Born Sarah Cooper in Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1666--the same year that diarist Samuel Pepys wrote of the Great Fire of London--Mrs. Woodruff died in her 62nd year in Elizabethtown (present day Elizabeth) New Jersey. She was the wife of John Woodruff.
Her brown sandstone stele was carved by a craftsman known as "The Old Elizabethtown Soul Carver I". Active during the 1720's-30's, his work is distinguished by highly detailed mortality imagery and the use of skull-with-crossbones soul effigies. Mrs. Woodruff's gravestone typically speaks to the Puritanical emphasis on the brevity and fragility of life on earth, but the combination of the cross bones effigy together with an hourglass flanked by doves is a rarely seen arrangement of symbols. Birds have universally been used to represent spirituality since ancient times, and in colonial America, a bird in vines symbolized the soul partaking of celestial food, with the dove a Christian icon of constancy and devotion. For more information, click on uppermost photo (taken in 1991 by Nikita Barlow, originally uploaded anonymously in January 2002, refreshed in October 2014).
Her brown sandstone stele was carved by a craftsman known as "The Old Elizabethtown Soul Carver I". Active during the 1720's-30's, his work is distinguished by highly detailed mortality imagery and the use of skull-with-crossbones soul effigies. Mrs. Woodruff's gravestone typically speaks to the Puritanical emphasis on the brevity and fragility of life on earth, but the combination of the cross bones effigy together with an hourglass flanked by doves is a rarely seen arrangement of symbols. Birds have universally been used to represent spirituality since ancient times, and in colonial America, a bird in vines symbolized the soul partaking of celestial food, with the dove a Christian icon of constancy and devotion. For more information, click on uppermost photo (taken in 1991 by Nikita Barlow, originally uploaded anonymously in January 2002, refreshed in October 2014).
Born Sarah Cooper in Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1666--the same year that diarist Samuel Pepys wrote of the Great Fire of London--Mrs. Woodruff died in her 62nd year in Elizabethtown (present day Elizabeth) New Jersey. She was the wife of John Woodruff.
Her brown sandstone stele was carved by a craftsman known as "The Old Elizabethtown Soul Carver I". Active during the 1720's-30's, his work is distinguished by highly detailed mortality imagery and the use of skull-with-crossbones soul effigies. Mrs. Woodruff's gravestone typically speaks to the Puritanical emphasis on the brevity and fragility of life on earth, but the combination of the cross bones effigy together with an hourglass flanked by doves is a rarely seen arrangement of symbols. Birds have universally been used to represent spirituality since ancient times, and in colonial America, a bird in vines symbolized the soul partaking of celestial food, with the dove a Christian icon of constancy and devotion. For more information, click on uppermost photo (taken in 1991 by Nikita Barlow, originally uploaded anonymously in January 2002, refreshed in October 2014).
Her brown sandstone stele was carved by a craftsman known as "The Old Elizabethtown Soul Carver I". Active during the 1720's-30's, his work is distinguished by highly detailed mortality imagery and the use of skull-with-crossbones soul effigies. Mrs. Woodruff's gravestone typically speaks to the Puritanical emphasis on the brevity and fragility of life on earth, but the combination of the cross bones effigy together with an hourglass flanked by doves is a rarely seen arrangement of symbols. Birds have universally been used to represent spirituality since ancient times, and in colonial America, a bird in vines symbolized the soul partaking of celestial food, with the dove a Christian icon of constancy and devotion. For more information, click on uppermost photo (taken in 1991 by Nikita Barlow, originally uploaded anonymously in January 2002, refreshed in October 2014).
Inscription
"Her Lyeth ye Body
of Ms Sarah Woodruff,
Wife if John Woodruff
Who departed this Life
the 3, of June 1727 in
the 62d Year of her Age"
Gravesite Details
Sources: maiden name: Findagrave member Mary Olive; birthdate & place: Findagrave member Glen Hockenjos
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