earth quakers

so i happened to have been in a quaker cemetery in springport, ny.

you know, like you do.

i've been to a couple of these things and often they don't even have headstones, because a headstone would be a vanity.

nevermind you ordinarily wouldn't see a whole bunch of GAR stars or other markings of the graves of veterans because of that quaker pacifism thing.

but in this cemetery,
among their simple grave markers are a scattering of markers to signify veterans of both the civil war and the revolutionary war. the markings on many of the stones are too eroded to be read, and as it turns out the markings on the stones marked with veteran stars are all among those.

but there's one that has enough relief to it that i can sort of make out some characters and i can't figure out a name or anything, but i do stop and make a sketch of the parts of the letters i can see and i figure that later on when i get to it i can figure out what letters those COULD make and then try to match it to cemetery or census records.

here are my notes.

pemnnah mallitt?

reminah mabbill?

it's hard to tell. but there's a cemetery listing of a peninnah mabbitt and a census listing for a peninah mabott so i figure it's a match, but it turns out she is not herself a war veteran. but you never know how far the marker is from its proper place, or if she shares a grave with a veteran, and i have seen once or twice where the veteran marked with the star has himself no headstone so the star marks him and the stone marks a relative of his.

i did a little poking around and i only get dead ends, but i got to read some cool stuff about the history of the quakers in  cayuga county and brush up on my understanding of the branches of quakerism because even though i studied my soteriology i lose track of the finer doctrinal points where faith communities fracture and lay claim to the true interpretation of god's intent.

uh, anyway.

i found a really cool digitized copy of the cayuga county civil war enrollment book; check out this page where it details who is and is not subject to military enrollment. you will notice that quakers are exempt.

short story long.

i found out who is buried under that stone, but i know nearly nothing about her, despite an afternoon of looking.

but i have a better understanding of quaker history in central new york!

i'm sure that will come in way handy.