The Museum Entrance, Note the Original Saltbox on Left
Time is something I often take for granted. I think of it frequently, mostly in the context of how much I’ve spent and how much I have left. Whenever I’m curious, I have time at my fingertips: my watch, or my phone, the wall clock, oven, microwave or even toaster. Everywhere we look, there are items listing the time, but like many things, it wasn’t always that easy.
Thomas Jefferson signed Simon Willard’s clock patent
Clockmaking spanned 3 generations and 104 years of Willards
About 22 people worked to complete one clock
A Lighthouse Clock
Sundials, water clocks, and hourglasses have all been utilized for their ability to measure time. When mechanical, tall, clocks were invented, they held the place of honor for hundreds of years. However, a man named Simon Willard completely changed that.
Hi everyone! Have you ever spent time in an old graveyard? Perhaps you’ve gone on a tour where you were instructed to notice the famous historical figures buried there. Or maybe you’ve played a game of hide and seek between the stones? (I was little, okay?) Or have you tactfully given the graveyard a wide berth when passing by on a dark night?
Whatever your feelings on the subject, I find myself to be fascinated with graveyards. A morbid interest, yes. However, picturing all the stories of the people whose names cover the headstones is humbling in a way.
Here are all these people, who lived lives just like you and me, and now they are gone. I read a name, and start wondering about what life was like for them. Sometimes you see that they lived to the ripe old age of 83, while others died before the age of 2.
In this particular graveyard, I trod for hours, snapping pictures and jotting down notes. The purpose of this finger-numbing exercise was to allow anyone to access the headstones online. For those who are researching their family history, sites such a findagrave.com and billiongraves.com offer thousands of graveyard files as resources. Volunteers input the information.
Sometimes the stones are well-worn, and require a lot of painstaking deciphering. Others look as if they were hewn yesterday, even though they’ve stood there for almost 200 years.
I realized that when you spend a lot of time in one graveyard, the names become familiar. Stories would come up at the Bolton Historical Society, mentioning one of the occupants, and I began to feel like I knew these people in a way. So let me tell you about a few of them.
The Nourse family left Salem because of a hanging
Be on the lookout for poems
Not all headstones are made of stone
The Nourse Family
They couldn’t decide on a name: Nurse, Nurss, Nourse?
Rebecca Towne Nurse was hung for witchcraft
After the Salem Witch Trials, the family left town
Most everyone has heard of the Salem Witch Trials, but have you ever thought about the aftermath? Even though her family believed Rebecca Nurse to be wrongly executed, the association with someone hung for witchcraft still followed them. Wishing for a fresh start, they moved to Bolton, Massachusetts, and tried changing their name. After several variations, they finally settled on Nourse.
In the West Cemetery, there are headstones with relatives bearing both the name Nurse, and Nourse.
Sarah Nourse
A Row of Nourse and Nurse Graves
David Nourse
The Grassie Monument
I love when poetry is inscribed on a gravestone. On this tall, brownstone monument is a lengthy poem describing George Grassie’s life. Born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, Grassie immigrated to Nova Scotia in 1813. There, he married his wife, Elizabeth. When his father died, he moved back to Scotland for a few years, then came back to North America in 1843. He lived the rest of his life in Bolton, dying at the age of 87.
Grassie’s distinctive commemoration stands out, towering above all but a few other stones. The poetry’s artful rhythm lends emotion to the dead man’s life.
All That’s Grey isn’t Stone
If you scan the headstones of the West Cemetery, you might notice that one memorial differs from all the others in its color. The pale grey is marvelously legible, and appears as though it has stood there only a few years. Look closely: what sort of stone could it be made of? The answer is – none! Metal (zinc carbonate) was a novel gravestone material, produced from about the 1870’s to the 1910’s.
The durability of the metal through time is impressive. Also, the center panel containing the names is removable. That way, if more family members wished to be added upon their passing, the metal plate could be updated and replaced.
Family genealogy is increasingly popular these days, and there are many resources to aid you in your search. Take a look at these two below, they’re free, and it doesn’t take long to type in a name or two. If you want to check out more of the headstones I talked about, just type in Nourse, in Bolton, Massachusetts. The West Cemetery will pop right up.
BillionGraves is the world′s largest resource for cemetery data. Our goal is to document every burial in every cemetery throughout the world before these precious records disappear.
Find A Grave is a free resource for finding the final resting places of famous folks, friends and family members. With millions of names, it is an invaluable tool for genealogist and history buffs.
