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Nov 08, 2024

David Lapham’s 18th century gravestone re-buried in Lincoln; mystery lives on | News | valleybreeze.com

Valley Breeze Staff Writer LINCOLN – After vanishing from Rhode Island Historical Cemetery Lincoln #36 decades ago, the 18th-century gravestone of David Lapham has finally returned to its rightful

Valley Breeze Staff Writer

LINCOLN – After vanishing from Rhode Island Historical Cemetery Lincoln #36 decades ago, the 18th-century gravestone of David Lapham has finally returned to its rightful place. The mystery of its disappearance, however, remains unsolved.

Lapham, of Lincoln, died on Nov. 11, 1753, at 20 years, 11 months, and 20 days, according to his headstone.

He was buried in the Lapham-Wilcox lot near what is now Handy Pond, alongside his sister Abigail and brother Silas, who also died in November 1753, likely from an illness such as scarlet fever.

Though 40 or so people are thought to be buried in Cemetery #36, an 1896 survey recorded only five inscribed gravestones, those of siblings David, Abigail, and Silas Lapham, their cousin Cylinda White, and Augustus Lapham, believed to be their nephew.

Local historian Ken Postle, director of cemetery recovery efforts for the Blackstone Valley Historical Society, noted that the cemetery was used by Quakers, and up until the 1820s, he said, it was against their religion to bury anyone with an inscribed grave marker.

Traditionally, Quakers buried the dead with both a plain headstone and a plain foot stone, with the headstones to the west and a foot stone to the east toward Jerusalem, so when Jesus calls the dead to rise, they stand at the resurrection, Postle explained.

Despite dying in the mid 1700s, David, Abigail, Silas, and Cylinda received inscribed headstones around 100 years after their deaths, as a way for family to memorialize them, Postle said.

By 1995, a cemetery survey from Roger Beaudry stated that only Cylinda’s stone remained, and was badly damaged. The rest were missing up until this spring, when Stephanie Santos, chairperson of the Lincoln Conservation Commission, received a peculiar email from Melinda Stoops, a Boston College faculty member.

According to Stoops, David Lapham’s headstone had been confiscated from a student’s Boston College dorm room some 30 years ago. A former BC professor, Donald Hafner, had conducted research on the stone, tracing it back to Lincoln, but when he retired, the stone went all but forgotten in one of the university’s offices.

Upon discovering Lampham’s grave marker herself, Stoops reached out to Santos in an attempt to return it to where it came from.

Santos contacted Postle, who immediately recognized Lapham’s name. Several years ago, he had created the page for the Lapham-Wilcox plot, also known as Rhode Island Historical Cemetery Lincoln #36, on the Find a Grave website.

When they first heard Stoops’s story, Santos and Postle theorized that the stone was taken from the cemetery by the BC student, who perhaps had the same name or birthday as Lapham, as a joke.

Before seeing the stone in person, Postle also said he thought the bottom of the stone was broken off, which would allow him to match it to it’s base, almost like a puzzle piece.

But, after Santos transported Lapham’s grave marker from the BC campus to Postle’s Pawtucket home, Postle noticed the stone was fully intact.

“It makes sense that it’s not broken, because it’s so solid, and incredibly heavy, which I didn’t realize until I had it in person. That alone kind of disproved my original theory that some kids were messing around and pulled the stone out of the ground, but it also raised lots of new questions,” he said. “It also meant that the odds of returning the stone to its exact original location were slim.”

After months of researching and assessing the layout of the cemetery, Postle said he hadn’t made much progress, but knew he wanted to re-bury Lapham’s stone before the cold winter weather had the chance to harden the ground.

On the sunny Saturday afternoon of Oct. 26, Postle, Francine Jackson, secretary of the Blackstone Valley Historical Society and member of Lincoln’s Conservation Commission, State Rep. Mary Ann Shallcross Smith, and photographer Jim Hendrickson gathered at Handy Pond Preserve to place Lapham’s headstone back with his family in Cemetery #36.

With his original burial place unknown, Postle decided to bury the stone within the confines of the Lapham-Wilcox plot in the Eastern-most row, so the stone is visible from the walking path.

Before Lapham’s headstone was re-buried, the land was nearly indistinguishable as a cemetery.

“It’s very unfortunate, but this is the case for many of these historic cemeteries; they’re not properly card for, and because the Quakers just used head and foot stones instead of inscribed grave markers, the average person doesn’t even realize they’re walking by, or on, a graveyard,” stated Postle.

That Saturday, as Postle carried the stone down the footpath to the cemetery plot, he said he couldn’t help but remark on the weight of the gravestone, asking “how could a college kid possibly get this thing out of the ground?”

Jackson offered up an explanation that Postle said he’d not yet heard.

Jackson told the group that in the 1980s, developers eyed the land at Handy Pond for possible development, and heavy machinery moved all over the land, including running over what at first appeared to be small rocks sticking up out of the ground.

Apparently, she said, a worker noticed a few larger stones, with writing inscribed on them. The stones were actually the gravestones of the Laphams, which she alleges developers removed from the ground, and eventually misplaced.

Ultimately, the developers did not go through with the project, and the land was later acquired by the town, but Jackson said the damage was already done.

Postle told The Breeze that Jackson’s explanation was a probable one, but posed even more questions than he had before, questions, he said, felt impossible to answer.

“How, when, and why was Lapham’s gravestone removed from the ground? If the developers did remove it, where did they put it? How did developers get heavy machinery down this small path? How did the solid slate gravestone end up at Boston College? Why did the student feel compelled to take Lapham’s gravestone, and where did they find it?” Postle asked.

One thought, Postle said, stood out to him above all else: “is there a chance that the other Lapham gravestone are still somewhere around here, just waiting to be found?”

If Jackson is correct, Postle emphasized that there is a high possibility that Silas, Augustus and Abigail’s grave markers are in the vicinity of Handy Pond. He said he has a hunch that they might actually be part of one of the stone walls around the area.

“If anyone knows any information about this at all, please, please, come forward. Even if it’s anonymously, it doesn’t matter. There are so many questions that can only be answered by the developers of this project or by that BC student themselves,” pleaded Postle.

Aside from coming forward with information on David’s stone, Postle urged anyone walking around Handy Pond and RI Historical Cemetery Lincoln #36 to shuffle through the fallen leaves, and keep their eyes peeled for one of the missing stones.

“They’re black and smooth and don’t match the other stones. They probably weigh more than 50 pounds each, so I’m hoping, with the exception of David’s, they haven’t gone very far,” Postle said.

“If they are found, I’d love to re-bury them properly.”

To share information about David Lapham, his family, the disappearance of his gravestone, or the other three gravestones, contact the Conservation Commission at [email protected] or visit the Facebook page, River Road and Blackstone Valley Cemeteries, which is run by Postle.

Valley Breeze Staff Writer

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