Now, in my defense, there are plenty of bleeding gravestones out there, also glowing gravestones, weeping gravestones, disappearing gravestones, screaming gravestones, levitating gravestones, graving gravestones, all of them sharing in common that nobody has ever seen/recorded those gravestones in action. Well, other than graving.
And the bleeding gravestone of Rocky Hill is no different in that regard. But it is different. Because somebody set its legend in bronze.
The bleeding gravestone itself is white, mottled with black, and the epitaph is completely worn away. I actually don’t need to write a single other word about this thing. Because a large brass plaque that someone inset into a stone at its base tells the whole story:
This stone is at the grave of a mother who died leaving several small children. The husband remarried, as husbands do, and tis said that he and the step mother were very cruel and unkind to the children. But
Death could not this mother’s anguish kill
When the gnarled oaks groan.
And the pine trees moan
In this grave yard at Rocky Hill.
The tale oft told on many a lonely stretch
Is that this stone breaks out in Bloody Sweats
In this grave yard at Rocky Hill.
Setting aside such quirks of phrasing as “cruel and unkind” and going from prose to poem mid-sentence like a singer-songwriter with a guitar, what I really want to know is, Who put this thing there? Why did they do it? When did they do it?
According to FindaGrave, Mary was George Fox’s second wife. His first was Anna Elizabeth, and the two of them had some five children. So it sounds like Anna is the person underneath the bleeding stone.
Still, those other, more modern questions remain for me. If you know the answers, drop me a line. Until then, let’s marvel together at this plaque on this grave in the middle of farmland in the Crab State.
