Spending Time in Cemeteries

This past week, I spent a significant amount of time in cemeteries in New Hampshire and Maine, ending up in a small, seaside village on the coast of Maine on a Sunday evening with some folks who were attached to the history of the town and the State of Maine, and even the world in the 18th and 19th centuries. The folks I visited were General Abiel Wood and his first wife and children in Wiscasset. I cleaned his stone, his first wife’s stone, and some of his relatives’ stones.. Abiel married Sally Keating (Sayward Barrell) in 1804, and they moved to Wiscasset, Maine. Sally was the granddaughter of Judge Jonathan Sayward, one of the wealthiest men in Maine and a Loyalist during the American Revolution. Sally was the first woman to publish gothic fiction in the United States. She published her work using pseudonyms, including “A Lady of Massachusetts” and later, “A Lady of Maine.” In Wiscasset, she formed the first women’s group in the US, entitled The Female Charitable Society of Wiscasset. In its current iteration, it is known as The Wiscasset Female Charitable Society.