ERECTED
In Memory of
Alexander Bell
Who Departed this Life
January 1834 in the
82nd year of his
age
This stone is a substantial work of folk art, and it is interesting to speculate how far that art might have gone if it had not been snuffed out by the arrival of industrial monument companies.
A beautiful work by a German craftsman. Father Pitt is not an expert in German, but the inscription seems to be in Franconian:
Hier ruht
die Gattin von
JOH. H. BOERTZLER
gb. Maria Wunderlin
Gebor. 1 Marz 1829
Gest. 28 August 1875
Ein freues Weib und
eine wahre Mutter
warst Du und das sagt
Alles! Alles!
Anyone with a better knowledge of German dialects is invited to submit a better translation, but here is old Pa Pitt’s attempt:
Here lies
the wife of
Johann H. Boertzler
Born March 1, 1829
Died August 28, 1875
A joyful wife and
a true mother
were you, and so says
everybody! Everybody!
This is a very unusual tombstone, handmade by a folk artist of some skill, the way the early settlers’ tombstones were made, but as late as 1871. Almost all English-speaking craftsmen were put out of business by the mechanized monument industry in the 1840s, but in German-speaking communities local craftsmen continued to work until the early twentieth century, and that is our explanation. The church that owned this cemetery was originally a German church, and other handmade tombstones in the cemetery are in German; here an English-speaking family must have hired a German craftsman.
The inscription is mostly legible, but Father Pitt was unable to interpret some of the numbers:
…the Memory
of
Letitia Lee
Consort of Joseph Lee
Who departed this life
July —th A. D. 1871
Aged — years 10 mths
— days
Note the term “consort,” already well out of fashion, but the usual term for “wife” on tombstones of the late 1700s and early 1800s. Mr. Lee or his stonecutter had very old-fashioned tastes.
An easily identified work of the Master of the Robinson Run Reliefs, whose trademarks are all present:
Interestingly, there is a Henry Huls buried in the Peters Creek Baptist Church Cemetery, whose tombstone is also by the Master of the Robinson Run Reliefs. We therefore know of at least three cemeteries in which this fine craftsman worked.
The inscription:
IN
memory of
AMELIA HULS
who departed this life
April 16th 1836 in the
49 year of her age
This is almost the archetype of the Slavic tombstone, with a fine folk-art crucifix to decorate it. With the help of Google, Wiktionary, and other Internet resources, we translate the Polish inscription thus:
HERE LIES
MARIAN
FABISZEWSKI
DIED MARCH 14, 1924.
—
Say a Hail Mary for Me
