I got this link from a blog reader named Annie Swickard this morning; she sent me this link about Horation Stone on Wikipedia, the sculptor (and more, it seems) who carved the beautiful headstone of Nancy Fairchild I’ve been writing about this week.

Sometimes, the Internet can be an awful and disruptive force, but it is a miracle in others. Bit by bit, person by person, we seem to be piecing together the life of Nancy Fairchild, about whom I know nothing beyond the fact her tombstone is lonely and especially beautiful, sitting proudly up above a quiet country road in Jackson, New York, where I live.

“I’m sure you’ve already found this,” wrote Nancy, “but I found it fascinating. You have a rather significant headstone in your neighborhood. Thank you for sharing.” Thanks for the link Anne; I didn’t find this, and the truth is I never asked anyone to explore Nancy Fairchild’s life and have done absolutely none of it myself.

In my mind, I am a curious person, but my curiosity doesn’t extend in that direction.

I have to admit I am intrigued and impressed- and grateful –  at what I am learning about what appears to be an extraordinary family and the fantastic way so many strangers are working so skillfully and diligently to flesh out her life.

It was a very casual post I wrote, I often stop at the small cemeteries left behind by life in the country. I never expected to know anything about Nancy Fairchild, and enjoyed imagining her life.  I doubt that much is written about here, women were often ignored in her time. But the life of her son speaks highly of her. So does the inscription he wrote: “blessed be pure of heart.”

Horatio believed strongly that headstones like hers could bring serious art to rural areas, which were and are too poor to spend a lot of money on statues, even for the dead. The reaction to her headstone proves him prescient.

Anne is quite right about Nancy’s son Horatio, a landscape architect, sculptor, arts advocate, author, Civil War Army surgeon, a co-worker of Walt Whitman, creator of three statues that sit in the  U.S. Capitol Rotunda, and many others.

Above: The Three Marys At The Tomb, by Nancy Fairchild’s son, Horation Stone.

Stone is still well known in art circles; he was born in my town, the eldest of at least six children of Col. Reuben and Nancy Fairchild Stone. In New York City, Stone attended the Columbian Academy of Painting under Archibald Roberston and the American Academy of Fine Arts under John Trumbull, those are heavy credentials.

At Trumbull’s urging, Stone entered medical school to study human anatomy further.

Before becoming a sculptor, he completed his medical education and practiced as a physician from 1841 to 1847. He opened a sculpture studio in New York in 1847 and later moved to Washington, D.C., where he specialized in sculpted portraits of Washington patrons.

He also wrote more than thirty poems, some of which were set to music as the oratorio Eluetheria, premiered in New York City in 1849.

Later in his life, Stone wrote about the importance of placing artworks in rural cemeteries, which he did often and apparently, with great skill. This is what he wrote about it. I like this man:

“Such places furnish almost the only facilities, to a rural people, for seeing the higher outstanding works of art. By exercising our ability for superior expenditure in a direction that will increase the number of such works, we shall at the same time elevate their sentiments and advance our own. In every structure, whether of a great or small cost, let the spirit of design and the soul of sentiment manifest themselves. Then our cemeteries will be visited, not for the recreation of the drive only, but for the divine lessons they teach and the sacred aspirations they inspire.”

Very few rural people of his time (or this time) could afford sculpture or much art. But he is right; I see in these cemeteries, small and large. People spared little expense to honor their loved ones.

And he was prescient, see what Nancy Fairchild’s headstone has set off and manifested and inspired.

Stone was a co-founder of the Washington Art Association and was president until its dissolution at the Civil War. After the war, Stone lobbied unsuccessfully for federal funds to purchase art for federal buildings.

“This Stone has been for the last eight years a sort of martyr to the cause of art in Washington,” wrote an admirer, “through poverty neglect and score, he has urged increasing the claim of American artists to the consideration of the government.” That fight continues to this day.

During the Civil War, Stone worked as a contract surgeon, first at the military hospital set up in the United States Patent Office in Washington, and treated wounded from some of the bloodiest battles in the Civil War – the Second Battle Of Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. The famed poet Walt Whitman was a volunteer nurse in Stone’s ward.

Stone saw almost unimaginable injuries, amputations, fevers, and death in his ward, which housed 150 patients. He told a friend that had had not once in all of his memory saw one single case of a man’s meeting the approach of death, whether sudden or slow, with fear or trembling – but always of these young men meeting their end with steady composure, and often with curious readiness.”

We’ve come a long way. In our culture, millions of Americans are terrified of getting a vaccine and enraged at being asked.

After the war, Congress awarded Stone three statue commissions for the U.S. Capitol: John Hancock, Alexander Hamilton, and Sen. Edward Dickinson Baker, the only member of congress to die in the Civil War. All three remain in the Capitol rotunda.

When Stone’s mother Nancy died in 1849, Stone carved the headstone that started all of this; he called it The Three Marys at the Tomb. It was his first significant sculpture led to his great success as a sculptor, art advocate, physician, and human being.

Stone’s personal life is somewhat mysterious, there is little mention of it in the lengthy Wikipedia piece on him, from which I drew a lot of this account.

The Art Journal  of London reported on July 14: “Horatio Stone, the sculptor, who has the commission for a statue of Gen. E.D. Baker, to be placed in the United States Capitol, is now at Carrara, Italy, superintending the work upon the marble.” Stone died at Carrara, Italy on August 25.

He never married.

I know of very few biographies as diverse and accomplished.

I think he is without a doubt the most famous resident of Jackson Township, at least that I know of.  And before this week, I never heard his name mentioned even once.

He was 65 years old when he died. His love for his mother Nancy really came through in this headstone, his first serious work.