Descendants of Roger Conant who plan a visit to East Budleigh sometimes ask if any graves of family members exist in All Saints’ Churchyard. Sadly there are none, although there is a Conant family grave in Sidmouth, not too far away.
As for Roger Conant himself no grave has been found in the town that he founded, although according to the excellent Find A Grave website it is thought to have been in Salem’s Burying Point Cemetery, also known as Charter Street Cemetery and Old Point Cemetery.
Roger died in 1679. Sadly, only two of his ten children
survived him. Their burial details are either unknown or there is no trace of a
grave, except for the tenth, the oddly named Exercise Conant, who died in 1722
at the grand age – for that time – of 83. But what a distinctive and well preserved grave!
With his wife Sarah, daughter of John and Anne Andrews, Exercise had six children born in Beverly, where Roger Conant had settled. Later, with at least two of his sons, he moved to what became the town of Mansfield in Connecticut, where his splendid headstone can be admired in Mansfield Center Cemetery.
Stone carving was a flourishing
craft in New England and Mansfield Center Cemetery with its 18th-century gravestones, decorated with
cherubim, geometric designs, and a variety of funerary symbols, is considered
to be illustrative of the rich artistic tradition of funerary stone carving in
early America.
More than 180 stones have been attributed to identifiable
stone carvers, including such 18th-century masters of the craft as John
Hartshorne, Obadiah Wheeler, Benjamin Collins and his son Zerubbabel, Gershom
Bartlett, John Huntington, the Manning Family, Jonathan Loomis, Aaron
Haskins, Stephen Spaulding, Elijah Sikes, and John Walden.
Pictured here is Exercise Conant’s headstone in Mansfield
Center Cemetery. It is shown alongside
that of Josiah Baker, who died in 1726. Made by Obadiah Wheeler, described as perhaps
the most talented gravestone carver in Connecticut during the first half of the
18th century, Baker's headstone is located at Trumbull Cemetery in Lebanon, Connecticut, but resembles
Exercise Conant’s in style. Could they be from the same hand?
Photo credits: Exercise Conant headstone by Jon/Find A
Grave; Josiah Baker by K. Carlini (KC)/Find A Grave.
For examples of other headstones see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Center_Cemetery
If you are interested in the history of early America, and Roger Conant as a peacemaker in troubled times you can join the Devon Peacemaker Festival Facebook group at
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