Lessons Learned in an Old Burying Ground
Llife and death and how they have been viewed in America over the years.
“In blooming you’ll behold I die. Dear friends, prepare, for death is nigh.”
The thought etched into the slender stone seems totally out of sync with a sunlit afternoon. I’m walking through (Southborough, Massachusetts’) Olde Burial Ground, past the barely readable, ancient tablets of stone with their familiar names–written on street signs and used to label parts of the town–Parkers, Fays, Newtons, Bellows and Brighams– people who made this place into Southborough. The sloping green of this cemetery bordered by a simple fieldstone wall rises above Route 30, remarkably quiet and detached from activity below. American flags put there by veterans for Memorial Day wave in a soft breeze. At the top of the hill, white-spired Pilgrim Congregational Church stands like a sentinel keeping watch.
Glancing again at Nabby Bellows’ grave, I wonder if this young girl really chose these grim words? Were they part of a favorite poem? We’ll never know. We have only that inscription, and these scant words carved 179 years ago:
“In memory of Mrs. Nabby, wife of Antepos Bellows who died September 30, 1820 at the age of 21.”
Among the Parkers I find—“In memory of two infant children, sons of Mr. Heman and Mrs. Peggy Parker, one born June 13, 1815, the other born……”(sunken)
The Fays seemed to have fared worse. Betsey died at 7 months, Polley at 3 years, Patty at 26, and Laura Ann at 31. I can’t help but wonder what happened. How did the Parker’s babies die? What caused so many of the Fay children to never get the chance to grow up? Did Nabby Bellows die in childbirth as so many of her female compatriots did then? Perhaps they were victims of tuberculosis, diphtheria, or some other communicable disease we’ve conquered.
“Olde Burial Grounds—erected in 1995 in memory of the members of the early generations of the town who were buried here, in graves marked and unmarked, between 1727 and 1895”, reads the inscription.
“The place of sudden death”, the first people to bury their dead here, the Nipmuk, termed it. Many of them died of Smallpox and Hepatitis brough by Europeans for which they had no immunity. Missionary John Eliot’s Christian Praying Indians continued using this same place, but they, too, were mostly gone, victims of King Philip’s War, when the Fays, Parkers, Bellows, Newtons and Brighams arrived.
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