Taking such pains to commission a memento like the gravestone, especially considering it conflicted with the asceticism of pious puritan society, bespeaks emotional ones from Josiah Miller’s passing. The emphasis of Josiah’s life down to the days, as opposed to the more macroscopic year count found on all the other gravestones we looked at, denotes a preciousness of the child’s life that his parents cherished and wanted to commemorate. No better example of this can be found than on the gravestone of Josiah Miller, whereupon it is written that the deceased lived for “4 Years, 4 Mo & 15 Days” before the Lord claimed him. Other prominent images include the hourglass and crossbones, both functioning as momento mori for the puritan onlooker.Īlthough, in theory, death is a benevolent occasion for the puritans as it denotes a break from the unimportant stuff of the physical world, it is clear persons are afflicted by sadness upon the passing of their loved ones. Instead, the gravestones’ central image tends to be a winged skull-seeming to represent physical death and the freedom of the soul found therein. Gravestones are noticeably absent of religious symbols.