Small as befits the baby it commemorates, covered in lichen, illegible on a knoll in the Old Burial Ground in Sandwich, there is no hint that this little piece of slate probably is the oldest gravestone on Cape Cod.
Yet even when it was pristine this ancient stone defied reading:
Its words and dates were defaced, chiseled out, likely by the very carver who notched them in the first place.
So surmises Steve Broker, whose fascination with gravestones dates back to 1968 at Wesleyan College. He has studied, catalogued, written about and taught courses on Cape Cod stones; his investigations, many Wellfleet based, rank him among the region’s passionate fonts about “settler” artifacts and activities.
“That this is the oldest stone on Cape, I’m virtually certain,” says Broker. “But why would all the wording be damaged? I have theories, though more research needs to be done.”
Two theories, in different ways, hinge on religious motivations.
Thomas Clark was only seven weeks old when he died on July 24, 1683. We know this because even though name and date were chiseled away it was still possible to make out telltales to combine with corroborating support from old town records.
Quakers were a strong presence in Sandwich, the Clark family perhaps among them. There also was deep antipathy between Quakers and their Puritan neighbors. This leads to one of Broker’s theories:
Maybe the carver was ordered to remove the name and information from the stone to obliterate a Quaker presence in the town burial ground, instigated by “many members of the community who discriminated against Quakers,” says Broker.
His second theory builds from the fact that a few other stones around New England also have been chiseled out, though none as old. Those stones, erected mainly by iconoclastic Puritans, had what’s called a “central soul image” or a “soul effigy” meant to be a representation of the departed soul itself.
This would be much different than say an image of a cherub, an angel, an imp or even the person.
To some, such a rendering would be deeply presumptuous and sacrilegious. Given opportunity and authority, traditionalists might have ordered or pressured carvers to obscure their work.
Both theories have their strengths. I incline toward the Puritans versus the Quakers, though as Broker says, more research needs to be done.
Time has added yet more obfuscation in the form of lichen. But Steve says the stone would “clean up just fine” with an ammonia-and-water spray followed by a light-handed bristle brush -- as he has done before.
This is true because Thomas Clark’s gravestone is slate.
“If you want your memorial to last a few hundred years, use slate or granite,” advises Broker. “Don’t use marble.”
And hope no one chisels away your name.
