"Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd, Or wak'ed to ecstasy the living lyre" -Thomas Grey An Elegy in a Country Church

The forecast in the upper right-hand comer of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle on March 24, 1906, called for fair weather that weekend. There were ads for summer dresses and miracle tonics, and columns of town gossip and local happenings. It also carried the obituary of Sarah J. McCarn Craig, MD, who had died the day before. Her obituary was short and, like her gravestone, did not reveal much in the way of personal information.

     CRAIG - Entered into rest, Thursday, March 22, 1906, at No. 7 Birch crescent, Sarah
     McCarn Craig MD aged 74 yrs. Funeral private. Kindly omit flowers.

Perhaps she left no one behind to whom flowers could be sent, or perhaps her kin simply wanted the funeral to be small and quiet. She was no one especially famous, no lengthy epitaph distinguished her from the other notices of death. But what caught my eye on her gravestone were those letters 'MD.' My guess was that there probably were not many female doctors around in her day, and even if she was no one famous, she must have been a very strong and admirable person to achieve such a goal. There was only a handful of places at which she could have even received such a degree; by 1885 only 19 medical colleges for women had been formed (Lopate, pg. 15). She was worthy of some attention.

The plot consisted of one large family monument, bearing three names, and three smaller stones, one for each name listed on the monument. The northern side of the monument read:

SARAH J McCARN CRAIG M.D.

WIFE OF AUSTIN CRAIG

BORN JUNE 6, 1831.

DIED MARCH 22,1906.

SHE HATH DONE WHAT SHE COULD

The southern side of the monument was shared by two names:

REV. AUSTIN CRAIG D.D.

DIED IN STANFORDVILLE, NY

AUG 27,1881 AGED 57 YEARS

-------------------------------------------

MARY ADELAIDE CHURCHILL

HIS WIFE

DIED JUNE 24,1879 AGED 51 YEARS

Here the chronology interested me-- the dates would suggest that Mary was the first wife, and Sarah the second, but it seemed odd that Austin would have been memorialized on the same side of the monument as his first wife, rather than his second, living wife. Could this have been a case of divorce, uncommon as it was for the times? Or perhaps there was some other reason for this placement.

The first place my searches led me was to the records and archives at the office of the Mount Hope Cemetery, digging through plot books and internment records. Neither Mary nor Austin showed up in the internment records. This made sense for Austin, as he had died in Stanfordville. The plot book turned up another key piece of information--there was a fourth person at rest here. The perpetual contract was in the name of Josephine Craig, who died on June 10th, 1938, and in fact her ashes were buried there with no stone or marker to tell the tale. Judging by the dates, she was of a later generation, perhaps a daughter or niece, perhaps married in to the family. Another point of interest, however, is that a later visit to the office revealed that Josephine had actually died in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her ashes were not simply buried in the family plot, but actually interred in the foundation of the monument. But while the perpetual contract was in her name, the cost was charged to Austin Craig, who was living in Minneapolis at the time. She had passed away at the age of 60, from carcinoma of the breast, or breast cancer. This second visit also yielded Sarah's cause of death--Chronic Interstatial Pneumonia--along with a handful of other trivia. Add to our list of facts that Sarah's interment had cost $4.00, and had been charged to Ingmire, a funeral home which was fairly common at the time. And years later, it was only another $4.00 to have the gravesite trimmed.

Now as mentioned, the cost of the grave had been charged to Austin Craig, living in Minneapolis. The Austin buried in Mount Hope had died in 1881, making it highly unlikely, if not impossible, for him to have been the same Austin who footed the bill. In all likelihood, this was Austin Craig Jr. So now we have a second Austin, to whom Josephine obviously had some relation. It seems probable that Austin Jr. would have been her husband, making her the daughter-in-law of Rev. Austin Craig, D.D.

The quest for obituaries was not nearly as fruitful as the Mount Hope offices. After many hours spend scanning the microfiche of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, only one obituary turned up--Sarah's. Everyone else died outside of Rochester, and the 'good old D & C' didn't get the word, or at least didn't print it. Sarah's obituary tells little more about her life and times than the information found on her gravestone, yet the language is telling of the times. Rather than referring to her death as "dying" or even "passing away," it was phrased such that she "entered into rest." Rather than confronting the innocent reader with the harsh reality of death and reminders of his or her own mortality, the reader is comforted with images of the deceased resting, sleeping, passing on to something or somewhere better. It also speaks strongly to the belief and hopes of resurrection. The predominant belief of the time was that dying was not an end, but simply a time of sleep between life and the second coming of Christ. As it says in I Thessalonians: 'We who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not preceed those who have fallen asleep'(4:15). So perhaps Sarah left behind friends and family who hoped to join her again when she woke from her "rest." Or, just as likely, the newspaper editors used the common language reflecting the culture trends in viewing death.

The one thing on Sarah's gravestone which does give a personal slant is the phrase "she hath done what she could." This is a quotation from the Bible, Mark 14:8 to be exact. The full text reads:

This was certainly an appropriate choice for a physician--one who dedicated her life to the service of others, who focused always on doing whatever good she could. It also gives the strong notion of her living on in her deeds. In fact, Lifton brings up physicians as prime examples of creative symbolic immortality. The concept is that one method of achieving a kind of immortality is to five on through one's actions, "whether through great works of art, literature, or science, or through more humble influences on people around us" (Lifton, pg. 21). "Physicians and psychotherapists, for instance, associate their therapeutic efforts with beneficent influences that carry foward indefinitely in the lives of patients and clients and their children or posterity" (pg. 22).

The stones and monument do not provide much material for analysis. There are no carved flowers or leaves, no wreathes or urns adorning the granite, no Greek letters of fraternal organizations. Just names and dates, and a plain, but prominent, cross atop the monument. Richard Reisem, in his book Mt. Hope, tells us that a cross symbolizes salvation, but it's also one of the most commonly used symbols on a gravestone, and could hold any vast number of personal meanings. It would be interesting to find out their religious affiliation, especially since Austin Craig was a Doctor of Divinity.

So while our factual knowledge of their lives is sparse, a picture does begin to emerge. Mary was almost certainly Austin's first wife; divorce was rare in those times. It also seems that Austin had a son, also named Austin Craig. Josephine was the wife of the younger Austin, and lived with him in Minneapolis. The post-death journey from Minneapolis to Rochester explains the cremation, as transporting a body would have been very costly. The plot was purchased before her death, as the perpetual contract was in her name, and after Austin and Mary had died, possibly Sarah too. It seems fitting that the younger Austin would have been the son of Mary, which would account for him putting his parents names together on the same side of the monument. He most likely remarried after Josephine's death, and was buried elsewhere with his second wife.

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Bibliography

Davies, Douglas Death, Ritual and Belief . 1997 Wellington House, London

Lifton, Robert J. The Broken Connection . 1979 Simon & Schuster, NY, NY

Lopate, Carol Women in Medicine. 1968 Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, Maryland

Mount Hope Cemetery Archives - plot books and records of internment

Reisem, Richard Mt. Hope. 1994 Printing Methods, Inc. Rochester, NY

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle March 23, 1906