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Robert son
of Robert and
Zipporah Stillman
died Nov 26 1790, age 15m

Robert son of
Robert and
Zipporah Stillman
died Oct 8 1797, age 1 yr

Two infant sons and
three infant daughters
of Robert and
Zipporah Stillman
Zipporah bore to Robert a dozen children that we know of, even though the local Vital Records and other official documents mention only five, as far as I’ve yet been able to determine. Daughters Sally and Polly lived to marry, as did sons Jonathan and Robbins. Daughter Eliza lived to her 50s, if we’re correctly informed.
The other seven all died young, and we know of them only because their grieving parents erected a separate tombstone for them, right next to their mother’s. We’d wondered about an apparent fifteen-year hiatus (1788-1803) in their childbearing; it didn’t correspond to anything obvious like a war, which might have taken Uncle Robert away.

The first two entries on this stone commemorate two attempts to give the father’s name to a son: each of our cousins (1C4R) Robert Stillman lived about a year, the first from 1789 to 1790, and the second from 1796 to 1797. The third entry just mentions two little boys and three little girls lost by Robert and Zipporah Stillman. No names; no dates. So now we know: they didn’t take a fifteen-year vacation. They lost seven consecutive babies!

This is a very unusual stone. In many cemetery hours, I’ve never encountered its like elsewhere. Clearly an expensive monument, adorned with a particularly beautiful funerary willow, it shares the elegance of the adjacent parental markers. Betokens both deep feeling and considerable prosperity on the part of our kinfolk.
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