In September, two historic Spokane bridge marker plaques were pried loose and offered for sale on Facebook. Luckily, both plaques were recovered and returned to the Spokane Streets Department for re-placing on the Latah Bridge and Marne Bridge.

This sad occurrence got me to ask the question, “How many other historic markers, specifically tombstones, have been stolen?” BOY!

May 21, 2012, story on a Memphis, Tennessee, TV station: “A Memphis man was shocked to find more than one dozen tombstones in his backyard when he was clearing the area for landscaping. He said, “They were all buried in the dirt.” Now he’s on a mission to find the families to which the tombstones belong.

August 15, 2025, Girard, Kansas, story on a local TV station: “A routine event for the Crawford County Sheriff’s Office turned into an amateur archaeology project this week when the department recovered a stolen pickup truck. In the bed of the truck they found a worn, broken headstone belonging to a gravesite. Time and exposure left the headstone difficult to read but it marked the grave of an unnamed infant and gave the simple epitaph: “Daughter of J.M. & ?? Johnson, born March 20 187?.  (?? means illegible). So sad.

August 30, 2025, Woodlawn Celestial Gardens, Compton, California: “Thieves took and damaged more than a dozen headstones from a historic cemetery in Compton…… one of the oldest and most historic cemeteries in the area. Celestina Bishop, the owner of the cemetery, said she believes the thieves took the headstones for the bronze and copper plaques. “It’s just sickening!” Bishop mourned.

Googling for bits for this post, there were hundreds! Going back years! So, so sad. Let’s hope our ancestors’ cemeteries, wherever they are, are safe. 

Would you have qualified to be a housekeeper in 1780 in Pennsylvania? This ad was placed in the Pennsylvania Packet on 23 September 1780:

“Wanted at a Seat about half a day’s journey from Philadelphia, on which are good improvements and domestics, A single Woman of unsullied Reputation, an affable, cheerful, active and amicable disposition; cleanly, industrious, perfectly qualified to direct and manage the female concerns of country business as raising small stock, dairying, marketing, combing, carding, spinning, knitting, sewing, pickling, preserving, etc, and occasionally to instruct two young Ladies in those Branches of Oeconomy, *, who, with their father, compose the Family. Such a person will be treated with respect and esteem and meet with every encouragement due to such a character.”  (* Oeconomy: the practice of mangaing the economic and moral resources of the household for the maintenance of good order.” 

Or how about this diary entry written by Abigail Foote in 1775 in Connecticut. She set down her daily work and the entries run like this:

“Fix’d gown for Prude,–Mend Mother’s Riding-Hood,–Spun short thread, — Fix’d two gowns for Welsh’s girls,–Carded tow,–Spun linen,–Worked on Cheesebasket,– Hatchel’d flax with Hannah, we did 51 lbs apiece,– Pleated and ironed,–Read a Sermon of Doddridge’s, — Spooled a piece, — Milked the cows, — Spun lines, did 50 knots, — Made a Broom of Guinea wheat straw, — Spun thread to whiten, — Set a Red dye,– Had two Scholars from Mrs. Taylor’s,– I carded two pounds of whole wool and felt Nationly (sic),– Spun harness twine,– Scoured the pewter.”  

Dear Abigail also told of washing, cooking, knitting, weeding the garden, picking geese, dipping candles and making soap. AND she had time to visit friends!

(Donna: And these were the good old days???)

Home Life in Colonial Days, by Alice Morse Earle, 1974,  is a book I keep on my genealogy shelf and refer back to often. Such interesting information about our ancestors!

Take the subject of wigs for men. Author Earle waxes poetically about this fashion:

“There was one fashion which lasted for a century which was so untidy, so uncomfortable, so costly and so ridiculous that we can only wonder that it was endured for a single season…. I mean wig-wearing by men. The first colonists wore their own natural hair. The Cavaliers had long and perfumed love-locks; and though the Puritans had been called Roundheads, their hair waves, also, over the collar and often hung over the shoulder. The Quakers, also, wore long locks, as the lovely portrait of William Penn shows. But by 1675 wigs had become common enough to be denounced by the Massachusetts government and to be preached against by many ministers while other ministers proudly wore them.

Wigs were called horrid bushes of vanity and hundreds of other disparaging names which seemed to make them more popular. They varied from years to year; sometimes they swelled out at the sides or rose in great puffs or turned under in heavy rolls or hung in braids and curls and pigtails. They were made of human hair, calves’ and cows’ tails, of thread, silk and mohair. They had scores of silly and meaningless names such as “grave full-bottom,” or “giddy feather-top.” 

They were bound and braided with pink, green, red and purple ribbons and sometimes all these colors on one wig. They were very heavy and very hot and very expensive, often costing what would be equal to a $100 today. The care of them was a great item, often ten pounds a year for a single wig and some gentlemen owned eight or ten wigs! Even children wore wigs!

After wigs had become unfashionable the natural hair was powdered and was tied in a queue in the back. This was an untidy, troublesome fashion which ruined the clothes for the hair was soaked with oil or pomatum to make the powder stick.”