Janet Greene enlarged on a work by Thomas C. Mann that records samplings of epitaphs from New England gravestones from a variety of periods from Colonial times to the present. I found the older stones to be the most interesting. They frequently recorded causes of death such as a 7 month old child who had been scalded to death from a tea pot. One very tragic stone from the 19th century recorded the tragic deaths of a family where the man killed the entire family and then himself. Epitaphs interest me, and many of these did not disappoint. ( )