The Epitaph
Summer 2021 Newsletter
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Kousa Dogwood tree in front of the Shedd Mausoleum |
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AN ACTIVE BURIAL PLACE RICH IN HISTORY |
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Greetings!
Each season, the Lowell Cemetery offers something unique to visitors, and summer is no exception. This is the time to view the lush green foliage and enjoy the quality of shade provided by many flowering trees and shrubs. The photo above is one of our 40 beautiful Japanese Dogwoods. Over time, the cemetery’s original forest of oak and pine gained various species of trees with crowns that provide cool shade.
We are still learning about the history of many people whose final resting place is the Lowell Cemetery. This issue features information on a notable individual, Dr. Gilman Kimball. Maybe you’ll find Dr. Kimball’s grave at the corner of Tuckerman and Blanchard Avenues on your next walk.
My thanks to Maxa Berid for her article on migrating and resident birds in the Lowell Cemetery. Our landscaped acres with a substantial number of trees makes the Lowell Cemetery a de facto bird sanctuary. Maxa tells us which birds can be seen and explains why we are a birding “hotspot.”
Our Epitaph editor Kim Zunino is fascinated by cemetery history and their stories. Inscriptions, iconography, and epitaphs on grave markers provide insight into families and the community. Her article on Lowell’s Hunt-Clark Cemetery explores the families of early residents of what is now the Belvidere neighborhood in Lowell and makes connections to a surprising broader social and literary history.
Robert S. McKittrick, President
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Dr. Gilman Kimball
(1804-1892)
by Richard Howe, Jr.
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During the second half of the nineteenth century, Lowell became the center of the lucrative patent medicine business. Three of the primary purveyors - James C. Ayer, Charles Ira Hood, and Augustin Thompson - are buried in Lowell Cemetery. Modern audiences rightly associate “patent medicine” with slickly marketed products that missed the mark when it came to treating underlying diseases, but it’s important to recall that Ayer and his colleagues were following medical best practices as they existed at that time. Health care in 1850 was not very different from treatments in 1750 or 1650 or even 1550.
But the medical profession was not entirely mired in nostalgic practices. Some doctors used their power of observation, their knowledge of science, and their common sense to break with traditional practices and bring innovation to the medical field in America. Such was the case in Lowell with Dr. Gilman Kimball, who is also buried in Lowell Cemetery.
Gilman Kimball was born in New Chester, New Hampshire, in 1804. Upon graduation from Dartmouth Medical School in 1826, Kimball practiced medicine in western Massachusetts until 1829, when he went to Paris to study anatomy and surgery.
Upon his return from Europe in 1830, Doctor Kimball opened his medical practice in Lowell with an office on Merrimack Street. He quickly established himself as a competent, caring physician who earned widespread distinction in the community.
In 1840, the owners of Lowell’s textile mills jointly agreed to create and finance a hospital for their employees. They invited Dr. Kimball to be its medical director and he agreed. The Lowell Corporation Hospital was unique in America. While corporations elsewhere may have provided clinics or paid for doctor visits for employees, nowhere else did private companies establish an entire hospital, especially one that treated both work-related injuries and other maladies. Because there was no other hospital in Lowell at the time, the Corporation Hospital also treated other city residents, even those unaffiliated with the textile mills. (In 1930, the remaining mill owners sold the Corporation Hospital to the Archdiocese of Boston which renamed it St. Joseph’s Hospital).
Because the workforce in Lowell was predominantly female, the Lowell Corporation Hospital became a national leader in the field of gynecology primarily due to the efforts of Dr. Kimball who developed nationally recognized expertise in gynecological surgery.
When the Civil War commenced, Governor Joseph Andrew appointed Dr. Kimball to be the chief surgeon of the brigade formed by the four Massachusetts Militia Regiments that deployed to the south at the start of the war. Under the command of another Lowellian, General Benjamin F. Butler, Dr. Kimball established the first U.S. Army hospital of the Civil War at Annapolis, Maryland, in May 1861.
Gilman Kimball died at his home in Lowell on July 27, 1892, at age 87 after an extended illness. His funeral was held at the Kirk Street Church with burial following in Lowell Cemetery. The pall bearers at his funeral were General Benjamin Butler, Judge Arthur Bonney, Hon. Sewall Mack, Hon. James Abbott, Dr. F. C. Nickerson, Dr. William Bass, Dr. Charles Simpson and Captain George A. Hanscom.
Above photo credit: Lowell Historical Society
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Marble gravestone
for Dr. Gilman Kimball, MD
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Mary Dewar Kimball,
wife of Dr. Gilman Kimball, MD
Photo credit: Rick Weaver
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The Gilman and Dewar Families |
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Dr Gilman Kimball's marble headstone lies flat in the Gilman family lot in Lowell Cemetery. His first wife, Mary Dewar Kimball, was buried in the family lot in 1869 and has a similar headstone. Their three sons, Gilman, John, and Ebenezer are buried in the lot as well as Charlotte J. Puffer, "For forty years the faithful servant and friend of Dr. Kimball's family."
Mary Dewar Kimball was born in Saline, Fife, Scotland in 1810. If you find yourself in St. Cuthbert's Churchyard in the City of Edinburgh you can see the Dewar family memorial stone. The Dewar children are listed on the stones flanking their parents' center stone, including Mary.
Mary Dewar, wife of Gilman Kimball, M.D., of Lowell, Mass; U.S.A., born 20th May 1810, died at Lowell 7th July 1869, and in interred there.
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Birding at Lowell Cemetery
by Maxa S. Berid
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Did you know that the Lowell Cemetery is THE place to bird in Lowell? You may ask, why the Cemetery? Or, who birds in Lowell? What is the difference between birding and bird-watching? Here I will try and answer those questions.
The Lowell Cemetery attracts birds all year long because of its lush trees, flowers and vegetation. Birds love a place where they can eat, rest, nest, and breed. The Cemetery has many year-round birds, such as American Robins, Blue Jays, House Sparrows, Cardinals, Red Tail Hawks, and Northern Mockingbirds. If you note these birds while traveling or at home, you are birdwatching. If you travel specifically to see these birds, you are birding.
For birders, each spring and fall something magical happens: migration. Birds that winter in the south, as far away as the bottom of South America, head north to their breeding grounds, either in New England or further north to the Canadian Provinces. Along the way they stop for a short period throughout April into the end of May at our Cemetery to rest, and feed, before continuing. This is when the Cemetery comes alive with birders, who wait patiently for the earlier opening hours, binoculars in hand, whispering to each other, "Is that a Northern Parula warbler I hear?” “Did you see the Black-throated blue warbler down by the trees overlooking the Concord River?” “How about that Baltimore Oriole, wasn't its coloring fabulous?" The Baltimore Oriole is one of the birds that returns each year to nest and breed at Lowell Cemetery.
Each of these wonderful species are noted by many on EBird, an app that allows birders to report their sightings. This app is run by the Cornell School of Ornithology. In fact, because of our many reports, the Lowell cemetery is considered a hotspot of birding. Check it out!
Each spring and fall the Lowell Parks and Conservation Trust (LPCT) sponsor birding trips, led by expert birders to bring the joy and fun of birding to all. Birding is one activity that the only requirement is your ability to move around the Cemetery any given early morning to see the amazing array of colors and listen to their songs. If you are lucky, you might see a bird that will hook you on this activity for life.
Photo Credit: Birding Walk at Lowell Cemetery led by Mike Baird sponsored by LPCT and The Brush Art Gallery & Studios, October 2019
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Private Tours of Lowell Cemetery
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Private tours for school groups, garden clubs, historical societies, and social organizations can be arranged by contacting the Cemetery office at: staff@lowellcemetery.com or by calling the Cemetery office at:
978-454-5191
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Hunt-Clark Cemetery
by Kim Zunino
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The Hunt-Clark Cemetery is in Belvidere and has been used as a burial ground since the late 1600s by the members of the Hunt and Clark Families. Samuel Hunt, Jr. was known as the “Father of Tewksbury.” Once considered part of Cambridge and then Billerica, the land was part of Tewksbury from 1734 until annexed by Lowell in 1906. The Clark family came to the area in 1735, and Thomas Clark (1743-1823) led a militia of Tewksbury men to the Revolutionary War. His home still stands at 61 Clark Road. The oldest burial markers were initialed rough stones, but the oldest visible headstone was made for young Jeremiah Hunt (1712-1717) who died at age five (see photo below). A photo of a footstone for Mrs. Abigail Hunt, his mother, is seen at the beginning of this text.
The last burials of the Clark family were for Dr. Edward J. Clark (1879-1928), who served as Superintendent of the Lowell Corporation Hospital, and his brother George Walter Clark (1886-1931). Edward was buried in his family cemetery with his young daughter Margaret (1909-1912) until Edward’s widow had Edward, Margaret, and George removed to a new lot in Lowell Cemetery in 1947.
Other notable burials in the Hunt-Clark Cemetery are:
-John and Martha Chapman, grandparents of Johnny Appleseed. They had a farm in Tewksbury where Nathaniel Chapman was born and young Johnny visited.
-Edward J. Steinbeck, wife Susan (Clark) Steinbeck, and their children. Edward was born in Palestine to missionaries and survived an attack that left his father dead and his mother traumatized. That family ordeal influenced literary work done by his cousin, noted author John Steinbeck.
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This stone dates to 1717, making it the oldest carved gravestone in the Hunt-Clark Cemetery. Joseph Lamson, a prolific stonecarver from Charlestown, might have carved this one himself before he died in 1722. The skull with wings seen here is known as a "winged effigy" and represents the flight of the soul upon leaving the body.
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The Lowell Cemetery is a private, non-municipal, non-denominational, garden-style cemetery located in Lowell, Massachusetts.
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The white "petals" of the Kousa Dogwood aren’t actually petals at all! They are modified leaves called bracts that surround the small, greenish-yellow flower.
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Address:
77 Knapp Avenue
Lowell, MA 01852
Phone:
978-454-5191
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