The Vermont Old Cemetery Association

Epitaphs

Compiled by Joan Alexander for the Stones & Bones Curriculum

A Few Words About Epitaphs

I could be satisfied ignoring everything else a cemetery has to show and just concentrating on epitaphs, and maybe some of your students will be captivated by them also. Sometimes they are so hard to read on the old marble stones, or so buried in the grass that it is almost like playing detective to try and decipher the phrase or line of a poem.

My favorite is a chilling one which I first read in a cemetery in Glover, VT on the grave of Ellen Patterson, who died of Black Measles in 1863 at the age of 18 and whose marker is one in a line of her siblings who died in close succession. The epitaph - almost a riddle - is seen in similar versions in many other graveyards:

Stop my friends 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.

Janet Greene’s book, Epitaphs to Remember (Alan C. Hood & Company, Brattleboro, Vt. 1962) originally published as Over their Dead Bodies, organizes trends in epitaphs over time. Students will find her categorizing helpful:

Years	Time period in New England	What you will tend to find in inscriptions
through 1775	pioneer and colonial life	inscriptions reflect piety, church-going, thrift and hardwork; carvings warn of inevitability of death
1776-1815	new religious revival	American Revolution documented on stones, but not War of 1812; inscriptions talk about eternal peace and reunions in heaven
1816-1870	great social change and humanitarianism	epitaphs written to soothe the bereaved
1871-present	decline of Yankee epitaph as declaration of belief	today, usually only name and date recorded

Ms. Green’s book records over 200 epitaphs from around New England, many from Vermont.

Other Resources:

Epitaph and Icon by George & Nelson (Parnassus Imprints, Orleans, MA, 1983)

The Best of Gravestone Humor by Louis Schafer (Sterling Publishing Co., NY, 1990)

Famous Last Words by Gyles Brandreth (Sterling Publishing Co., NY)

This file last edited Tue 04-03-2001 8:54:01 pm.