is a stone that's down in Berry, Massachusetts. He was born in Maine. He died in Chicago. I have no idea why his memorial is in Berry, Massachusetts. But he had it ordered, special just for him. Put in. And these are really nice because they usually, other than slumping once in a while, because they're hollow inside and it's a soft metal. They hold up pretty well. And then we moved to Memorial Gardens. And this starts like the 1960s. We had riding Vaughn mowers. We had machinery to clear. The stones were kind of in our way. They were hard to maintain in these older cemeteries. And they tried to move us into Memorial Gardens. And at first people were like, OK. But you got really restricted on how much you could have. You had to have a bronze or a granite stone and had to be flushed to the ground. You could have these urns on top for flowers. Then it becomes kind of a weird thing. You just see all these little fake flowers lined up in the field. Or you come to visit your mother and father and you find out it's got the lawnmower tracks right over it. And that's kind of disturbing. And so cremation actually became kind of the way to go. People were keeping them at home for a while. And Memorial Gardens have started to change a little bit. They're letting more larger monuments and different monuments come in and they expanded a little bit. Becoming more like the modern cemeteries that we know today. Lines of stones and kind of closely placed together. The top picture is cremation grounds at Mount Auburn. They've just created this garden. It's got several different places that you can be placed. There's niches in those little walls. There's also behind that there's some big tower of pillars. You can sprinkle ashes and have your name added to the pillar. So there's all these different ways that they're using to open up more space in their cemeteries. And now we have the green cemetery that's becoming very popular, which is a whole subject unto itself. So what do I do? What's gravestone conservation about? I'm an art conservator. Just like my friends, only they get to work inside. I work outside with the red ants and the bugs. This is Carrara Marble, same as any sculpture they would be working on. It's a Greek reproduction. It's similar to what you would find in a museum, but it's sitting outside. Tree branches, birds, bugs. The elements are all against me. So this is down in Kentucky. But it's the same techniques and the same things that we use inside that we use outside. I preserve, I conserve the works. I stick to the secretary of the interior who tells me how to deal with historic artifacts. These aren't just a monument. These are now historic artifacts by the time I'm working on them. We stick to the same rules. Do no harm. Conservators are sometimes accused of moving slowly. But we try to maintain that we don't do anything that isn't reversible, that can't be undone, or that we're using all the proper materials and all the proper techniques in preserving these stones. I fix broken stones. Some of them big broken stones. This is location, location, location. Think about this when you pick your plot. This is for a girl. This is Jerusha, wife of Daniel, her husband next door. She's been hit by a car, I think, three times now. She's in the front row of a cemetery. They raised the road up. This is out in Richmond, Mass. So they get the nice icy weather. It's on a curve. And people come around the curve and go off the road and down the hill and hit Jerusha. She's been put together several times. At one point prior to my repair, the top corner had been smashed beyond repair. It did get broken in the repair that I was working on. That section was replaced with a slightly different color. And the inscription was not carried on to that stone. And that's partially because we're following those rules set out by the secretary of the interior. You're supposed to see that that was repaired. You're supposed to know that that's new material. If you go to the Coliseum or any of the ruins in Europe, you will see this kind of technique. The new stone will either be marked with little black spots or maybe drill holes. So that you know that's the new stone. And then you can tell what the old original ruins are made of. I document everything before and after photos for Louisa Jones. She's standing up again. I have to fill out complete reports, what was done, what was wrong with it. Sometimes those are submitted to the Mass Historic Commission and they keep records on all these historic repairs. This is Maria Richman, who, you know, just over time, it's not vandalism. Probably a tree branch originally broke off the urn. She kept getting bumped by the monomers so she's a little twisted. She kept leaning a little bit so they'd pry her up and shove another rock under her. But that only lasts for so long. And we took her apart, we put her back together, removed all the rubble, and it got the urn back on top. This is in Richmond mass, so a Richmond was kind of an important stone to get done. So why do I care about these stones? Why shouldn't we care? I'm gonna tell you a little story here. This is Seth Stone and his wife, Mary Tufts. She's from Medford, Mass. These stones are located in my Branch Bridge Cemetery in New Salem. And I haven't been working at Medford at the time. Resetting quite a few Tufts stones at the moment. And I took the day off to work the voting booth in my town. And they took me in, sat me down next to someone I hadn't met in town before, turns out, and they introduced me as being on a cemetery commission. She was like, oh, we wanted to talk to you. She belonged to a group of women who didn't need a work. And they had found an old sampler made by Mary Tufts back in the 1700s, and it was at the Atfall Historical Society in the next town over. So they had done some research. They told me that Mary and Seth had moved to New Salem, followed his brother, Lucien Stone, to the area. That shortly after they were there, they weren't sure what happened, but Seth left Mary. And he went to live with this other woman in Atfall. Hence, that's how her belongings end up in Atfall. But they had record that she was buried in our center cemetery, but that her stone was out at Branch Bridge, so they were trying to check on this. They had paid to restore the sampler. They had all made copies of this sampler, and this is kind of what they did, and they did the research. They also told me that Mary and Seth never had children. So I took the information, I was trying to find out a little bit more to help them in locating exactly where the body was. Turns out Lucien Stone does own a plot in our center cemetery. We're not sure if anybody's there. There's no stone marking the burial, but maybe her husband just felt bad and had this stone put next to his out of Branch Bridge. But the next day when I went back into work, I walked by these two little stones, which were across this little pathway from where her father, who had died the same year she made the sampler, and her younger brother, who had also died about a year later, were buried. And these stones are facing east, and the son had some. And look, it says, Holly Stone, daughter of Seth and Mary Stone. I thought they didn't have any children. These stones are in Medford, is that right? Yeah, yeah, they're in Medford. They had this child. It had passed away 14 months. They had another child, very commonly. They named the second child the same name. She makes it for three years and four months, and she passes away. And then they moved out to New Salem. So what happened? Was she having medical problems because of this childbirth? Was she suffering depression over losing her children? What drew him to leave her and go to Adlaw? So we now know that they didn't have children. They're not recorded. They may be in some baptismal records somewhere, but those are burnt, too. But here is the stone that tells me Mary and Seth did, in fact, have children. They had two children. And it says, in memory of Mrs. Mary, wife of Mr. Seth Stone, I find it interesting that the last line is blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God. I'm thinking he was feeling a bit remorseful, and that this stone is actually just a sun attack. There's no body at this location. And then he just put it up next to where he was going to be buried. There's stories on all the stones. This is how in Princeton I find it interesting. And you have to watch for the long, what we call long S, that's not a F in that word. So cut down at so early a period in the midst of his commercial concerns, exclamation point. Let it teach the reader to set their affections on things above. He had a heart attack at work. He was only 31, 34 years old. His wife was pretty upset about that. She had that put on his stone to tell us all. But I find the final line on this is the one where she's really talking to us today, while drifting sad to tread among the silent dead. Think. This one kind of touched my heart. This is the young couple from Ohio. I'm originally from Ohio. It's out in, It both had the same day. Yes. Yes, this is out in Quincy. It's for John and Hannah. He was 22. She was 15. They have left Sainsville, Ohio and come to Quincy and we're working in the shoe factory. Now women couldn't work in a factory. So she had pulled her hair up under her hat, tried to dress more manly and was trying to make money with him so they could stay in Quincy. And you wore aprons, leather aprons so that she worked on these shoes. The story goes that someone tossed her an apple. She used her apron to catch the apple. Therefore they knew she was a woman. So instantly she was fired. He was fired. And if you're working at the factory, you had your home or your living space provided by the factory. Once they lost their job, they also lost their living space. And you see it's November 12th. The story says that they were found in a lover's frozen in a lover's embrace. They had died somewhere in the night and two hunters had found them. But what got me was that, that last line again, diluted by the writings of AJ Davis. Who was AJ Davis? I thought maybe he was the factory worker who had lured them there to work in his factory. No, in fact, he was a spiritualist and he gave lectures and they were drawn to the area to hear him speak and to be with other followers. And the father was so upset that in this town it's huge. It's like, you know, four and a half feet tall or so. And he spent, I mean, there's a lot of words and a lot of numbers. He spent a lot of money to have this stone made and installed in Quincy, even though he lived in Zanesville, Ohio. And to include this man's name because he felt he was the cause that he had lost his daughter. Then poor Harrison Walker. He perished by the destruction of the steamer, Lexington, in the Long Island Sound. And I love that they tell me this stuff on their sound. He was just 18 years old. I want you to mark the date here. It's January 13th. This is winter time. And so the story goes that this paddle boat steamer would cross from the Long Island Sound from Long Island to Connecticut. It was always running back and forth trying to keep up with the train. It didn't take people over to Connecticut to connect with the train. Sometimes they would run little competitions between the boats to see who could get there faster, whatever. They had bought, this company had bought this boat from Cornelius Vanderbilt. And it had originally been made to burn wood, but they decided to burn coal a little bit hotter, a little bit faster than they could go. On this particular night, they had 150 bales of cotton aboard the ship. We all kind of know where this start was going, right? So it caught fire. And there was a small fire going and the captain saw it. It was around the steam pipe, or the pipes. And he sent men down to work on it to put out the fire. But he thought, of course we'll be fine. He wants to catch the train. He's trying to keep up. He doesn't turn back. He's only about a mile off short the time he sees the fire. He keeps going. It's four PM, I think, when he sees the fire starting. But it's dark, because it's January. So he keeps going and he thinks they'll be fine. They get farther out into the sound and the blaze just takes over. At one point it burns through the rudder rope. They can no longer steer. They're just afloat. The story goes that the captain fell into one of the lifeboats. We're not sure about that. But the lifeboat, if you look close, you can see the lifeboat gets drugged under the paddle wheel and he's killed along with several other people. If you didn't die in the fire, you froze in the water. This is the Titanic all over again. Everybody's out there clinging to bails of this cotton trying to sail out, but they froze. It was a hundred and 68, I think. People that died in this. And only four survivors, mostly crew members. And this is a Courier Knives print of it. It was one of the most popular prints that Courier Knives did. And if you find one of these, you're really lucky. Maybe it's hanging over someone's living room. But then there's my little, final walker who I believe is a cousin of Harrison who also dies aboard ship. He had been sent on the U.S. warring to the Pacific or should I say, par-sific. This is the right down there. But he had left Boston, went down and around the horn and up the other side he was aboard what they considered a slew of warship. It's a smaller supply ship. It would run between land and the other ships taking supplies and paying off things. I'm not sure how Philo passed. I couldn't find any information on his exact passing. But there was a story about the acting master on this ship had to go pay off all the people that he had got supplies with on the mainland. They took a small dinghy and about five or six guys in the boat with him he had $900. They never came back. They finally found the dinghy and the acting master was dead and had been robbed. They put out I guess an APB for sailors on land carrying lots of money. They never did catch the guys but this was the type of thing that happened. I mean there were pirates in the Pacific at that time. He could have lost his life in any number of ways. But he probably wasn't returned to Belcher Town where his stone stands. This is why he's on a stone with his mother I believe. Then poor Simon Wayne, he died from drinking too much cold water. And we laughed but this is a real thing. And unfortunately one of my stone mason friends just went through this. His son got overheated, drank too much cold water. He wasn't feeling well. He sat down for a little bit. And when he stood up he became dizzy, passed out, smashed his face. What probably happened is he was working in, to Simon as he was working in the field, became a little overheated, drinking cold water from a well. Your body thinks you're dying. Your stomach's so cold. So it takes all the blood from all your extremities, your brain, your feet, your hands and sends it to the stomach to try and warm up that water. And so a lot of people pass out. That's the more natural thing that happens. But of course sometimes they do pass. And poor Benjamin, he was sent out, get some sand, probably mixing some mortar to build something, an eight year old, sent to get sand. Ironically his stone is in the front part of this cemetery in Belcher town. And at the back of the cemetery is the sand bank in which he was probably killed. And here poor Aaron, they show us what happened to him. He got crushed by boards. They were probably stacked, right? And he was climbing on them. He was only two years old and collapsed the boards on top of himself. And we get the imagery of that. And yet they're talking to us again. Parents, parents dear, your idols all take down. Least God shall, or should still upon you frown. So that's warning all of us, you know. Don't lose your little one because God's mad at you because you got your idols in the wrong place. I find this one very interesting mainly because of what we would consider a European dating when you have the day before the month. So I'm interested in where Mr. Oliver Hildreth came from but once again the day here January 22nd, he was occasioned by the throw from a slide. So he may have bumped his head and at that time we didn't have antibiotics and brain surgery so he had passed on the 22nd of January. Now you might not recognize this name but some of you might recognize the date. July 6th, 1944. Hang it out, another? P.J. B.J. B.J. Well no, it is during the war but it's the heart for the service fire. This is a very big tragedy. And what had happened here is several different things kind of happened. First off, the tents were covered with a mixture of wax and gasoline. They melted the wax into the gasoline and applied it to the tent to make a waterproof. That was a common practice. Fireproof, not so good. At the time of the fire it was a weekend and the place was packed. They had been out passing tickets out in downtown. Poor little Eleanor and her siblings were there. Her mother, they were originally from South Hampton. Her mother was separated from her husband. She had went down to Hartford to get a job as a secretary. She left her three children, Donald, Edward and Eleanor, with her sister. It was a long weekend in the summertime and kids were out of school. She was off work. She thought, well, I'll have them down for the weekend and we can have fun. She invited them down. They happened to be out and they got some of those free tickets for the circus. So they went to the circus. And the fire breaks out. People are running around a panic. They get separated. Donald and his mother both survived the fire. But his younger brother and sister, Edward and Eleanor, don't. And there are unclimbed bodies. It's a real long thing. And originally Eleanor is marked as Little Miss 1565. And she kind of becomes famous. People feel really bad for this little girl. She doesn't get it identified. Mildred, her mother was injured during the fire. She's in the hospital, can't claim the body. The aunt and uncle come down, pick up Donald and go to the morgue. They identify Edward and were able to claim him. But they couldn't identify Eleanor. And they kept presenting this Miss 1565 as if that was Eleanor. Even if picture is taken to Mildred in the hospital, she said, no, that's not my daughter. That's not my daughter. Eleanor was six. She was blonde. She was dressed in a little dress. The picture that they brought is of an older girl, about eight years old, much bigger, brunette. So the story goes on and on. And Eleanor, or whoever, is left in this Little Miss 1565 down in Hartford in this mass grave area. And the story keeps being brought up and brought up. 1.2 detectives start trying to research who this person was. They try to make claims that it's Eleanor Cook. There is a note left on the grave saying that, no, this is Sarah Ann, I believe is her name, Sarah Graham. She's a twin. Her brother is also buried there just a few feet away from where Little Miss 1565 is buried. And it keeps going back and forth about who this child is. Donald's mother, Eleanor's mother passes away right before she passes away. Donald gets it that he wants to bring his sister home. He's convinced that this is, he needs closure. So it's around 1987, a book comes out, you know, suggesting all these things that this is Eleanor. She's finally moved in 1991. The mother passes in 1997. The mother up until her dying breath says this is not her daughter. Donald's convinced it is and has her buried in South Hampton. But whether it is or not, we're not sure. And those lines at the bottom, always get me, this is your brass miss Gilbert. And he died in 1852. He was only 30 years old. His brother and his sister-in-law are buried next to him. He was moved from a cemetery into the Quabin Park Cemetery when all the towns were dismantled and to make the Quabin Resort. And it says, oh no, he died and left behind a fame that none would wish to share. This drives me nuts. I'm like, okay, so what's on it? So my friends are saying, maybe you had the legitimate children. Really? And your parents are gonna put that on your stone? Maybe they did some bad business dance. Really? And your family put that on your stone? Remember, they're talking to us. They're talking to us. I went through the Greenfield recorder, found his obituary. It doesn't say anything except he died suddenly. And they're talking to us. He was unmarried, had no children. I feel that it's possibly a suicide. And that his brother or whoever had this stone made is trying to tell us that. Because I can't imagine that they're trying to tell me he was a bad businessman or something like that. But there was no description about how he died or anything except that it was sudden. And this is one of my favorite, or I should say least favorite stones. This is in New Salem. It says, here lie the remains of Josiah Wilcox's third wife, aged 44. In 15 minutes from Feebo Health, God took her life and stopped her breath. What's her name? What's her name? When did she die? Now I know she was a third wife, not the second or the fourth. Josiah Wilcox didn't even live in my town. He must have been passing through when she, in 15 minutes, dropped. He has all these, there's six letters there, age 44. He couldn't have given me her name, Abigail Susan, something so I could find her. I just find this very upsetting. And if I ever find her, and I've got various people searching for this one, if we ever, but we don't even have a date of her death. I'm going strictly by the carving on the stone and the few little clues I can find to find out who this woman is, but I would really like to get a stone with her name on it. But it's that ownership. So she was a consort. And then this is really why I do it. This is Darren Quawvin Park. I was up on the hill fixing a huge sandstone obelisk and I had to put fill in. You got to wait for it to set up. I had nothing to do. This stone happens to be done by a carver that's did a lot of work in New Salem and it was covered with like, it just couldn't even read it. I was like, this was really bothering me. I had time while I was waiting for stuff to set up. So I cleaned this stone. Took me about an hour in between my trips back and forth to the sandstone. When I got it all done, this guy shows up. Not 10 minutes later. That's his ancestor. If he would have shown up the day before you, and he was from, I think, Tennessee or Texas and had traveled up and was doing family research and he was able to read that stone. I got out of a little reflector. We were able to read everything and he copied it down. He was so excited, I wanted his picture. But this is why we do it. So people can find their people. So I suggest to all of you, get out, go out, find those stories in the stone. Even if they're not yours, you might have to do some math to figure out what they're trying to tell you. He was 86, he was 24. How is that his third wife? Figure it out. But there's stories out there for all of us to find. Time for questions. Just a couple. Yeah, it's one o'clock almost. Yes. How did you get interested in this, to start? Okay, the short story is, I moved up to Massachusetts from New York City and I'm wandering around in one of the beautiful cemeteries looking at the artwork. And a woman there doing family research said, are you looking for someone special? And I said, no, I'm just enjoying the artwork. She says, well, you might want to know about the Association for Cravestone Studies. And she said, and it's in Greenfield. I could find it. I found that. And I just fell in love. This is something that I do. The long story is, I was four years old when my brother, who was 19, died in a car wreck. I spent every day for the next two years, sometimes twice a day, going to the cemetery. It's where I learned to read. So I studied all the rocks up close. I just fell in love with them. And I've always taken care of family sounds. So it just kind of, and what else do you do with fine art degree? I don't have a great degree. Any other? Yes. I've seen private cemeteries in rural Plymouth maps. And one of them has a couple of lettered stones. And then there is a stone that has been clearly placed there by just a plain stone. And the history indicates a suicide in the cemetery. Was this a common practice? This is mid to late 19th century. Common practice was, you were on the other side of the fence. You were not in the cemetery, if you were a suicide. That was usually. Now in another cemetery, in also in Plymouth, but an organized cemetery, not a private. Right. The husband, or let's say, divorced husband is on the other side of the cemetery from the rest of the family. And again, it's the stone that has a little plaque on it. Later put on, I suspect. And I hear in Plymouth, there's the question of Austin Dickinson. And his rock, which is a little bit different from anything else in the family. So I wonder whether there's anything going on there. Bob, do you know? You mean about Austin? Yeah. He was in the dog house. He's buried in the family plot. No one in his immediate family felt implying to get him a respectable gravestone. So he just has a boulder with a plaque on it. Actually, he does have a small marker. And his gravestone, but it's a third the size of everybody else. It's just initials too, right, Bob? I think it is. Yeah, it's W-A-T. A-G, right. Yeah. So. Sorry, do you know when the boulder was put in? I don't. I think it was placed by his colleagues and Amherst College, so. Yeah, something like that. And it's outside the family plot. It's a memorial rather than a gravestone. Yeah, so sometimes they're. So this question of unmarked stones, or stones marked but separated from the rest of the family. Right, nice. Or separated from your stuff. Is this a 19th century local tradition? I don't think it's a tradition, but I've heard of other. There was very well-to-do family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the one daughter was kind of crazy. And they took care of her. She had a little room in the back of the house, but when she passed, they put her on the other side of the cemetery, not in the family plot. And I'm not sure why. I mean, it happens on and off for different reasons, I'm sure. Yeah. Thank you. Nice.