Concepts of a tour

Amherst women I'm excited to highlight

Last week, I wrote about how I’m in the process of researching and writing a Women’s History tour of West Cemetery in Amherst, Massachusetts. I’ve been a volunteer tour guide at Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia, for about six years now, but for the tours I’ve given there, I’ve always had a script provided to me. This is my first time trying to come up with my own cemetery walk.

To motivate myself to write the tour, about a month and a half ago, I invited some friends and family to a preliminary walk, which will happen this coming weekend. Since then, I’ve been researching my little heart out on ancestry.com and other sites. I’ve now identified the figures I want to highlight and have some sense of the general themes of the tour, but I wouldn’t say I have a full tour yet. To borrow a phrase our current president used on the campaign trail, I have “concepts of a tour.”

Women I’m excited to highlight

I have around twenty-five figures to talk about, some of whom are depicted on the town mural next to the cemetery. Here’s a sneak peak at some of the stories I’ll be sharing.

Esther Cutler(s)

What’s unique about Esther Cutler’s grave marker is that it’s much larger in scale than any of her family members who are buried nearby. Her name is engraved in bold block letters, and the font size larger than I’ve seen elsewhere in the cemetery. I was curious how Esther came to have such an elaborate grave.

In my research, I found the answer to this question, and I identified another Esther Cutler buried nearby, who has a connection to Shay’s Rebellion, a local uprising that had big political implications for the United States’ governing structure in the country’s early years.

Sarah Finnemore

One of the first graves that caught my attention at West Cemetery was that of Charles Finnemore, who served in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry as part of the United States Colored Troops during the Civil War. Finnemore was wounded at the Battle of Olustee, a relatively obscure battle site where I happened to attend a reenactment a few months before I moved to Amherst. Sarah and Charles married shortly before the war. I’m interested in considering his service from her perspective as well as highlighting their lives together after the war and the tight-knit Black community they were part of in Amherst.

Annie Kirby Stearns

One of the themes of the tour is the precariousness of life in earlier eras when people were more susceptible to mortality from infectious disease because the vaccines and treatments we have today weren’t available. Annie’s grave caught my eye for this reason. She’s buried in the Stearns’ family lot. By the appearance of the lot, the Stearns were a wealthy family in Amherst, but Annie (and her sister Ethel) passed away when they were teenagers. I’ve identified their cause of death and learned more about their mother, Mary Stearns, who ran a school for girls out of her home in Amherst and endured a lot of tragedy in her life.

Lavinia Dickinson

Lavinia Dickinson shown holding a cat behind her sister Emily on the town mural.

Lavinia was the sister of the poet Emily Dickinson. She was one of the driving forces behind Emily’s poems being published. Lavinia never married and apparently really loved cats, so I’m excited to acknowledge her as a role model for today’s “childless cat ladies.”

Research goals

I’ve been enjoying swimming in a sea of information about Amherst’s women, but I haven’t been great about saving the records I’ve come across. I watched a great video by Erin Moulton of Soulspun Kitchen this past week about being intentional with genealogical research.

Making Your Genealogy Research Intentional

Once I’ve had a chance to share my “concept of a tour” this weekend, I’m looking forward to going back through the records more intentionally so I can create a well documented script.

I hope my dreams of sharing this tour regularly becomes a reality because I love being a cemetery tour guide and it would be great if I didn’t have to travel to Atlanta to do it. (Although I will still keep visiting Atlanta because Oakland Cemetery is amazing and my volunteer friends there are the best.)

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