Thursday, September 8, 2011

Jane Steward


A classic urn-and-willow design draws your eye to the gravestone for Jane Steward (d. 1851).

JANE.
Daughter of
Spencer &
Nancy Steward
Died Feb. 4th 1851.
Aged 15 yrs, 7 m,
& 16 ds.
They die in Jesus and are blessed
How calm their slumbers are
From sufferings and from sins
released. And fread from evry snare


The epitaph is from a hymn by Isaac Watts (b. 1674, d. 1748), a prolific hymn writer with 750 hymns to his credit—and an untold number of epitaphs.

Hear what the voice from heaven proclaims
For all the pious dead;
Sweet is the savour of their names,
And soft their sleeping bed.

They die in Jesus, and are blessed;
How calm their slumbers are!
From sufferings and from sins released,
And freed from every snare.

Far from this world of toil and strife,
They’re present with the Lord;
The labours of their mortal life
End in a large reward.


Census records show that sometime before 1860, the Steward family, a large family with many children, left their farm in Ohio to settle in Iowa.


Blue Church Cemetery, Delaware County, Ohio

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