Name/Title
Wooden Grave Marker| Margaret Smith 1870-1910 and John H. Smith 1868-1948 | From Hillside Cemetery, Eastport, MaineDescription
Dimensions of frame: 15 1/2" wide by 23" high.
Gift from Cemetery Department, City of Eastport, Maine, 2023.
From the Quoddy Tides newspaper, Eastport, Maine, October, 22, 2004:
Woodworker replaces old grave markers
by Susan Esposito
It was a simple wooden gravemarker. Perhaps it had stood in Hillside Cemetery in Eastport for almost a century. Or maybe it had been placed there about 56 years ago. But, whatever its age, the memorial to John and Margaret Smith was falling apart.
Cemetery superintendent Jim Elliott told Eastport woodcarver Jim Blankman about the Smith gravemarker, and Blankman took a look. “It was pretty much moss holding it together,” he recalls of the memorial upon which someone with a pocketknife had carved, “Margaret Smith 1870-1910” and “John H. Smith 1868-1948.” “It had rotten and fallen over.”
Elliott had done some sleuthing and discovered Margaret Smith was pregnant when she had a serious fall. The baby was born the following day but died. Then Margaret died of her injuries. John Smith, after losing his wife and child, apparently never married again. A woodsworker, he died of liver cancer at age 80.
The sad tale inspired Blankman to create, free-of-charge, a duplicate of the original Smith gravemarker, even using a small knife to carve the names and dates into the new one. “I put several coats of varnish on, put plexiglass on the bottom with some tar, so it should last awhile.”
He placed the original Smith gravemarker in a wooden case with a plexiglass front, and it can be viewed in the Hillside Cemetery office. And directly across the street from the office can be seen the new wooden monument reminding passersby that the Smiths once lived upon this earth.
Blankman has also volunteered to make Nola Carter a new wooden headstone. Elliott thought the Smiths' gravemarker was the only wooden one in Eastport but recently discovered Carter's in Bayside Cemetery near the eastern treeline. Her simple cross is being duplicated by Blankman.
These are not Blankman's first gifts to occupants of Eastport cemeteries. Two years ago, for Terry Flaherty, Blankman and Greg Pugh created an eye-catching momument to mark his grave in Hillside Cemetery. “We faced it north, so the paint wouldn't fade,” notes Blankman of the black-and-gold marker with the pair of crossed drumsticks at its base. Six feet below the monument, Flaherty rests in a wooden coffin made by Blankman for his friend.
