At least some of these stones have clearly been moved, apparently in a 1954 restoration of the Cemetery: the smaller stone to the right (and, larger, below) is Benjamin’s footstone. Both are fashioned of white marble; their quality — if not, alas, their durability under acid rain and other insults — betokens the family’s prosperity and standing in the community.
The similar stone (particularly finely tooled) in the background,
where the footstone belongs, commemorates Benjamin’s and Ruth’s infant son, 4GU Elkins Smith. A larger picture of Elkins’s stone appears on the previous page.
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That’s not a “happy-face”
on Grandpa’s stone, by the way,
but it has evolved a long way
from the winged death’s-head
of a century earlier.
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“Lieut.
BENJAMIN SMITH
1796”
(displaced footstone)
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