Now that we are right in the middle of spooky season and I have been traveling all over the state of Massachusetts in recent days for get-togethers with friends, visiting family, having my car repaired/prepped before the frost starts appearing on my windshield and other Halloween-centric activities and adventures, I thought I’d share three of the famous headstones I pass on a regular basis during my travels and a little history behind them.
New England is a hub of all things macabre and morbid – we have the entire town of Salem as a tourist attraction, for crying out loud! – but there are so many quirky, unusual and borderline bizarre spots all over the place that it can be easy to miss them if you’re not looking – including these cemeteries/graves of famous (and infamous!) figures.
Perhaps one of my favorite, and the closest in proximity to my apartment is the grave of Warren Gibbs (buried at the Knight’s Corner Burial Ground in Pelham, Massachusetts.) After dying of food poisoning from ingesting spoiled oysters, Gibbs’ brother – not particularly fond of his sister-in-law, evidently – erected a headstone for his brother that flat-out blamed Gibbs’ wife of intentionally poisoning him with arsenic. The inscription carved into the stone reads:
Think my friends when this you see
How my wife hath dealt by me
She in some oysters did prepare
Some poison for my lot and share
Then of the same I did partake
And nature yielded to its fate
Before she my wife became
Mary Felton was her name.
Erected by his Brother
WM. GIBBS
It should be noted that Mary Gibbs was never tried or convicted of any crime or wrongdoing, and lived to be 74 before she herself passed and was buried in nearby Belchertown, Massachusetts – but the absolute insanity of her late husband’s headstone is proof that people could be just as petty in 1860 as they can be now. Whenever I’m passing through the area and I have time – I just like to stop and look at this one.
Next, and directly down the street from where I went to high school is Bay Path Cemetery in Charlton, Massachusetts – and if you take a look around the graveyard (which doesn’t have great street parking – just a heads up!) you may find the final resting place of John “Grizzly” Adams – who also died in 1860.
Grizzly Adams, who always makes me think of ‘Happy Gilmore’ when mentioned, was a skilled mountain man, for sure – but he also captured/imprisoned wild animals that he would train and later sell to circuses and zoos – so there’s that to take into consideration when looking at history.
Many of his family are buried beside him, and although his headstone is pretty faded – you can still kind of see what’s left of his famous portrait (with his grizzly bear named Benjamin Franklin beside him) above his name.
And finally, buried in the same graveyard as my grandparents and a few other members of my family in North Oxford, Massachusetts is the very fancy – and huge – grave for Clara Barton, the founder of The American Red Cross, who was born and raised in Oxford and died just a couple of days before the Titanic sank.
Her plot also contains her parents and her four siblings (and some of their spouses. Others, oddly enough – are buried near Grizzly Adams’ grave in Bay Path Cemetery in Charlton,) and can be spotted from the main path that cuts through the cemetery by the large red cross near the main headstone.
I walk by this one constantly when I’m close to home and am bringing flowers for my relatives.
There are so many other headstones/graves and unusual landmarks I’d love to share someday – including some truly morbid monuments. I’m going to see if I can snap some photos of them before Halloween to keep up with the spooky theme this month!
And if you have any New England-based spots like this you think I should check out, feel free to drop me a line. I’m always looking for unique things to check out around my region!
xo
Coffee & Chiffon 