History and more culinary delights in Boston!

One of the best things about Boston (besides the food), is the history that is so accessible. There are tourists everywhere, tours abound for any and every historical site, and self guided walks through the history of the beginning of our nation. Since we all love history, especially revolutionary era history, we LOVE this city.


We walked through the unique cemetaries. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few...

A few interesting tidbits about these gravestones-

• They are mostly puritanical gravestones, all the images are highly symbolic, although there are some early american catholic gravestones here also.
• The skull with wings on many of the gravestones symbolizes the soul leaving the body.
• On many of the gravestones a skeleton, sometimes dancing, can be seen. The skeleton symbolizes death Many times you see this figure extinguishing a candle, showing a snuffing out of life. Often this image is accompanied by another robed figure seeking to stop the skeleton from putting out the candle, this figure often has an hourglass. This robed figure symbolizes time.
• At the Granary Cemetary is the largest grave oblisk in Boston with the name Franklin engraved on each side. We wondered about this, since we know Benjamin Franklin is buried in Philadelphia. Here are the graves of Ben's parent's.
• On many stones, the stone carver would run out of room on a line when carving a word. No problem, they would insert the letters that they had not had room for above the line. No need to waste a good gravestonestone!
• On may gravestones they have 2 consecutive years for a birth year. This does not mean they were unaware of the year of birth, but rather at the time, some places still went by the Juian calendar, which set the beginning of the new year in March, while others adhered to the Grecian calendar, setting the new year start at January 1. Thus, if someone was born in the early part of the year, they placed both years on the gravestone, since it depended on what year you observed, as to what year you may believe the person was born. In 1752, Britain and all it's colonies formally adopted the Grecian calendar, which set the new year start permenantly at January 1st. After that year, there was no longer a question as to birth year.

So, we finished up our walk through the cemetaries and Boston Commons and came back to relax and read for awhile. Soon it is off to dinner in the Italian quarter and some evening strolling along the wharf!