VOLUNTEER and make a real difference in our local history project --

In 1895 a man named Dolliver traveled around Gloucester, MA and wrote down the words carved on the tombstones. In his handwritten manuscript, he assigned each tombstone a number and eventually all his work was collected in a series of books. We're working on a project now to update and digitize all of this early information about the cemeteries in Gloucester and are faced with a dilemma -- Dolliver is really hard to read. In fact, each inscription needs to be puzzled out and transcribed (put into a type-face format) before we can really use it. Here's an example:

Sarah Burnham died in 1814. There are many Burnham's in early New England, particularly in Gloucester and Essex. She has a large and copiously engraved stone in Gloucester's First Parish Burial Ground (FPBG). Here's what Dolliver recorded in 1895 --

In Sarah's case, we're lucky we can go back and still see the inscription on the actual tombstone. That's not always the case. Some stones are simply gone and others are impossible to read.

Best of all, we now have Google, with which we can, when we come across a few lines of verse that are hard to decipher, search, and find the commonly used verses from that period -- most carvers or families did not make up their own. So between puzzling over the inscription, actually being able to double-check the stone and using Google we can now have an accurate and readable copy of Sarah Burnham's stone -- and it is both sad and quite touching -- so many children to die so young and then the sad and fascinating fates of the two who lived to adulthood. She lived long enough to see them all die before her.

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No. 452 Near the ______ [?]

In Memory of Mrs Sarah Burnham and her children Samuel, Betsy, Samuel Davis, Aaron and Moses

Mrs. Aaron Burnham endured an agonizing sickness without a murmur and closed a well spent life April 25, 1814. Aet 59

Samuel died, Aug 29, 1788. Age 21 days. Betsy died May 20, 1792, aged 8 months, and 5 days. Samuel Davis died Dec. 14, 1795 Aged 5 months and 20 days. Aaron died at Sea Dec 8, 1805 Aged 23 years. Moses died at Plymouth England, October 1812 Aged 26 years

Death oppressed thee, far from home, an helpless stranger, no familiar voice, no pitying eye, cheered thy last pangs

(The following verses on this stone are a token to the Mother)

Remembrance shall her story tell, Affection of her virtues speak, With beaming eye and burning cheek, Each action, word, and look recall The last, the loveliest of all, When on the lap of Death she lay, Serenely smiled her soul away And left surviving Friendship’s breast Warm with the sunset of her rest

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All of which brings us to a volunteer opportunity for you. Would you like to help us decipher and transcribe these Dolliver pages? We hope that by crowd-sourcing this work, it can move forward much more quickly than otherwise possible. The idea is to dole it out to our volunteers in 5 page sections and, as you finish one assignment, you can, if you wish, get another one. There are 207 pages all together in the FPBG Dolliver (and two more volumes on the shelf!). Interested? Just email ckellyCAC@gmail.com (Carol Kelly, Gloucester Cemeteries Advisory Committee) with your email and any questions or concerns. We'll send you five pages of Dolliver that will belong to you -- no one else will be deciphering these particular writings -- as well as a simple form to use that includes instructions on what to do with words you CAN'T decipher (note in the example above the bracketed question mark [?] ) and you'll become a part of our project. We hope you'll want to join us!

Contact information: ckellyCAC@gmail.com Carol A. Kelly Gloucester Cemeteries Advisory Committee