Cloudy with occasional showers this afternoon. High 59F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Rain. Low 56F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall around a half an inch.

Editor’s note: The story about the Freemans’ headstones being restored, referenced in this letter, specifically relates to free Black residents in Gloucester from the 18th and 19th centuries.

To the editor: Gravestones are often the only tangible remains of the everyday people that participated in our city’s history. They are, too, a valuable source of historic and genealogical information. Many older stones, such as those in the ancient Second Parish Burying Ground in the woods of West Gloucester have been lost to time and vandals as the cemetery fell into disuse and disrepair. Therefore, it was pleasing to see that the Freeman gravestones in the Bray Cemetery have been restored. I would humbly like to point out, however, that there is at least one other gravestone of a free Black Gloucester resident in the Clark Cemetery: That of Joseph Green.

Joseph Green was born about 1843 in St. Thomas in the West Indies. He was enslaved for a portion of his life (evidenced by the fact that one of his daughter Edith’s most prized possessions was Joseph’s manumission papers; the document was signed by many Gloucester residents), but was free by 1864, when he joined the Navy in the last years of the Civil War. He served as a landsman with the USS Jamestown until his discharge in 1865. In Gloucester, he worked as a laborer in the textile trade. Joseph was in Gloucester before 1871, the year he was wed to Lizzie Bradley in a ceremony officiated by Austin Herrick, a Methodist Episcopal clergyman.

The Greens’ efforts to start a family met with repeated misfortune. Lizzie’s first pregnancy ended in the stillbirth of a female child on Oct. 11, 1872. Their first son Waldimer was born on March 1, 1874, but he died from hydrocephalus in September 1875. (Lizzie may have conceived immediately following Waldimer’s birth, though the record is unclear; this pregnancy also ended in the still birth of a female child in October 1874.) Loretta was the next child born, in 1876. She survived until the summer of 1883, when she died of diphtheria. Lizzie again lost a child through still birth, this time a son, on Nov. 1, 1877. Edith was born on May 31, 1879. She would be the Greens’ only child to survive into adulthood. On Sept. 5, 1881, Lizzie’s final known pregnancy ended in the still birth of a male child. Lizzie herself died of heart disease on May 15, 1889, and was buried along with her children in the Clark Yard.

Joseph remarried some years later, to Rhoda Cox (a member of the extended Freeman family of West Gloucester) whose parents were born in Kingston, Jamaica. She was 12 years his junior. Her mother likely remarried into the Freeman family after the death of her father, Abraham Cox, a Black fisherman and one-time inmate of the Deer Island Almshouse. Rhoda Cox likely lived at the Freeman home in West Gloucester in her youth.

Rhoda died at the Short Street Hospital in 1909 during surgery to remove uterine fibroids. She was buried in Beechbrook Cemetery. Joseph Green outlived all of the members of his family except Edith; he died of prostate and bladder cancer at the Soldiers’ Home in Chelsea in 1916 and was buried in the Clark Yard.

Edith Green, Joseph’s and Lizzie’s only child to survive into adulthood, left Gloucester in 1895, when she was 16 years old, to join the Shaker community at Canterbury, New Hampshire. Edith was the only Black member of the community. She worked at making the renowned and sought-after “Shaker knit,” had charge of the creamery, and participated in the other cottage industries characteristic of the Shaker lifestyle. Edith Green left no children, as the Shakers are celibate. Not only was she the last of the Green family, upon her death on March 4, 1951, she was the last African-American member of the Shaker community.

I visited the Clark yard in April 2020 while researching Edith Green. Joseph Green’s stone is a white marble stone and located on the side of the cemetery near the Oval playground. It is in good condition despite the damage to many of the stones in the First Parish Burying Ground and Clark Cemetery. The graves of his first wife and his children who predeceased him are likely nearby, but I couldn’t find them. I have not been to Beechbrook Cemetery to look for Rhoda’s stone. Finally, I would like to extend my gratitude to the Cemetery Advisory Committee, whose tireless efforts are preserving this unique and valuable part of Gloucester’s history.

Jude Seminara, Gloucester Historical Commission

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