David Weatherbee (c1763-1846)
Susanna Weatherbee (1768-1861)
Lucy Weatherbee (1778-1840)
Three gravestones and their accompanying footstones stand in lot 81 of Old Parish Cemetery.
David Weatherbee was born sometime around 1763 to Benjamin and Susannah Wetherbee who had been married in Walpole on February 12, 1761. David became a farmer and married Lucy Wight (1778-1840) on September 21, 1797 in Dedham, where they both resided. They had two children: Joel (1798-1872) and Susanna (1807-1858).
Lucy Wight Weatherbee, David’s wife, died on August 9, 1840 at the age of 62.
David Weatherbee, a widower, died on October 9, 1846 of old age. The unusual epitaph on his gravestone reads:
The only true and real good
Of man was never vermins food,
And that as yet not harbored here
Mounts with the soul we know not where.
The lines came from a fable which was ascribed to a British poet named Gay and published in The Poets of Great Britain, around 1795. The poem/ballad focuses on death as the great leveler. Weatherbee’s grave leaves out a few lines, however, the complete stanza reads:
The only true and real good
Of man was never vermins food;
Tis seated in the immortal mind;
Virtue distinguishes mankind,
And that (as yet never harboured here)
Mounts with the soul we know not where
On October 14, 1861, David Weatherbee’s sister, Susanna Weatherbee, died just two months shy of her 93rd birthday.
The graves of David, his wife Lucy, and his sister Susanna were reset, along with their footstones in the spring of 2021.
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