Winthrop Street Cemetery
[2012, Dunlap]
Town Cemetery is the place to go for star-gazing: Norman Mailer, Robert Motherwell, et alia. At St. Peter’s Cemetery, you can immerse yourself in the story of Portuguese Provincetown. But if it’s the classic New England death’s-head grave markers you’re seeking, you must visit the Winthrop Street Cemetery, the oldest existing burial ground in town. Here you’ll find an abundance of toothy skulls, like the one above whose wings stretch over the grave of Mrs. Rebecca Parry (1745-1798). The founding date of the burial ground is customarily given as 1723, based on the oldest known stone, marking the grave of Desire (Hatch) (Hawes) Cowing. There are some 600 burials in all. What follows is a small sampling of the more interesting memorials in the cemetery.
¶ And while Provincetown Encyclopedia is under development, please also consult this older article from Building Provincetown.
Chaffee
With his occasionally psychedelic palette and his boldly juxtaposed forms, Oliver Newberry Chaffee Jr. (1881-1944) was a “modern before modernism was popular,” Ross Moffett said. His accomplished Fauvism was good enough to get him into the famous 1913 Armory Show in New York. Thanks to their exuberant but disciplined spirit, Chaffee’s century-old paintings hold up remarkably well. He was married to Ada Gilmore (1882-1955), among the more important and influential of the Provincetown Printers, who pioneered the white-line wood-block print; a technique that permitted the use of a single block for multiple colors through the incision of narrow channels among the color fields. Their home was at 3 Central Street. They’re buried under identically modest markers. ¶ Provincetown’s Historic Cemeteries and Memorials, Key W-61, Page 16. Find a Grave Memorial No. 34616719 (Ada) and Memorial No. 34616745 (Oliver). [Photo 2009, Dunlap]
Cowing
This is the oldest know memorial marker in the Winthrop Street Cemetery, honoring a woman who was born in the 1600s. The inscription says in full: “HERE LYES ye BODY OF Mrs. DESIER COWING ye WIFE OF Mr. JOHN COWING WHO DECd FEBry ye 8 1723/4 IN ye 40 YEAR OF HER AGE.” Desire (Hatch) (Hawes) Cowing was born in Yarmouth to Desire (Gorham) Hawes and John Hawes. She married first Josiah Hatch, and then, in 1719, John Cowing Jr. Four years later, she was dead. In his vast collection of gravestone data, Bob Carlson wrote, “The round winged skull and scroll border are carved in the style of Nathaniel Emmes of Boston.” (As he said for the stone of Samuel Rotch, below.) By a remarkable coincidence, Brian Cowing, a descendant of the Cowings, lives just across the road. ¶ Provincetown’s Historic Cemeteries and Memorials, Page i. Cape Cod Gravestones. Find a Grave Memorial No. 34579722. [Photo 2013, Dunlap]
Freeman
While the weeping willow is a common symbol of grief on gravestones, the one over Charles R. Freeman’s grave would seem to hang especially heavy. Charles was born in town in 1835. He was only 4 years old when his mother, Elizabeth (Eldridge) Freeman, died. Then, when Charles was 9, his father, Hatsuld Freeman, also died. Charles himself lived only to the age of 17 years, 1 month, and 17 days, as the stone sadly declares. ¶ Cape Cod Gravestones. Find a Grave Memorial No. 54273366. [Photo 2016, Dunlap]
Hinckes
What a year in which to be born: 1776! Tempy Hinckes — her given name probably a shortened form of Temperance — shared a birthday with the United States of America. Sadly, not much else can be said about Tempy other than that she married Elisha Hinckes and died four months before her 23rd birthday. I don’t know what her surname was at birth. She is the only “Hinckes” whom Find a Grave has documented with a burial place in Barnstable County. Presumably, the Hinckes were at least somewhat prosperous, since her slate gravestone is a work of considerable sophistication whose refined lettering has held up crisply. ¶ Cape Cod Gravestones. Find a Grave Memorial No. 34581061. [Photo 2008, Dunlap]
Howard
A funerary urn claims pride of place on this Victorian marble monument to members of the family of Joseph Watkins Howard, a master mariner who was born in 1817 in Provincetown, where he died in 1886. Also honored on the front of the monument are his first wife, Harriet Newell (Freeman) Howard, who died at age 20, and his second wife, Bridget (Burnett) Howard, who outlived Joseph by 13 years. The front is inscribed, “He giveth his beloved sleep,” from Psalm 127:2. ¶ Cape Cod Gravestones. Find a Grave Memorial No. 41207705. [Photo 2008, Dunlap]
Mayflower passengers
A small fence borders this memorial, though no bodies are buried here. Instead, the stone commemorates the “four Mayflower passengers who died while the Mayflower was at anchor in Provincetown Harbor, December 1620″ — Dorothy May Bradford, James Chilton, the 7-year-old Jasper More, and the servant Edward Thomson. The memorial was the work of the Research Club, founded in 1910 at 84 Bradford Street by a group of history buffs who traced their ancestry to the Mayflower manifest. They dedicated this memorial in 1920, the tercentenary of the ship’s brief stay on the Lower Cape. ¶ Provincetown’s Historic Cemeteries and Memorials, Page i. Cape Cod Gravestones. [Photo 2016, Dunlap]
Paine
A pair of marble tablet-style gravestones honor Olive (Nickerson) Paine (1793-1847) and her husband, Capt. Lot Paine (1789-1853). He was descended directly from Stephen Hopkins, one of the most consequential of Mayflower‘s passengers, because he had previously lived in the New World, at the Jamestown settlement. Lot Paine counted a second Mayflower passenger — Constance (Hopkins) Snow — as a direct ancestor, because she had accompanied her father as a 14-year-old.1 Lot Paine was described by the Advocate as “one of the original founders” of what is now the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House.2 Their grandson Artemus Paine Hannum (1847-1921) was a civic dynamo who cut a high profile during the visits of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft to the Pilgrim Monument. ¶ Cape Cod Gravestones. Find a Grave Memorial No. 34634083 (Lot) and Memorial No. 41212845 (Olive). [Photo 2009, Dunlap]
Parry
This memorable 18th-century death’s-head, which also illustrates the beginning of the 43 Winthrop Street article, ornaments the grave of Rebecca Parry (1745-1798). The rendering of the letterforms is especially sophisticated. Her son Richard Parry Jr. (1774-1805) is also buried in the family plot, under a stone with an unusual tympanum of leaves or feathers, and a poignant inscription: “By his death his wife [Elizabeth] is bereft of a kind husband & five children of a tender Parent.” ¶ Cape Cod Gravestones. Find a Grave Memorial No. 34592056. [Photo 2012, Dunlap]
Rotch
One of only about 10 extant Provincetown grave sites from the first half of the 18th century, this unusually sophisticated stone memorializes 15-year-old Samuel Rotch, son of Mary and William Rotch, who died in 1736. In his vast collection of gravestone data, Bob Carlson wrote, “The round winged skull and scroll border are carved in the style of Nathaniel Emmes of Boston.” (As he said for the stone of Desire Cowing, above.) The inscription reads: “The Lord gave & the Lord hath taken away,” from the Book of Job. ¶ Cape Cod Gravestones. Find a Grave Memorial No. 34596671. [Photo 2012, Dunlap]
Smith
Sally Stubbs Smith was born in town in 1822 and died here in 1855, at the age of 33. Her parents were Sally (Tufts) Smith and Richard Flood “Dick” Smith. The Smiths once had a house on Long Point (now at 37 Commercial Street), where Dick Smith also maintained a saltworks. A hand pointing up on a grave stone is showing visitors the path to heaven and eternal life. ¶ Find a Grave Memorial No. 34597182. [Photo 2016, Dunlap]
Soper
Capt. Samuel Soper (1791-1860) set sail from Boston in March 1823 aboard the brig Ardent with 14 men, bound for the whaling grounds of the mid-Atlantic. In late September, with a good haul of sperm oil, Ardent was returning to the U.S. when it was overtaken and nearly wrecked by a violent tempest. Three sailors were lost in the storm and six more died during the agonizing 28-day wait for assistance, which finally came when a British packet spotted the foundering vessel. Captain Soper was among the five initial survivors, but his odyssey prevented him from being present for the birth of his son, Samuel Thomas Soper.1 ¶ Provincetown’s Historic Cemeteries and Memorials, Key W-39, Page 9. Find a Grave Memorial No. 54272352. [Photo 2009, Dunlap]
Tallcott (or Talcott)
While American militias still fought alongside British soldiery, one of their greatest victories was the siege and capture in 1745 of the French Fortress of Louisbourg at Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. (That’s roughly 575 miles east-northeast of Provincetown; as far away as Cleveland.) Some of those colonial troops arrived aboard Gull, a transport skippered by Capt. John Tallcott (1704-1745). The French surrendered on 26 June. Captain Tallcott, 41 years old, returned to Provincetown and died just two months later. ¶ Provincetown’s Historic Cemeteries and Memorials, Key W-55, Page 13. Cape Cod Gravestones. Find a Grave Memorial No. 34597215. [Photo 2012, Dunlap]
[2016, Dunlap]
Paine
1 Stephen Hopkins (1581-1644) › Constance (Hopkins) Snow (1606-1677) › Mary (Snow) Paine (1630-1704) › Thomas Paine Jr. (1656-1721) › Elkanah Paine (1692-1724) › Elkanah Paine (1726-1769) › Elkanah Paine (1748-1822) › Capt. Lot Paine (1789-1853).
2 “Universalist Church Notes,” Provincetown Advocate, 5 May 1932, Page 3.
Soper
1 “The Wreck of the Ardent,” by Amy Whorf McGuiggan, The Provincetown Independent, 1 February 2023.