Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Tombstone Tuesday - Samuel Whitney (1746-1812) in Westminster, Massachusetts

I stumbled across a picture of the gravestone of Samuel Whitney (1746-1812) yesterday...it was hiding in my Cemeteries file folder in My Pictures. Then I checked the death date on the gravestone and saw that he died in 1812, and realized that it was not for my 5th great-grandfather Samuel Whitney (1719-1782), but it was for his son, Samuel.


The gravestone is in Woodside Cemetery in Westminster, Worcester County, Massachusetts.  The Find A Grave memorial for this Samuel Whitney is here, and has a photo included.  The inscription on the stone says:


Erected in memory of

Mr. Samuel Whitney,
who died
June 7, 1812;
Æt. 66.

Here learn the end of earthly hopes and fears,
The hasty flight of numerous days and years.
Reader prepare to rest beneath the ground,
Till the archangels awful trump shall sound.


I took the picture above on 17 July 2004 while visiting Woodside Cemetery in Westminster after the memorial service for my aunt and uncle, Edward Richmond and Janet (Roukes) Seaver in Leominster.  

At the time, I thought that this was my 5th great-grandfather's stone because I didn't have a list of ancestors and their death dates with me.  Now I do on my iPhone with the Ancestry.com mobile app and the RootsMagic mobile app.  

Samuel Whitney (1719-1782), and his wife Abigail (Fletcher) Whitney (1720-1783), have memorials on Find A Grave, saying they are buried in Woodside Cemetery, but there are no pictures of their gravestones.  Perhaps they are in the cemetery records, or the town records, and the stones have been removed or were never erected.   I see that there is an open Photo request for Samuel Whitney (1719-1782) - I hope someone is able to do this!

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/11/tombstone-tuesday-samuel-whitney-1746.html

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver


2 comments:

Michigan Girl said...

Don't you just love those Massachusetts cemeteries? My husband has lots of ancestors there and we visited a few years ago.

Andrew said...

Thanks for sharing this beautiful post with us.