Is This About Six Deaths of the Children, My New Relatives OR Research Problems -- Tombstone Tuesday

In the ideal world of tombstone hunting in an old cemetery, I should do a thorough research a head of time on who I was looking for and have an idea who else is buried there as well. However, in this case, I came across the cemetery stone by accident and didn't know the 6 Childs children were related to me. All 6 died within weeks of each other, so I wanted to post the tombstone because it's an interesting stone and sad because of all the deaths. Their stone photos were taken in two different years, in three visits. (Photos below with transcription.)

When I began this post last year, I thought some of the photos of other grave stones could be related to the children and later discovered two to be their parents. It seemed that each subsequent trip provided another family member to them and to me.

Without a doubt, I've lost a lot of time making these trips, when two visits should have been enough. Even if I didn't know who they were, the above Childs and Cutlers were buried in the same area, and that was a clue. I now need to return for a fourth trip because I see that the children's great-grandmother, Abigail Dewey Cutler is also buried there.  Much time could have been saved, if I had used FindAGrave for the Childs children first and looked at all the family members. (On the link above, you'll see that at one time, the long tombstone was almost flat on the ground.)

The six children of Abijah Childs and Sarah Cutler were buried in this plot located in Y^e Old Burying Ground in Lexington, Massachusetts. They died within a three week period between August 19 and September 6, 1778. The parents were buried behind them under the two tall cemetery markers, seen in above photo and below), photos taken Oct. 17, 2015. (Photo too dark, so I returned last week for a better picture. Summer photo too light.)

Abijah Childs and Sarah Cutler above and below.

They are my 2nd cousins, 7 times removed. Photos taken Aug. 22, 2015.

In memory of
Mr. Abijah Childs
who died
Aug. 30
1808
Age 70

His wife is below.

SACRED 
to the memory
of
MRS. SARAH CHILDS
wife of
Mr. Abijah Childs,
who died
March 3, 1812
Age 78.

A return trip to the cemetery on October 9, 2016 was necessary because I used FindAGrave again and discovered the children's grandparents were two stones from them. (Photo above and below.)

Benjamin Cutler and his wife Mary Hartwell are  the grandparents to the Childs children, and My 1 cousin 8 times removed.

Memento mori

Here lies the
Body of Mr.
Benjamin Cutler
who departed this
Life Novr. 3d. 1776.
Aged 79 years
3 months and
29 days

Here lies the
Body of Mrs. Mary
Cutler, wife of Mr.
Benjamin Cutler
she departed this
Life Novr. 6th

Aged 75 years 9 
months and 21 days

For more information about this cemetery, please see my post HERE called,  How to Find a Tombstone in the Old Cemetery in Lexington, MA

Children listed on the above stone.

My third cousins 6 times removed.

Sarah Childs

Died

August 28^th

1778

Aged 13 Years

^{8 months}

^{and 11 days.}

^--- 

^{Eunice Childs}

Died

August 23^rd

1778 

Aged 12 years

3 months

and 8 Days

---

Abijah Childs

Died

Sep^t 6^th

1778

Aged 11 years

And 37

Days.

---

Abigail Childs

Died

August 29^th

1778

Aged 7 years

7 months

and 11 Days.

--- 

Benj^m Childs

Died

August 24^th

1778

Aged 4 years

9 months and

8 Days.

--- 

Moses Childs

Died

August 19^th

1778

Aged 3 years

Wanting

8 Days.

This Monument is Erected to the Memory of 6 Children

of M^r Abijah Childs and M^rs Sarah his wife.


Foot stone listing the six Childs children.

Where Was The Lincoln Memorial Made?

Photo by B. Poole taken at Chesterwood,
Stockbridge, Massachusetts

Several years ago, I wrote a few posts about Daniel Chester French, a Concord, Massachusetts sculptor 

who was commissioned in 1873 by the town to make the bronze Minuteman statue which is displayed near the Old North Bridge. That fact is something I've known for many years, but when the Concord Museum had an exhibit of his works, I became more aware of his work pertaining to the Lincoln Memorial.

I then discovered he summered for 30 years in Stockbridge, Massachusetts at his estate and studio, called Chesterwood, with 120 acres. The good news is, these buildings are open to the public for the price of admission.

The pictures below are of the main house, only a few rooms were shown, the studio, and the few gardens showed evidence of fall because almost all the flowers had gone by. If you have ever seen the Lincoln Memorial, I believe this post might interest you or your children.

Although the entire Lincoln Memorial wasn't made here, the preliminary design work was. That fact, was enough to impress me.

The above is the main entrance to the house, and below is what you see on the opposite side, the fields and Taconic Mountains, shown below.

From the edge of the woods, another view of the house.

Main hallway. I believe we saw three rooms: the dining room, sitting room and private office with Mr. French's original typewriter (all shown below).

Study with Daniel's typewriter shown on the right.

Part of the 2nd floor hallway above, and three bedrooms below.

There were several gardens to enjoy as well as trails in the woods to explore.

Unfortunately, I didn't take a front picture of the studio, probably because I was so taken with the bench by the open door. The picture below is the side entrance with the huge door and the back porch overlooking the property.

The porch with bench was to the left of the entrance door. You are allowed to sit on it and view the meadow and mountain in front (see my 2nd picture).

When you first enter the studio, this is what you see! Notice the huge door as well?

General Charles Devens is on the horse. The statue may look small, but it was quite life-size.

I'm glad the chair is there, it's a good way to get an idea of the size of things.

You are looking at an open drawer with Mr. French's utensils. The window above the table provided an interesting reflection.

Looking toward the house, from the woods.

Daniel Chester French Led Me on a Trail (My post with quite a few of pictures)

Lowell Locks Colored with Light At Night

The sky looked threatening, on September 1, 2016, as the crowd of local residents gathered around Swamp Locks in anticipation for the 7 p.m.  illumination of the locks and its gatehouse on this very, very warm evening. Many of us had cameras, and I knew my simple "aim and shoot" camera probably wouldn't get very good pictures. However, when I compared my pictures with others I saw on-line, I though mine were similar and that is why I finally decided to share the only ones I took.

To read more about this special illumination, please read the article in the Lowell Sun newspaper, called: Lowell lights the locks to illuminate canals' beauty, potential

To see daylight pictures of this area, see my post called, Gotta Love the Name of Swamp Locks, click on the link.

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

Figure 4.

Figure 5.

Figure 6.

Figure 7.

10 Things I Wished I Knew When I Started My Blog

Blog header for my blog.

On October, I. 2016 I will be celebrating my seventh year of blogging, so I decided this was a good time to share the 10 Things I Wished I Knew When I Started My Blog. At that time, I knew very little about publishing a blog (blogging was relatively new to the genealogy world), and I knew none of the items below.

My blog hasn't changed much since the day I started, except for some changes as described below. I replaced my original header picture (originally taken in the dead of winter) with that of an old cemetery in Chelmsford, Massachusetts in late spring. I now include other topics to write about, not just about genealogy, and I make an extra effort to include my photographs. Sometimes my photographs are better than my writing.

I wish I had learned these 10 topics during my early writing days, but I didn't. If I had known a few of these things, they wouldn't be a major project now. The items are in no particular order.

1. I should have started labeling each blog, with major content or subject words. The words, known as search words are used for me and readers to locate my blog topics, like: Revolutionary War, Surname: Smith; Location: New York; Cemeteries; DAR; Research Tips, and so forth. The labels are shown at the bottom of each post, and on the label bar at the right side of each blog.

2.  I should have kept a list of all blogs written, with the date and title. I have written over 1230 posts and it's difficult to remember what was written. To use search words (as mentioned above), takes a while and sometimes those words aren't the ones I initially typed. I still don't have a list, but if I ever do make one, it would be in excel and it would help me immensely. (I now I have 1,500+ posts and still don't have a list.)

3.  I wish I knew about checking all the links I've put in the posts to see if they are still active. I didn't begin doing this until rather recently, and after seven years, many old addresses have disappeared. They need to be corrected or deleted.

4.  I try hard to reply to all comments. I know how I feel if somebody doesn't respond to my comments, so I do my best to respond to any I receive. In the earlier years, I didn't do this, and that was pretty inconsiderate. I clearly remember the ones who sent me messages when I first began. It was a nice feeling. With so many blogs available to read, readers can move on to other blogs, they don't have to deal with an ungrateful writer. If your post is ever selected to be on a Best of the Week list, you best thank that blogger. The comment feature was turned off by Google.

5.  Sourcing your facts in a blog is as important as it is in your genealogy. I didn't know this at the beginning of my writing days, nor did I know it 32 years ago when I began doing genealogy  (then, most people didn't source). If your post has facts, you need to go a step further.  Thanks to the many professional bloggers, webinars, seminars, and genealogy magazine writers who stress the importance of sources, most genealogy bloggers are now sharing where their information came from. Along with sources for facts we need to give credit for all photos and images we use.

6.  I should have spent more time preparing each post. Some of my early posts have major problems. They aren't consistent with font and size and some are bold. When I come across them, I take the bold feature off, and make the size normal in Veranda style. If you are using a program with very small print and light font, such as a grey, I won't read your post. We all like to read something easy on our eyes.

7. I learned that people will have opinions on what to do to have a great blog. Well, some ideas are good, and not others. For example, I read that all blogs should be "short and sweet." Well, I've read some great stories that are quite long, and some are continued to another day or week and I had no problem reading them. Since then, I've written a three-part story which seemed quite popular. Just use your own judgment and do what you want to do.

8.  I wish I had known about some of the sites that help bloggers with hints and tips, such as the free Problogger or the hundreds of informational blogs out there to help all writers. I didn't know about these sites until four years ago. There are thousands of bloggers, and we all need a little help in the beginning.

9. When I discovered I didn't need to write almost every day, I felt freer because I wasn't tied to my computer, and my readers were probably happy because they didn't need to spend their time reading yet another blog. If you subscribe to 100 blogs, I doubt you would want to read 100 of them a day. On a personal note, I wrote 260 posts in 2010 (my first full year) and 94 in 2015. This post is my 43rd one for 2016. It isn't because I don't have enough material to share, it's because I don't feel it's necessary to share everything, nor do I want to spend the time since some can take between 2-4 hours or more if I need to drive somewhere to take photos.

10.  I learned that my blog is not about page views (the number of hits, that is, people looking at your post). In my first few months, I spent every day checking those figures and wondered who was reading what I was writing. For much of that time, I worried about what the readers thought, and who they were. Months and years later, I discovered those figures don't always represent real people. The stat figures are not an indicator of how good or bad my blog is and the same goes for others.

Little Genealogy, Beautiful Flowers, Old House, Antiques..Need More?

Tree taken last year, in front
of the House, see last
photo.

As with almost all my blog posts, I try to incorporate a little genealogy, showcase beautiful flowers or scenery, an old house, collectibles, and/or antiques into it. In this post, I finally get to do everything. Fortunately, the Stevens-Coolidge Place in North Andover, MA is rather close to where I live and I've been visiting the property for a good 9-10 years. We go to walk around the grounds, smell the fresh air, and view all the gardens.

However, I always wondered what was in the house, and several times when I inquired about it, I was told they didn't have enough volunteers to act as docents. This year, I got a notice that they were having a tour of the house. (I appeared there bright and early on June 21st for the first tour, and it didn't disappoint. I had NO idea it was even furnished! Photos are below. The post will also show the formal rose garden, a perennial garden (this was the best growing season ever), the cutting garden from beginning to end, and a large French garden.

The Stevens-Coolidge Place

139 Andover Street

North Andover, MA 

(A property of The Trustees of Reservations.)

The house as shown from various views from the front, side, and back.

 

The house is called a Place, but I like to call it an Estate since there are 91 acres. Helen Stevens married John Coolidge in 1909 and inherited this property, known as Ashdale Farm in 1914. They lived here in the summer until John Coolidge died in 1936. She remained spending summers here until her death in 1962 and she bequeathed the estate to The Trustees of Reservations, and they changed the name to Stevens-Coolidge Place. Note: Since I have quite a few ancestors and relatives from this area, I hope to do their genealogy to see if there is a connection to mine.

 The Rose Garden

The photo above was obtained from:

 https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:b8516144v

This work is licensed for use under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License (CC BY-NC-ND).

Early spring, not much is in bloom, but the lilacs are!

The Perennial Garden photos are below.

I usually go three times during mid-late spring. The first flowers that I go nuts over are the oriental poppies and purple iris.

Front entrance.

On the first floor we walked through several sitting rooms, a den, and a formal dining room, all filled with family antiques. (I've enlarged the photos, so you can see the items.)

Hallway.

Photo of the couple on Mr. Coolidge's desk, seen below.

A door opens to a patio overlooking the Perennial Garden.

Genealogy on the wall! Mr. John Gardner Coolidge was related to Thomas Jefferson. (Thomas Jefferson was his great-great grandfather). I was the only one who got excited and took the photos. He was also the nephew of Isabella Stewart Gardner.

The Cutting Garden, spring and late summer.

The French Garden

In the Spring there are hundreds of pink and white Peonies.

Below are some late blooming flowers in the French Garden.

Last year, 2015,  photo. Note for April 29, 2022: That beautiful tree and many, many others were removed in 2019-2020 to change the landscape.

Brochure with a map of the property.