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The (somewhat overlong) story behind Thankful , …… the best paragraph of which is in bold near the end of Part Two:

Part One

In the winter of 2022 I discovered an image I had made back on June 24th of 2016. In the throes of a subsequent 2016 family medical crisis, as well as planning for my upcoming trip to the Arctic , I had forgotten all about that photograph, but the second I stumbled across it again my original excitement at the time of creating the image was renewed…and then some. But the photograph I had made was, upon closer examination, flawed. I was driven to re-shoot it.

I had forgotten which cemetery it had come from, but using the meta-data embedded in the capture, and cross-referencing that date with my log book aboard Raven I pretty quickly pinpointed the Carver Cemetery on Vinalhaven as the location. A recent trip to the island, and a short walk up from the harbor to the cemetery, with a few minutes of searching for that particular headstone and voilà, there it was for me to re-photograph more carefully.

What so grabbed me about it that first day—and to this very minute—was/is the comma. Yes, the THANKFUL grabbed my attention from twenty feet away, then and now. I live my life filled with gratitude and quiet thankfulness for my many, many blessings. So of course the word caught my eye.

It turns out that Thankful was her name…and the stone only further revealed that she was the wife of Samuel C. Burgess and that she had died on August 24, 1891. As so often happens, there was an entire life’s story left unwritten…and it’s those untold stories that draw me to wander around older cemeteries. But in this case, on that specific stone there was an additional mystery.

But what is the comma all about??? I have never before seen a comma used in this manner on a headstone and it fascinates me to this minute. I just cannot quite stop wondering about this. Further, her stone gives so little other information about her; no birthdate, just the name of her husband and the day she died. How old was she? What sort of live had she lived there on the island? Children? Was she, indeed, thankful for the life she led?

Of the many cemeteries I have visited and the many stones I have photographed, this one intrigues me like no other.

With all this running through my mind last week, I sat in my studio to work on the new photograph of her headstone. There were a few small things that I wanted to do to the image in my “digital darkroom” and as I sat in my darkened room I had plenty of time for my mind’s eye to wander back in time. As I worked and as I daydreamed about her, of an instant another mystery revealed itself to me…one that really electrified me and compounded the several existing, unanswered questions.

You see, all of a sudden I realized that the spacing of the letters was irregular; on the left the letters are close to each other and the “T” is very close to the edge of the “window” wherein her name is carved. But as one letter follows another, they slowly grow further apart. As with the comma, I have never seen this before.

This could easily be explained as the stone-carver simply running out of space…a nineteenth century version of the old joke about “plan ahea…d,” but in this case that explanation doesn’t work for several reasons. First, because of its major granite quarry industry, Vinalhaven had as residents some of the finest stone carvers in the world. Further, headstone carvers always used stencils to ensure accuracy before enshrining someone’s passing for all time. I believe that none of this was accidental…not at all.

First, the beautiful name…sigh…then the comma and then utterly unique spacing. All mysteries of the first order.

I must admit that all this has really sunk a hook into me. I have promised myself that when things slow down just a bit, I am going to spend some time over on the island learning what I can about her. I further promise to share with you whatever I—hopefully—discover.

Thankful, whoever you were, I am thankful.

Part Two

Two weeks ago I shared a brand new image of mine, Thankful , (the comma being part of the title), and allowed that a significant part of the subject’s attraction for me are the mysteries embedded within…who was she?, what’s the comma all about?, and why are the letters spaced as they are?

So, here’s a bit of what I’ve learned in the past two weeks and, as promised, I am eager to share it with you. I had no idea what we were all in for when I initiated this!

Thankful Phinney was born May 31st, 1806, in Barnstable, Mass.; she was a descendent of Giles Hopkins who arrived on the Mayflower in 1620. She married Samuel Burgess in 1830. Samuel Burgess was a fisherman by trade as listed in the Census records and also served as a lightkeeper in several locations. They had at least seven children, perhaps nine in total. Samuel died in 1875 and so Thankful Phinney Burgess was a widow when she died in 1891.

It turns out that I am very familiar with one of their daughters, Abbie Burgess, who is still a celebrated local heroine.

In January 1856, Samuel Burgess left Abbie and her younger sisters to take care of the Matinicus Rock lighthouse (at the time Thankful was listed as an invalid) while he went to obtain supplies in Rockland, over twenty miles off to the west. The lighthouse cutter that was supposed to have supplied the family had not shown up for its September delivery, and food and oil for the light was running low. He feared that the family might be stuck on the Rock throughout the winter with no supplies. He charged Abbie with the care of both her family and the lighthouse.

Almost as soon as he had left, the wind shifted and a gale began. It blew for three days, with waves so high they overran the island with knee-deep water. The home intended for the family was completely washed away. Abbie and her sisters had to secure the windows of the lighthouse to keep the waves from breaking them in. The lower level flooded, and they were forced to seek refuge in the north lighthouse tower. Abbie even managed to rescue all but one of their chickens. Throughout this ordeal she kept the lighthouse light burning.

Even after the gale subsided, the waves were too treacherous for her father to return for another three weeks. The family subsisted on one cup of corn meal mush and one egg per day until Samuel Burgess was able to return with supplies. Notably, the light never once flickered and Abbie is still regarded as the epitome of unwavering vigilance and attention to duty by all those who love lighthouses.

I will mention that back in 1986 or so I spent ten days/nights on Matinicus Rock. It’s an amazing place, not much larger than a few football fields. The next land east of there is Portugal. The thought of being out there in a hellacious nor’easter with waves washing over the entire island boggles even my imagination.

On the more cerebral side of the mysteries within Thankful’s headstone, her name itself; as one of you wrote me, “The name Thankful is a girl's name of English origin. In the Plymouth Colony of the seventeenth century, Thankful was the third most popular of the abstract word names. It disappeared after 1700.”

Now here’s the part I really love… with my repeated thanks to those of you who contributed to sleuthing after this aspect of the mysteries. I combine quotes from three different sources among you all, “This lady was a believer in God and an ‘afterlife’ with Him. The initial closeness of the letters before stretching out with additional spacing conveys the fact that life on this earth is quite brief in the eternal scheme of things. As we age, we get closer to that eternity where life… the afterlife… begins and stretches out forever. The comma denotes the point of demarcation between our earthly life and our life thereafter. Whereas a period denotes an ending, a comma conveys a sense of ‘wait, stay tuned, there's more to come.’ The use of a comma expressing that God is still speaking or has more to say, has significance in modern times with the United Church of Christ…”

A retired pastor in the United Church of Christ just happened to stop by the gallery last week and allowed that Gracie Allen (yes, that Gracie Allen, for us of a certain age) once said “Never place a period where God has placed a comma.” To this day, The United Church of Christ often invokes that saying and that thinking.

My ever-overactive imagination absolutely loves all of this.

Anyway, thanks to all of you for indulging me in all of this. I swear, this is a great example of how images find me… not to mention the stories that are so very often embedded within.

I am thankful ,