The other day I posted a piece about a beautiful tombstone in a small family cemetery in Jackson, New York, just a couple of miles from our farm.

The beautiful stone sits on a small hill across from an old farm. These isolated tombstones and small cemeteries dot the rural landscape; they speak of when people were buried where they lived or close.

I visit the monument once a year and sometimes leave flowers there, but I loved imagining Nancy’s life, which began in 1788 and ended in 1849.

Her husband,  Reuben Stone, carried the title of Colonel; I always assumed he fought in the War of 1812 or served in the U.S. Army.

There is an inscription on the tombstone which reads, “Blessed are the pure of heart,” and that is the first time I’ve ever seen that around here on a gravestone. It suggests that Nancy was much loved.

I never tried to learn more about her or saw a reason to. I’m a storyteller, and I love telling stories. I was free to make up this one.

Despite my appreciation for the tombstone, I know and have learned nothing about Nancy and her life since I discovered it years ago; it was always more interesting to imagine her.

Given where she was buried, I assume she lived on a  nearby farm. I figured her family was prosperous – her tombstone was evidence of that.

Boundaries mark my life, and I am a loner. I am interested in many things but have always been queasy about digging into the lives of dead people with whom I have no connection or legitimate interest.

Except that I did that all the time as a reporter. I always persuaded myself there was a good reason.

I mostly looked into the lives of politicians or criminals or heroes.

It is almost as if I didn’t want to bother the long ago deceased, what’s done is done, and the past is past.

So I was surprised when I got a wave of e-mails about my piece from (genealogy is a new and popular hobby I see) people all over the place. When I think of it, this should not be surprising in the age of the Internet, where everyone’s life is online in one place or another, no matter if they are dead or alive, or lived a couple of hundred years ago.

The messages were interesting, and I appreciate them.

There is always someone out there searching for truth.

But the odd thing is that I still know very little about Nancy, the kind of life she lived, or the type of person she was. I don’t think anyone will find that on the Internet. What was she like? Was her marriage good? Did she work or write or paint? Did she have a lot of friends, work on a farm?

This new digital world is full of stats but little emotion or feeling. We don’t know as much as we think we do.

Kande wrote to tell me that the lovely monument was created by her son Horatio Stone, beautifully carved with four angels. Horatio became a noted sculptor. “Nancy’s son, Horatio… was an artist, physician, and writer,” wrote Kande. If I had a chance,  she asked that I note that he has some well-known pieces and accomplishments.

Roger wrote to tell me the cemetery is called Coulter Cemetery, presumably for a farm of the same name  (that is a guess.)

Caroline, a friend, sent me more details about Nancy. When she was born, her father was Jesse V. Fairchild, 33, and her mother, Zerviah Doty, was 25.

Nancy married Reuben Stone around 1806, somewhere in New York. They were the parents of at least five sons and six daughters. Nancy was 61 when she died.

Caroline wrote that she thought Nancy “would be touched or perhaps amused to know that people in the 21st century are interested to learn more about her because of her loving headstone.”

These messages reminded me of the importance of community and history.

Ironically, this new technology seems to have left us, strangers, to one another, farther away and not closer. Angry people plot frightening protests they can’t even explain. Everyone demands freedom, everyone wants to take some away from somebody.

Being angry is a cause all of its own. Nancy Fairchild would probably have been horrified by us.

We want to know about each other, especially people whose family thinks enough of them to put up headstones as sweet, loving, and beautiful as Nancy’s.

Walking through cemeteries at times removed me how we have lost the will or desire to make tombstones like that. Burial is more transactional and colder, I think. In a few days, it’s over.

From these messages, I sense that Nancy was wealthy and from a rich and well-known family. That explains the tombstone. From the inscription, I take it she was sweet and kind and well-loved, but that might be a projection.

I read all the messages; I got a little better sense of Nancy, yet I am curiously conflicted about it. A part of me loves to imagine her; I don’t feel the need to know everything about her. It was almost as if we had a personal relationship. I changed that.

And a part of me, of course, is interested. I became a reporter for nothing. I’ve spent many hours and days of my life digging for information about people. And when I did it, there was no Internet to shield me.

I wonder why so many people out there would know how to and are drawn to accessing the details of other people’s lives so efficiently. In 200 years, will anybody want to know the details of my life?

If they do, and if the earth is still intact, I suppose they can always go to my blog and learn more about me than anyone wants to know. It’s all right out in the open.

I am clear about cremating; I have no interest in buying buried or having any tombstone. I don’t think anyone in my family would care to do that in my memory.

My memory and legacy is in the life I loved and the people I loved. In 200 years, I will be even more insignificant than I am now.

I don’t need more than that.

As a former journalist and now as a writer, I am always curious about the details of other people’s lives. I didn’t know it was so possible to reach back in time and fill in some of those old blanks.

All the information in the world is out there, and once in a while, we get to use it for good.

I am grateful to the people who took the trouble to respond to my little piece on a tombstone on a hill in an abandoned cemetery. That was kind.

I think the message for me is that even though we are not connected to everyone and all of the information in the world, there is something lonely and empty in our culture. as we see our friends and neighbors and family less and less.

It seems the more we know about people, the less we care about people.

I have this feeling that we are lonely people, us humans in America in 2022. I think many of us fight so angrily and intensely on the Internet because we want to be heard and listened to.

I don’t think Nancy was ever lonely with 11 children and at least one adoring and creative son. I bet everyone in the world called him”Colonel.”  Maybe they lived in a Mansion and had servants.

Sometime later in the year, informed by these new details about Nancy, who is still a mystical figure in my life, I will bring some more flowers to  her grave – maybe the first day of Spring, now that I think of it.

I will know more than I knew about here, but there is still an awful lot to imagine.