Verbal/Material Lore – Gravestone Epitaph
“The Smith Family”

English

Informant Data

Henry Leavitt Smith was born on February 19th, 1848, in New York City, and died September 7th, 1918. Smith was a graduate of the Dartmouth College class of 1869. His wife was Jane Isabelle Noyes, who was born January 18th, 1848 in Concord, New Hampshire, and died May 22nd, 1935 in New York City. This marriage appears to be the reason that the plot is shared with the Noyes family, whose epitaphs and names are inscribed on the reserve side of the same gravestone.

Contextual Data

The Smith epitaph is taken from Revelation 22:3-4, as written in the King James Bible. Born to Asa D. Smith, a Review Doctor and President of Dartmouth College, and his wife Sarah Ann (Adams) Smith, there is no indication that Henry Leavitt Smith was an especially religious man. However, his wife’s father, Daniel James Noyes, was a Pastor of the South Congressional Church in Concord, New Hampshire. Thus, his daughter, Jane Isabelle (Noyes) Smith, was also likely religious, and it is thus well within the range of possibility that she would want a religious epitaph inscribed on her gravestone.

Text

“And his servants shall serve him, and they shall see his face and his name shall be in their foreheads.”