Ancient Burial Ground Hartford CT

It is November so I guess it was time for another colonial cemetery. This time I was intrigued by a photo of a single random stone someone posted on FaceBook and with as little planning as usual off we went!

I did not expect to find what we did – a small but well packed cemetery with the strangest and most beautiful colonial era stones surrounded by the city itself. Adding to their uniqueness most were sandstone, likely imported from New York (or I guess New Amsterdam as it was called back in the day) rather than the Boston and Rhode Island slate that filled most of the rest of New England. It was… intriguing.

My travel companion grabbed a pamphlet at the entrance and went about in an organized manner trying to find each historical figure. Normally I follow along and listen to him read aloud but today… the ADHD gremlin bit me HARD and I was let loose into that cemetery with all the enthusiasm and lack of focus as a rabid Jack Russel terrier in a pit full of meth addled squirrels. I zipped from stone to stone, squealing in excitement, looking at the strange artwork on each just soaking it all in.

I did an exceptionally poor job of listening to my historical lecture and honestly all I remember by heart is that this was the final resting place of 15 (16?) black mayors of Hartford (who would have been mayors of their own segregated part of the city which sadly had little to do with the rest of the white population) and the first Irish immigrant. What follows is my research I have done after getting home…

Although today the cemetery is quite small it used to be far more expansive with perhaps up to 6,000 people buried here. Up to 90% of those would have not had the financial means to erect a stone and were thus interred in unmarked graves. Since the real estate it is situated on became valuable much of it was eventually built on top of. People buried here include many important local officials, even some who were involved with the hanging of witches back in the day. At least five, not 15, my bad, black mayors were buried here. A new marker was created to honor the black inhabitants of this cemetery and as such it’s on the African-American Heritage Tour. As for the first Irish immigrant he was actually the first Irish immigrant to Hartford not the US in general so I’m much less interested, but his name was Phenias Wilson (1628-1692) if you want to find him. His stone is one of the first to have a skull on it!

My three favorite graves were purely based on needless drama which colonial New England was FULL of. The first was an unfortunate man who was struck by lightning and instantly killed while he was standing in his kitchen. His grave marker reads “Here lies interd the remains of Capt Isreal Seymour who was kill’d by lightning Augst. 14th 1784, in the 49th year of his age. With awful rev’rence GOD adore Whose holy hand with sov’reign pow’r Did in an instant stop his breath And closed his eyes in sleep of death.” The little poem on that is good enough for me but the fact local ministers used his death to fear monger people to god was the cherry on top of the cake. Best be kissing up to god or else he might fry your sinning ass too!

The second stone could have been ripped out of a colonial era soap opera. It was that of Richard Edwards and his second wife Mary. Edward was 20 during his first marriage and his new bride was 22 year old Elizabeth Tuttle. In two decades she gave him six children but the first Edwards always claimed was a bastard as he was conceived before the wedding. In 1689 after the honeymoon phase was long dead Edward, who was a man of means being an attorney himself, tried to file for a divorce saying his wife was insane and adulterous. He may have been projecting just a little because after this petition failed he once again tried to get a divorce in 1691 this time claiming his wife was threatening to cut his throat while he slept. He claimed she was genetically predestined to be a murderess because her brother had once murdered their sister. This time the courts granted his request and the freshly divorced Elizabeth disappeared into the mists of history while her ex almost immediately married 27-year-old Mary Talcott who the town believed he was already playing hide the sausage with. She bore him six more children so he could have an even dozen (or 11 if the first one really was a bastard. Hard to say.) Apparently the two were able to regain composure in the church and eventually have a grandson who’d become one of the most prominent religious leaders in the colonial era.

But my favoritest stone was the triple monument of the Beauchamp sisters honoring Susannah McLean (1711-1741) Margaret Chevenard (1708-1783) and Maryane Keith (1696-1784.) The pamphlet says thusly about this stone: “In an unusual departure from custom these three married women were memorialized first as sisters, next as daughters, and last as wives, suggesting they shared a powerful emotional bond.” Yes, I am sure that’s what this means, and not three women’s last fuck you to patriarchy. Beauchamp sisters, I got your message loud and clear. I hope you’re still floating around somewhere kicking butt.

And so that was my trip to the cemetery! You should totally go see this one if you can. So much charm. So much drama. So much bizarre gravestone art. What’s not to love?

November 21, 2023 0

Cedar Hill Cemetery Hartford Connecticut

Yesterday we ventured out to see the Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford Connecticut because we heard it was the final resting place of Katherine Hepburn and we’d never been to the grave of a modern celebrity before. Why not? We drove a few hours, this time knowing it closes at 4PM. Still, with 270 acres to poke out we knew we’d be out there for a while.

We managed to snag a spot in their weirdly limited parking up at the church and began to ankle it into the cemetery itself, which was down a long, paved driveway of sorts. On the way there was a nice view of the Autumn leaves over a body of water. A couple benches were here too just in case you wanted to linger, though there wasn’t a gravestone in sight for quite a while.

There were however pamphlets on the way in to take self-guided tours or an audio tour. This is where things got interesting because our previous internet search had only said that Katharine Hepburn and Yung Wing – the first Chinese man to graduate an American University (Yale) were buried there. But there were SO MANY other interesting people here!

I am only going to mention the ones that I found interesting because there were literally dozens and I don’t want this blog entry to be a book. But here we go! There were several friends of Mark Twain, an ungodly amount of bankers and founders of insurance agencies including JP Morgan himself (who I guess got filthy wealthy “funneling capital for Europe to the emerging American economies.”) Jacob Weidenmann who was the cemetery’s landscape architect (and what a lovely job he did. The trees here were stunning! All in their Autumn colors!) Several actors including Katharine Hepburn, Robert Ames, and Fern Andra, several artists including William Gedney Bunce, Albert Entress, William Glackens, and George Wright. Samual Colt who founded Colt’s Patent Firearms Company largely recognized for the improvement of the manufacturing of revolvers. If it’s women’s history you’re in need of there was Isabella Beecher Hooker who was a suffragist and who fought for the Married Women’s Property Law which passed in 1877. And Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was known for being the father of deaf education in the US founding what is known today as The American School for the Deaf. There were several inventors including the guy who figured out how to produce horseshoe nails by machine George Capewell which adorably had horseshoe nails carved into his stone.

But my two favorite monuments went to one for creepy creativity and the other for just being fascinating. Mark Howard was a prominent figure in the insurance agency and for whatever reason after he died he had a pyramid erected as his monument. Now, I’ve seen pyramids before but this was the first one that came with an angel playing peek-a-boo from the door. It was both gorgeous and slightly terrifying. I just don’t think angels should be peeking out from anywhere. That’s some sneaky behavior! But an even more impressive monument went to Horace Wells a dentist who discovered the use of nitrous oxide (laughing gas) as an anesthetic and died at 33. Someone put a lot of effort into showing his achievements on his four-sided stone that showed a woman awake and a woman at sleep through anesthesia. Eerie and striking. This was my favorite piece of art in the whole cemetery.

We’d eventually find what we came for – the modest monument to Katharine Hepburn. People had left a tennis ball, a golf ball, and several lipsticks. I don’t know much about her, haven’t even seen any of her movies, literally only know her from one interview with Dick Cavette which I watched with great amusement for her complete inability to sit like a normal person in a chair.

All and all it took us two hours to find the monuments recognized by letters in the pamphlet. We did not find the bonus list or wander beyond the sections shown in the pamphlet. Cedar Hill is 270 acres which means it just keeps going! I didn’t even mention all the war leaders or politicians but there were a number of them too. In any event this cemetery was one of the prettiest I have been to and was so expansive that there was really something for everyone here.

And so that was our trip. I highly suggest this cemetery to any history buffs, taphophiles, or anyone just looking for a relaxing afternoon stroll.

October 25, 2023 0

The House of Seven Gables – Salem MA

It was two in the morning the night before when we both were lamenting that we hadn’t planned anything for the next day – our weekly excursion. I said we could always wing something before my companion said he really wanted to go to Salem to see the House of Seven Gables. I have been to Salem many times, usually during the Halloween season, and I absolutely love walking around the touristy section and enjoying the general vibe. This was a place for misfits of all sorts and I was more than happy to go.

We slept for a few hours, got up and started our fairly miserable journey through Boston and onto Salem. I’ve been to the House of Seven Gables before but I was just knee high to a grasshopper at the time and my travel companion had a very similar experience. We both wanted to see if it’d be any better as an adult.

When I went as a kid the whole tour was based on Nathaniel Hawthorne – who never actually lived there but who had used the house as inspiration for what was at the time a globally popular book. I was a voracious reader as a kid but I never much liked Nathaniel Hawthorne… he struck as someone with an overinflated opinion of his own writing, which let’s face it – was the soap opera of the day. I could have probably forgiven this if it weren’t for a few other annoying personality traits – a penchant for whining and misogyny among them. All I remembered from this tour was the weird super tight staircase which I’ll get to in a moment.

I must say the young woman who led the tour on this day did a fantastic job telling us about everything – the house’s actual owners through the years, the wait staff which were at times slaves and indentured servants, and we even learned about the architecture and design. But perhaps the thing I was most struck by was this new feminine vibe. We got to learn all about a series of women involved with the house who were absolutely brilliant in eschewing the gender rules of the time including a Ms. Caroline Emmerton who refused marriage so she could inherit her family’s fortune which she then used to restore the House of Seven Gables so she could wield it’s fame to benefit her philanthropic adventures. To this day the house is still host to both citizenship classes and initiation ceremonies. Maybe this is why the word slave on all the historical markers has been changed to ‘enslaved individuals.’

The main part of the house was built in 1668 and it’s the oldest post and beam home still on it’s original foundation in the US today. To my great joy we got to see the ‘bones’ of the house in the attic – which included 2 foot wide timber planks, some sort of long forgotten mortar/insulation, and good old fashioned horse hair plaster. We were told there were wooden planks even wider at the time but anything over two feet was deemed the king’s wood and shipped back to England. Bit mind blowing when you think about it.

Of course the rest of the house showed off the wealth of various eras and how they got to be that way. I was amused by the profound abundance of Chinese and Asian decorating styles – everything from the dishes to the wallpaper! Apparently this was a way to show how worldly and well connected the merchants who lived here were. I had to wonder if genuinely Chinese people were decorating their own houses so garishly at this time or was this a ploy to sell to white people. Secretly, I hope for the latter.

The house was a fun walk through time as each addition shows how life improved from the dingy tiny oven-free kitchen of the 1600’s to the exceptional wealth of the next two hundred years or so. And yes, there was a weird hidden staircase, super thin and windy, put there as a bit of a tip of the hat to Hawthorne’s story which included such a mystery entrance to let a killer get away. It was SUPER tight going up those stairs and just as fun as it was when I was a wee one.

We had a lot of fun and picked up a couple books at the gift store that looked like they might have ideas for additional travels… And so ended our tour and began the rest of our visit to the beautiful seaside village of Salem where we continued our adventures at The Pirate Museum.

July 18, 2021 0

Fort Knox – Prospect Maine

After failing to find my fall foliage up Mount Battie I continued my journey onward hoping to reach Acadia and go up Cadillac Mountain to see if their foliage was any better, but first I wanted to stop off in Bucksport for some local folklore. So how then did I end up at Fort Knox which wasn’t even on my list? Distraction. That’s how. I saw a sign on the way stating, “Fort Knox, three miles thattta way!” and well… I cancelled my GPS route and the rest is history.

I had been to Fort Knox when I was a tween, several life times ago, and I remember I liked going but not anything I had seen. I just had a vague memory of it being really dark. When I drove in the toll gate operator asked if I wanted to buy a ticket to the observatory for two extra dollars. I was unaware there was an observatory but for two bucks how can you go wrong? She was super excited I sprang for the extra two dollars, far more so than I would expect someone to be… but hey, if I can make someone that happy that easy it’s all good!

I realized when I got there that this was a strange destination for a single woman with no children or military background to go. There were plenty of other people here but most were families or couples and a few single old men who were clearly military buffs at the very least. They gave me a couple odd looks but the staff seemed thrilled to see me so I was content.

I walked around the fort and of course being me I found the dankest hole I could and started there. It was the entrance to the B Battery. I started descending the stairs into a dark brick pit going down, down, down. All of a sudden I felt intensely anxious. It wasn’t pitch black, I could still see, and there was nowhere to hide on the staircase so it’s not as if someone could jump out at me but that’s exactly how I felt. So I did what I always do in this situation. I started talking to the walls. “Heeeeeey, I can sense someone’s here… just wanted to let you know I am not here to disturb anything. Just walking through, taking a few photos, don’t want to bother you but I hope you can forgive my trespass..” Immediately the feeling lifted. You can blame this on psychology or ghosts, I don’t care, I just know it made me more at ease.

After that initial oddness the fort proved to be a fascinating and completely disorienting maze of brick archways and darkened chambers. I didn’t have a flashlight but I am assuming there was nothing in there, maybe a Halloween prop or two. The staff had clearly got their giggles earlier when they spread zombie baby dolls and alien corpses intermittently through out – either in honor of Halloween or to illustrate a forgotten conspiratorial history. Still haven’t figured out if the cockroaches and spiders painted onto a display bed’s canopy was for Halloween or some sort of trite commentary on the state of things back in the day.

Anyway, I was very much alone through most of this tour of lower buildings. Fort Knox is huuuuuuge, utterly enormous, probably the closest thing I can think of to a castle the states has to offer. However very little is marked. On these lower levels I was hard up to find any plaques or explanations, nothing. Occasionally you’ll see label. One such label was “hot furnace” for a strange outside structure. Later I learned that “hot furnaces” were implements of mass destruction. Apparently lobbing cannon balls at invading ships was not sufficient so they started throwing the cannon balls into the furnace, heating them up until they glowed red, and then lobbing them at the enemy. Wooden ships would not only suffer catastrophic holes but also would immediately start bursting into flames from the heat of these cannons. Terrifying thought. Brutal. Gruesome. Perfect for Haunted History…

Took me forever to figure out how to get back up. From what I could gather there seemed to be three, maybe four levels of fort to explore. I went through batteries, powder magazines, a crude kitchen, some barracks. I marveled at some cannons still on the property that were so enormous they took twelve men to maneuver. This fort wasn’t fucking around!

I was struck by the architecture. And the feel of the place… sometimes eerie, other times placid and calm. I thoroughly enjoyed my visit spending more than two hours scuttling around like a half-drown ship rat. I even took what I think is my best marble photo to date. I have no idea how I had forgotten so much of this place. I guess kids being kids they don’t remember a goddamn thing you do for them anyway… “Remember that time we went to Disney?” “I remember that damn mouse that made me cry.” “That’s ALL you remember? We spent thousands on that vacation!” I have heard that conversation so many times I wish I could collect change on it. Ah well, c’est la vie.

This was a great distraction – totally worth the detour. I would even go again if someone else wanted to see it.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!

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October 6, 2017 0