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Name: Moses Wheler
Location: Stratford, CT
Date: 1688
100 years in the late 17th century was a damn good innings.~
Location: Stratford, CT
Date: 1688
100 years in the late 17th century was a damn good innings.~
Category Photography / Miscellaneous
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 1280 x 1175px
File Size 678.9 kB
And if it wasn't a boast on the carver's part (or the surviving family's), M. Wheler was born in 1588 (possibly 1587, as January 15th is at the very beginning of the year, and the odds are good he didn't make it to his birthday proper that year, when he would've been 101 (1688 minus 101 is 1587)). The tongue of stone, looking hand-carved and roughly hewn, might perhaps have the best, most permanent recollection of the existence of this man so long ago, so long after the fact. I suspect there were parish records (or had been) that existed in the day of the fellow buried beneath (or the limited remains- 340 years of ground-buried bodily decay is a while!) the soil before that stone, but in a century and a half, such records could've been lost, destroyed, or decayed in the meantime.
I marvel at the fact that even this record of an European emigrant to North America, or their descendants thereof, might manage to remain legible today, despite the information-carrier of the rough-carved headstone being limited to his age, his name and date of death. I wonder what he might think, were he to see modern Connecticut on the same soil, but surrounded by our modern world and technology thus.
GiC, do you find it usually takes a bit of extra effort in a given cemetery (even if it contains a considerable number of very old burials altogether) to find a bit of a historical treasure like Moses' headstone? I know something like a stoneworker's carved stonework (as opposed to a family finding a stone that was simply large and solid enough to put the inscription in by the chisel and hammer of a son or grandson, nephew or uncle) might be a luxury, when in those days you might be worrying more about tending the upcoming harvests, the well-being of your animals, and keeping well-enough fed and warm in the winter to keep something like influenza or smallpox from wiping out your whole family; and of course a New World European burial from the 1600s, still legible now, is also a bit of a treasure.
-2Paw.
I marvel at the fact that even this record of an European emigrant to North America, or their descendants thereof, might manage to remain legible today, despite the information-carrier of the rough-carved headstone being limited to his age, his name and date of death. I wonder what he might think, were he to see modern Connecticut on the same soil, but surrounded by our modern world and technology thus.
GiC, do you find it usually takes a bit of extra effort in a given cemetery (even if it contains a considerable number of very old burials altogether) to find a bit of a historical treasure like Moses' headstone? I know something like a stoneworker's carved stonework (as opposed to a family finding a stone that was simply large and solid enough to put the inscription in by the chisel and hammer of a son or grandson, nephew or uncle) might be a luxury, when in those days you might be worrying more about tending the upcoming harvests, the well-being of your animals, and keeping well-enough fed and warm in the winter to keep something like influenza or smallpox from wiping out your whole family; and of course a New World European burial from the 1600s, still legible now, is also a bit of a treasure.
-2Paw.
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