Antique snapshot photograph album dating to circa 1925–1930, containing 17 snapshot photographs of gravestones from New England and select locations beyond the region. Each snapshot is mounted on black paper pages and accompanied by handwritten epitaph transcriptions executed in white ink adjacent to the corresponding photograph.
Most photographs and epitaphs appear on corresponding pages. Three epitaph transcriptions do not have associated photographs, and one photograph does not have a corresponding epitaph. The album was acquired with the covers and pages loose and has been re-secured using period plastic album page grommets and cord.
The album features a leather cover embossed with a cabin and canoes on a lake scene, marked as a souvenir of St. Augustine, Florida.
Notable graves documented include Warren Gibbs, Pelham, Massachusetts, whose epitaph attributes his death to poisoning by oysters; a dollhouse-style tomb erected in 1926 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; George W. Parker, buried in Old Cemetery, Cincinnati, Ohio, between his two wives, with the epitaph mis-transcribed as George W. Parnell despite the gravestone reading Parker; Dr. John Jones, Village Cemetery, Hollis, New Hampshire, whose epitaph identifies him as a major’s only son with the line “It was for love he was undone”; and Benjamin Parker, also in Village Cemetery, Hollis, with his grandson buried above him and the epitaph noting “So all must see the effects of sin.”
Additional documented graves include William French, son of Nathaniel French, Village Cemetery, Westminster, Vermont, shot and killed March 13, 1775, “by the hands of the ministerial tools of George ye 3rd,” with a Revolutionary-era epitaph referencing liberty and sacrifice; Thomas K. Park and his wife Rebecca, Burgess Cemetery, Grafton, Vermont, noted as being buried with their thirteen infants; Patty Ward, Meeting House Hill Cemetery, Marlborough, New Hampshire, who died November 14, 1795, at age five years six months, “by boiling cyder she was slain”; Amos Fortune and his wife Violet, Village Cemetery, Jaffrey, New Hampshire, with the epitaph stating he was “born free in Africa, a slave in America,” later purchasing his liberty and that of his wife; Sevilla Jones, daughter of George and Sarah Jones, murdered January 13, 1854, at age seventeen years nine months by Henry N. Sargent, Meeting House Hill Cemetery, New Boston, New Hampshire; Mrs. Mary McHard, Old Hill Cemetery, Newburyport, Massachusetts, whose epitaph states she was killed “by the swallowing of a pea at her own table”; and Robert Morrill, who died of dropsy in 1809, Salisbury Point Cemetery, Amesbury, Massachusetts.
One epitaph without a corresponding photograph records the death of “the unfortunate Muranda” Bridgman, who died in a fire at her father’s house in June of 1797 at age twenty-eight.
Condition shows age-related wear to the album, with loose pages stabilized as described. Photographs and handwritten inscriptions show typical wear consistent with age, handling, and use.
