The Associated Press reports that Gen. Thomas Gilbert’s headstone was found in the front yard of the Emily Dickinson Museum. On Halloween, no less.
An innkeeper, merchant, lawmaker and member of the Massachusetts militia who lived in Greenfield, Gilbert had seven children and outlived his wife. But when he died a pauper in 1841, his youngest daughter, Susan, moved to Amherst to live with an older sister.
That’s where she met Emily Dickinson, when both girls were 14. Their lifelong friendship deepened in 1856, when Emily’s brother, Austin, married Susan. In order to entice the newlyweds into staying in Amherst, Austin and Emily’s father built them a house next to the Dickinson homestead.
Susan, who long endured taunts and barbs from Amherst residents who considered her father to be a drunk because he owned a tavern, may have wanted to put her detractors in place by moving her father’s grave from Greenfield to Amherst.
When Gilbert and his wife were reburied close to the Dickinson homestead in West Cemetery, their plot was adorned with a new marker. The gravestone dug up earlier this week was likely the original stone from Gilbert’s Greenfield grave, Wald suspects.
Link here to a Boston Herald web page currently hosting the story.
