Hitchcockiana 

June 18, 2024

EDWARD HITCHCOCK AND THE GEOLOGY
OF CAPE COD AND THE ISLANDS:

Reflections on a 200th Anniversary 

In April 1823, Edward Hitchcock wrote to Professor Benjamin Silliman of Yale College asking his friend and mentor for advice as to a possible geological excursion for that spring:

I have thought some of the White Hills. But as the coast is better for my constitution I have been thinking of the islands of Nantucket & Martha’s Vineyard. Can you tell me whether these would be probably interesting spots or are they all sand?

Silliman had no advice for his friend on that subject. But Hitchcock made a decision on his own, one that proved to be a watershed event in his life, both as a geologist and as a man of faith. And it may well have given him his earliest inkling of a coming revolution in American geology.

In early June, Edward Hitchcock visited Martha’s Vineyard, and he quickly learned that it was far from “all sand.” During his travels across the island in a horse-drawn chaise, he made notes for an article that would appear in the American Journal of Science the following year, the first detailed geological study of the Vineyard ever to appear in print.  

As he traveled around the island, Hitchcock observed an “Alluvial Formation” to the south and a “Plastic Clay Formation” to the west. But the feature that most attracted his attention lay atop the clay. He wrote,

All the north western extent of the island is hilly and uneven with no abrupt precipices…but rising into rounded eminences...

Strewn across that rolling terrain he observed a jumbled mantle of pebbles and stones of granite, gneiss, quartz, and mica. He named this the “Diluvial Formation,” referring to material deposited by flood waters. Hitchcock regarded much of the surface geology of the earth as the result of the Great Flood of Genesis, the flood of Noah and his Ark. So when he assigned the label “diluvium” to that detritus, he was ascribing its deposition to that great biblical cataclysm, a conclusion with which most geologists of his day would concur.

Most striking of all to Hitchcock was “the quantity of huge bowlder stones, scattered over these hills on every side,” some over 50 feet in diameter. At first he assumed these to be outcrops of the underlying bedrock. But the local inhabitants soon set him straight—there was, they assured him, no bedrock to be found anywhere on the island of Martha’s Vineyard.

But if those huge boulders were not derived from the underlying bedrock, where had they come from? Here Hitchcock made a telling observation, one that would resonate among geologists worldwide over the coming decades. Those boulders, that diluvium, he asserted, must have been “derived from the rocks that occur in place along the coast, on the mainland.”

Seven years later, Hitchcock, then Professor of Chemistry and Natural History at Amherst College, received an appointment as the first State Geologist of Massachusetts with the goal of surveying the state’s untapped mineral resources. In July 1830 he set out on the first field excursion of that survey, traveling in a rickety horse-drawn wagon accompanied by one of his students. A month into their travels, they arrived on Cape Cod.

Hitchcock's first observations, not surprisingly, harked back to his earlier visit to the Vineyard:

From Sandwich to Barnstable 12 miles diluvium all the way. In many places the bowlders are enormously large weighing 100 to 200 tons and very thick….In short the face of the country and its geological character appear to be precisely like those of Martha's Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands. I doubt not but the same remark will apply to the whole of Cape Cod.

On the mainland Hitchcock observed two other important features that reinforced his doubts about the origin of that so-called diluvium. Gouged in bedrock across New England he noted deep furrows, nearly all with the same orientation, from northwest to southeast. In addition he observed sinuous trains of large boulders, many extending tens of miles from their origin, all with similar orientations. 

By 1833 Edward Hitchcock had seen more than enough evidence to make him skeptical of the “diluvial hypothesis.”

Making every allowance for the reduction of the gravity of these bowlders when in water, I confess I cannot conceive how such a work could have been effected by this agency [by water].

Eight years later, in 1841, Edward Hitchcock stood before the members of the newly-formed Association of American Geologists in Philadelphia, and declared himself a convert to a stunning new notion, continental glaciation. It was not his theory—it was the work of Louis Agassiz, Jean de Charpentier, and other European scientists, and it had first appeared in Agassiz’s landmark study, Etudes sur les Glaciers. Agassiz put forward the radical notion that ice, not water, was the primary agent responsible for sculpting much of the surface of the northern hemisphere, that a huge ice cap had accumulated in the northern polar regions, gradually expanding southward over hundreds of thousands of years. It was a glacier, or series of glaciers, of massive extent, and it gouged, scraped, and bulldozed the earth’s surface as it advanced.

Hitchcock’s ringing endorsement gave the theory wide exposure and credibility among American scientists, although there remained a good deal of resistance in some quarters—Hitchcock himself backpedaled and equivocated on the idea repeatedly. Nevertheless, the evidence was strong and compelling. By the 1860s the concept of continental glaciation had been accepted and embraced by most scientists in America and worldwide.

As to non-scientists, particularly theologians, members of the clergy, and other people of faith who were suspicious of new ideas in science, the fact that Reverend Edward Hitchcock, well known as a devout man of strict orthodox Christian views, was comfortable with such a notion may well have given them license to accept the theory.

Edward Hitchcock’s life was a dual journey of faith, faith in God and faith in science. That journey led him to question some of the basic tenets of his religion as well as some of the fundamental scientific ideas of his day. And it all began with a visit to Martha’s Vineyard in 1823 and the sight of those huge “bowlders” scattered over a sandy Chilmark plain.

In a sermon delivered to his congregation in 1822, Reverend Hitchcock warned his parishioners to pay heed to the world around them.

Let the unbeliever then remember that as he passes over our hills the very stones cry out against him.

The stones did cry out to Edward Hitchcock that day on Martha’s Vineyard, and the message they bore was truly a revelation in stone.

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For more on Hitchcock’s studies of Cape Cod and the Islands, please see my paper, “Revelations in Stone: Edward Hitchcock and the Geology of Cape Cod and the Islands.”

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November 30, 2023

WAS EDWARD HITCHCOCK A GRINCH?

Reverend Edward Hitchcock often preached on the fundamentals of orthodox Christianity, subjects such as repentance, resurrection, and morality. Occasionally his sermons also addressed the great social issues of his day, war, slavery, the abrogation of the rights of Native Americans, and, of course, the consumption of ardent spirits.

But in my reading and transcription of Hitchcock’s sermons, I was surprised to discover hardly a mention of one topic central to Christianity then and now, the birth of Jesus. In his more than 200 sermons, the word “Christmas” appears exactly once, in a sermon entitled “The Advent of Christ,” his only sermon devoted to that topic.

Hitchcock first delivered his one and only Christmas sermon in Conway, Massachusetts, in January, 1823. According to his records he reused it on four subsequent occasions over the next thirteen years, all but one in the month of January.

Why did the birth of the savior receive so little attention from Reverend Hitchcock? And why did he preach on the subject only once in the month of December? The answers to both questions lie in the very first paragraph of that sermon:

There is some probability that this is about the season of the year when the Saviour was born. A considerable part of the Protestant Christian world regard the 25th December as the time of his nativity; and devote that day to a celebration of the interesting event. The precise day however in which the angel uttered the joyful words of the text is probably unknown and will always remain so to the inhabitants of this world.

He based this observation on scripture. Had the exact date of that event been important, Hitchcock reasoned, the Bible would surely have stated as much. Why then was there no such statement in Holy Scriptures? Likely, he reasoned, it was “that men might not carry the observance of such a season to excess as they are prone to do in such instances.”

So it seems that Edward Hitchcock was not inclined to make a great to-do about Christmas Day, whenever it might be. But Reverend Hitchcock did not mean to suggest that the birth of Christ was unworthy of celebration.

…to commemorate the birth of the Saviour in a religious manner is consonant with scripture and reason. It called forth the song of angels, glory to God in the highest - peace on earth and good will to men, and surely it ought to draw forth a responsive song from the hearts of man.

And that is about all Reverend Hitchcock ever wrote or preached about Christmas Day. The remainder of that one sermon, some twenty pages in its original form, was devoted to a description of the world as it was before Christ’s birth and the change wrought by the arrival of the Christ child:

O what a joyful event is the birth of such a Saviour! Good tidings of great joy it is indeed to all people who have received it. Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem: for the Lord hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem: for the Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations. Glory to God in the highest peace on Earth good will to men.

Did the Hitchcock family celebrate Christmas? If they did, there is no mention of it in their letters. Thanksgiving, on the other hand, was observed and its celebration was referred to in a number of the family’s letters. Hitchcock wrote two sermons specifically for Thanksgiving Day, one entitled “The Works of God,” the other “Prosperity the Ruin of Mankind.”


See "Sermons of Edward Hitchcock 1819-1862," my transcription of Hitchcock's sermons, to read the full text of his one sermon about Christmas.

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September 28, 2023

VERMONT GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF 1861?

In March 1857 Edward Hitchcock received a letter from Vermont Governor Ryland Fletcher offering him an appointment as State Geologist with the charge of carrying out a comprehensive geological survey of the Green Mountain State. This was the second such request he had received in that state, the first coming some 13 years earlier from Governor William Slade. Hitchcock actually accepted that first offer, but days later was forced to withdraw when the Board of Trustees appointed him third president of Amherst College.

The sixty-four-year-old Hitchcock had retired from the presidency of Amherst College in 1854 and was teaching only part-time when he received the letter. In frail health and with an ailing wife to care for, he might have been expected to decline the appointment. But he accepted and immediately began plans for the survey. It would be no sinecure: Vermont was nearly as large as Massachusetts with far more rugged terrain.

Shortly before the beginning of the first field season of the survey, Hitchcock made a wise move. He added three younger, more fit men to his team, his sons Edward, Jr., and Charles H. Hitchcock, and native Vermonter Albert D. Hager, an experienced geologist. But within weeks of embarking on the survey, the senior Hitchcock returned to Amherst exhausted, leaving the remainder of the field work for the Geological Survey of Vermont to his sons and Albert Hager.

Nearly three years later, with all the field data before him, Edward Hitchcock, Sr., began work on the final report that would be submitted to the Vermont legislature. By his own reckoning he spent a year on that work. In many ways it was the capstone of his career as a geologist, allowing him to integrate what he had learned over a lifetime about rock and mineral types, mountain building, erosion, deposition, metamorphism, and paleontology. The complete report, two volumes totaling some 650,000 words, received critical acclaim from scientists of his day and later.

Over one-hundred-twenty years later, University of Vermont geographer Harold A. Meeks published Vermont’s Land and Resources (New England Press, 1986). Meeks was a highly regarded authority on the state’s history. But in his book, he made a surprising statement about that 1861 geological survey:

Nearly a thousand pages were devoted to an exhaustive compilation of all the known knowledge of Vermont’s natural resources, even to a discussion of the relative value of human and cow manure for fertilizer. This report was referred to often as Hitchcock’s Geology of Vermont because three of the four authors commissioned by the State Legislature were surnamed Hitchcock. The report actually was done under the direction of Mr. Albert D. Hager who compiled the many reports, probably did the editing, and saw to the publishing of the work. Hager, of Proctorsville, Vermont, also wrote much of the material, although his name is seldom mentioned.

Was Meeks correct in this startling assertion? Had Edward Hitchcock been unfairly credited with the bulk of the work and Albert Hager slighted? Should the report have been called Hager’s Geology of Vermont? The answer seems perfectly clear to me.

First, the State Legislature commissioned only Edward Hitchcock, Sr., to carry out the survey in his role as State Geologist. The act of the Vermont legislature that created that position empowered him to select his own assistants which he did shortly before the field work began.

Second, the field work was carried out primarily by Charles Hitchcock and Albert Hager working as a team over the course of three field seasons. 

Third, Edward Hitchcock, Sr., and Charles Hitchcock wrote about ¾ of the report. Albert Hager authored two sections, “Economic Geology” and “Scenery,” totaling about 20% of the entire work. Of the 38 color plates in the report, Charles Hitchcock executed 17, Albert Hager, 21.

Fourth, Edward Hitchcock gave Albert D. Hager generous credit for his role in the project, both in the field and in the printing phase. Hager is cited more than thirty times in the report and his initials appear several hundred times next to data collected by him.

What might account for Professor Meeks’ conclusion that Albert Hager deserved most of the credit for the survey and the report? Probably the wording of the foreword led Meeks astray. Hitchcock wrote, “The Principal of the Survey desires to state, that the publication of this Report has been entirely under the direction of Mr. A. D. Hager.” Hitchcock was referring to the printing of the report, not the direction of the overall project nor the writing and editing of the written report.

For more information on Hitchcock’s geological survey of Vermont, please see pages 286-7 of my Hitchcock biography, All the Light Here Comes from Above: The Life and Legacy of Edward Hitchcock (Unquomonk Press, 2021).

I also invite you to read my article, “Against the Odds: Edward Hitchcock and the Vermont Geological Survey,” in the Summer/Fall 2023 issue of the journal Vermont History, pp. 103-9.

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December 30, 2022

          July 15, 2021

    CARS READY: THE ARRIVAL OF THE

    RAILROAD AGE IN AMHERST

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          May 1, 2021

    HITCHCOCK'S BASALTICK COLUMNS

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    ROBERT L. HERBERT

    1929-2020

   
One of the first sources I came across when I began my research on Edward Hitchcock was The Complete Correspondence of Edward Hitchcock and Benjamin Silliman, 1817-1863. I was at once awed by the scope of the manuscript that included transcriptions of some 250 letters between the two scientists. Equally impressive was the seventy-page introductory essay that placed Hitchcock and Silliman in the context of nineteenth century American science, tracing the evolution of their friendship and their views on science and religion over nearly half a century. The document was supported by no fewer than 670 footnotes, striking testimony to the thoroughness and attention to detail of its author, Robert L. Herbert, retired professor at Mount Holyoke College. At the time I was unfamiliar with Professor Herbert but guessed that he must be a geologist or historian of science. I was surprised to discover that that impressive opus was the work of an art historian.

Professor Herbert produced at least eight works related to the Hitchcocks between 2008 and 2014. Besides Complete Correspondence he transcribed two travel diaries of Orra White Hitchcock, edited an exquisite reproduction of her watercolor album, Fungi, Selecti Picti, authored an article on the artistic inclinations of Edward Hitchcock in the Massachusetts Historical Review, and co-authored biographies of three important contemporaries of Edward Hitchcock, Roswell Field, James Deane, and Dexter Marsh, in collaboration with Sarah L. Doyle and others. In 2011 he and Daria D'Arienzo, then archivist at Amherst College, co-authored Orra White Hitchcock: An Amherst Woman of Art and Science, a handsome volume that includes a biography of the artist and a catalog of her paintings and drawings that appeared in an exhibit at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College. (Bibliographic information for these works is provided below.)

Long before he became interested in Edward and Orra White Hitchcock, Robert L. Herbert was a distinguished professor of art history at Yale University where he earned a reputation as one of the world's foremost scholars on the Impressionist period. He developed his own distinctive approach to art history, examining in depth the lives of the artists and the social and political context in which they lived and painted, thus infusing a once sterile field with flesh and blood. Upon his retirement from Yale in 1990, Professor Herbert joined his wife, historian Eugenia Herbert, at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Both retired in 1997 but remained in South Hadley where he pursued his interests in the out-of-doors and New England history. There too he was introduced to Orra White Hitchcock and her art, then to her husband Edward and his scientific, religious, and artistic sentiments.

Professor Herbert scoured the letters and diaries of Edward and Orra just as intensely as he had examined the lives and works of the great Impressionists, searching for subtle clues to their personalities. In his introduction to Orra's travel diaries, he exhibits this talent most strikingly. Orra, he asserts in the introduction, was a dutiful mother and wife, a devout Christian, and a doer of good deeds. But those hand-written manuscripts, intended for no one but herself, provide a rare opportunity to fill out our understanding of her personality. "Hidden from view until now," wrote Herbert, "her more complete self finally emerges from her diaries."

Orra's wry, self-deprecating humor comes through on the first page of her account of their European trip in 1850. As she settled into a tiny cabin on their transatlantic steamer in Boston, she managed to ascend to her tiny upper berth only with the aid of "a little Yankee ingenuity" and "a little boosting from my husband." While a lover of art, Herbert notes, she paid more attention to the lavish furnishings of Windsor Castle and figures of Madame Tussaud's waxworks than to the classical works of art they saw at the National Gallery and the British Museum. She was a good-hearted Christian, to be sure, and was shocked at the squalid conditions of life in rural Ireland at the time, but regularly attributed poverty there and elsewhere in Europe to Catholicism. She was not immune to the prejudices of her time, likening the dark skin of the black workers she saw in Richmond, Virginia, to the filthy streets they cleaned.

The differences in the personalities of Orra and Edward, noted Herbert, were clearly on display in contrasting letters written to their children while vacationing on the coast of Maine. Of an excursion to Plum Beach with a party of friends, Orra wrote, "There were two gentlemen with us and we ducked and spattered each other and had the greatest frolic you can imagine." Meanwhile her sometimes saturnine husband, writing of the same trip, could only report to his children that he was suffering greatly, first from the cold on one of the coastal islands, then from the intense heat back on the mainland. Orra's cup, it seems, was always half-full; Edward's was half-empty.
    
Robert L. Herbert passed away in Northampton on December 17, 2020, at the age of 91, just a month before my book went to press. I immediately decided to dedicate the book to him—it seemed the least I could do. After all, hardly a day passed during the four years of my research that I did not consult one of Professor Herbert's works. They were invaluable to me and I will always be grateful for his scholarship.

    References

Herbert, Robert L. The Complete Correspondence of Edward Hitchcock and Benjamin Silliman, 1817-1863: The American Journal of Science and the Rise of American Geology, transcribed and annotated with an introductory essay. Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, 2012. Link

________ and Sarah L. Doyle. The Dinosaur Tracks of Dexter Marsh: Greenfield's Lost Museum, 1846-1853. Mount Holyoke College Institutional Digital Archive, 2013. Link

________ and Sarah L. Doyle. Dr. James Deane of Greenfield: Edward Hitchcock's Rival Discoverer of Dinosaur Tracks. Mount Holyoke College Institutional Digital Archive, 2014. Link

________. Fungi Selecti Picti, 1821: Watercolors by Orra White Hitchcock (1796-1863). Northampton, Mass.: Smith College, 2011. The original album is held by Smith College Special Collections.

________, Sarah L. Doyle, Joel Fowler, Lynda Hodson Mayo, and Pamela Shoemaker. Roswell Field's Dinosaur Footprints, 1854-1880. Mount Holyoke College Institutional Digital Archive, 2013. Link

________. "The Sublime Landscapes of Western Massachusetts: Edward Hitchcock's Romantic Naturalism." Massachusetts Historical Review 12(2010): 70-99.

________. A Woman of Amherst: the Travel Diaries of Orra White Hitchcock, 1847 and 1850. New York, iUniverse, Inc., 2008.

________ and Daria D'Arienzo. Orra White Hitchcock: an Amherst Woman of Art and Science. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2011.

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In an 1823 sermon entitled "Duties of Children" delivered by Reverend Edward Hitchcock in Conway, Massachusetts, he reminded the youth of his church that nearly half of them would perish by the age of twelve (see Chapter 8). He was not exaggerating. Childhood was a hazardous time of life in those days; illnesses such as scarlet fever, diphtheria, typhoid fever, dysentery, and pneumonia were widespread and essentially untreatable. Edward and Orra lost two young sons, a 2-year-old in 1824 and an infant who died within a few hours of birth in 1832.

The six Hitchcock children that survived to adulthood lived remarkably long lives, three into their eighties, well beyond the average lifespan of Americans of that period. This may seem surprising considering their father's lifelong battle with poor health. Perhaps his children were fortunate to inherit their mother's vigor and emotional stability rather than their father's frailty and mercuric disposition.

As to the Hitchcocks' twenty grandchildren, seven perished before the age of six. But those who survived childhood lived relatively long lives, eight into their seventies or eighties. As to the third generation, Edward and Orra's ten great-grandchildren, nearly all were born after 1890. There were no childhood deaths in this generation. Eight of the ten lived longer than seventy years.

Aside from the scourge of childhood ailments, the three generations of Hitchcock descendants enjoyed many advantages. They grew up in stable homes in prosperous and forward-thinking communities such as Amherst, Massachusetts, Hanover, New Hampshire, and Orange, New Jersey. They were well-educated. Nearly all the males attended either Amherst or Yale while the females were enrolled at Mount Holyoke, Smith, Pratt Institute, or Cooper-Union. Several earned graduate degrees. Three male descendants pursued careers as scientists and college professors, two as engineers, two as medical doctors, two as attorneys, two as stockbrokers. At least five Hitchcock women were teachers, two artists, one a nurse, and one a social worker.

Several Hitchcock descendants earned reputations as leaders in their fields: Edward Hitchcock, Jr., in human anatomy and physical education, Charles H. Hitchcock in geology, Jane E. Hitchcock in community nursing, Edward B. Hitchcock in journalism, and Charles Hitchcock Allen in chemistry. Charles B. Storrs served in the New Jersey state legislature. Dr. John S. Hitchcock distinguished himself as head of the Massachusetts Division of Communicable Diseases during the influenza epidemic in 1919. At least three Hitchcock men served in the armed forces.

In The Descendants of Edward and Orra White Hitchcock, I present brief biographical sketches of each of the couple's thirty-eight children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. I am indebted to a number of archives and newspaper for photographs, obituaries, and other documents which are attached. Readers who find errors on those pages or have additional information to offer are welcome to submit them to me at robertmcmaster24 [at] gmail.com.


See also The Hitchcock Legacy Lives On.

    
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December 18, 2020

Edward Hitchcock did nothing in life by halves. Each new task he undertook, each new assignment he accepted, he threw himself into with every ounce of strength he could muster. We can see this in the meticulous crafting of his sermons early in his career, his far-ranging travels in all seasons as an itinerant preacher, his intensive preparations for teaching chemistry at Amherst College, his ambitious pursuit of several state geological surveys, and his headlong rush to investigate those enigmatic fossil footmarks.

This trait in Edward Hitchcock, this indefatigable force, derived I believe from several sources within, intellectual curiosity, ambition, religious zeal, and a deeply-held conviction that his health depended on vigorous activity. Of course, throughout his adult life he was also convinced that his time was running out, his death was imminent. Of his "desponding nature" he wrote to Edward, Jr., late in life, "It is this trait in my character [that] has enabled me to do what little I have done as a literary man."

So it is no surprise to learn that within a month of receiving his commission to carry out the first geological survey of Massachusetts in 1830, Edward Hitchcock was off and running, notebook in one hand, mineralogical hammer in the other. Over the ensuing forty or so months, he visited every corner of the state, observing, recording, collecting specimens, and pondering the implications of his findings for his notions of geological history and God's plan for earth. It proved to be a life-altering experience for Hitchcock and a pivotal event for American geology (see Chapter 14).

How was it possible, we might wonder, that he could give up his college and family obligations for so many weeks over those four field seasons? The college apparently was happy to accommodate him. And Orra's steady hand and even temperament no doubt kept affairs under control on the home front. (Orra missed her husband, of that I have no doubt, but I can't help but wonder whether his absence may have made running the household a bit easier!)

In reading Edward's notebooks from those expeditions, I was fascinated both by the geological insights they offered and by some geographic curiosities revealed along the way. More than fifty of the state's modern-day municipalities had not even been incorporated in 1830, including a number in western Massachusetts: Holyoke, Chicopee, Agawam, Hampden, and Erving. The names of several towns have since changed: Troy to Fall River, Ward to Auburn, Western to Warren, Gay Head to Aquinnah. And of course four towns that Edward visited not far from Amherst, Enfield, Dana, Greenwich, and Prescott, are no longer, their territories having been inundated by the waters of the newly created Quabbin Reservoir in the 1930s.

To get a sense of the scope and intensity of Edward's first geological survey of Massachusetts, click on the map below to see an animation of his travels.

 
  

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The Hitchcock monument in Amherst's West Cemetery is one of the largest in the cemetery but by no means the most visited. That honor goes to Emily Dickinson, whose grave is situated just a few feet away from Edward and Orra's. Almost any time you pass, you're likely to meet one of Emily's admirers paying their respects, or perhaps you'll find some small tribute left for the "Belle of Amherst," a bouquet of flowers, a lock of hair, or a handmade journal and pencil offered in the hope that the poetess might show her appreciation by inscribing a little verse from the beyond: "Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality."

Anyone interested in the Hitchcocks will find Edward's and Orra's names on a tall granite obelisk nearby along with daughter Mary and infant son Edward (Little Edward was actually interred in Conway.) On the plinth is inscribed a Hitchcock epigram that aptly sums up the man: "The cross in nature and nature in the cross."




Not far from the Hitchcock monument are the graves of Orra's family, the Whites, marked by a row of badly eroded stones for her father, several of her brothers, and one sister, all of whom passed away decades before Orra. But one grave is missing here, that of Orra's mother, Ruth Sherman White. And therein lies a small mystery.

Ruth Sherman was born in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, in 1763.  She married Jarib White in 1794 and the couple first settled in Hadley before moving to Amherst. Ruth gave birth to eight children between 1794 and 1806. Jarib, a wealthy farmer and businessman and one of the early benefactors of Amherst College, died in 1821, as his stone in West Cemetery attests. But curiously, his wife's grave is nowhere to be found.

 While doing research for my book, I sought out information on the death and burial of Ruth from a number of sources without success. Even the Amherst Town Clerk's office had no record of her death. Her name appears in several places in the Hitchcock family account book, showing that she lived with the Hitchcocks or nearby in the late 1830s (see Chapter 15). But still no mention of her death.

The mystery was finally solved by Edward Hitchcock, Jr., in his memoirs (more on those fascinating volumes in a future post). "Doc" Hitchcock, as he was known during his half a century on the Amherst faculty, writes of attending his grandmother's funeral at the home of her daughter-in-law, Caroline White Sprague. Caroline, the wife of Jay White, lived briefly with the Hitchcocks in Amherst after her husband's death. In 1829 she married Reverend Daniel G. Sprague; the couple lived for a time in Hampton, Connecticut.

I contacted Hampton Town Clerk Leslie Wertam who located the hand-written burial record for Ruth White. She died on November 5, 1839, in Hampton at the age of 76. The line above her name carries the death record for the Spragues' 19-month old son, Henry W. Sprague, who passed away only a week earlier. Her grave in North Cemetery is marked by a small, nondescript stone—no words of praise, no mementos of tribute from admirers, just a simple inscription: RUTH WHITE BORN JULY 1763 DIED NOV 5 1890.

The memory of Emily Dickinson is held dear by many even 135 years after her death. Edward and Orra Hitchcock have been honored as well, not perhaps with the passion of Emily's followers, but by scholars of history, science, religion, and art.

But Ruth Sherman White has never been afforded her due. She was neither a scientist nor a philosopher nor an artist, so far as we know. What we do know is that she devoted a good part of her adult life to caring for children, first her own, three of whom died before their first birthdays. Then she helped care for her grandchildren. And finally, in the last year of her life, she traveled from Amherst to Hampton, Connecticut, to assist in the care of the Sprague children. It may well be that she succumbed to the same illness that took little Henry, her daughter-in-law's son. Whatever the cause of her death, it is clear that Ruth Sherman White gave her all for her family.

Requiesce in pace, Ruth.

  

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