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July 24, 2007

Mysterious visitor from 1700s sparks writers' interest

By Alan Burke , Staff writer

PEABODY - For more than 100 years, this city's South Burial Ground was a tourist attraction, included on every travel guide in 19th-century America. Thousands came for one reason - to seek out the grave of an enigmatic and tragic woman named Elizabeth Whitman.

They chipped off pieces of her headstone - until the stone all but disappeared. They stopped at the last line of her epitaph, said Bryan Waterman, a New York University literature professor: "And the tears of strangers watered her grave."

Waterman is one of two writers at work on books that just might spark renewed interest in Whitman's story. There is something about her that touches people across the generations, he said.

"She was desirous of freedom," he said. "Even though the price was high."

Jennifer Harris of Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada, also appeared at the city's historical society only days before Waterman with questions on Whitman.

"She wanted to know what we had," said the society's Barbara Doucette. "There seems to be - all of a sudden - a big interest in this."

In a sense, Whitman was a forerunner of today's media tragedies, from Laci Peterson to Natalee Holloway.

At 37, she came to then-South Danvers in 1787 where she knew no one and no one knew her. Pregnant, she took a room at the Old Bell Tavern, on the corner of Main and Washington streets, and let it be known she was awaiting the arrival of her husband, Thomas Walker.

Intelligent, well-read and charming, she made quick friendships and wrote poetry - "Is it my doom to hope, despair and die?/Oh! come, once more, with soft endearments come."

No husband came. She and her baby died during childbirth. Locals realized then they weren't sure who she was or where she'd come from. Even so, Waterman said, "Local tradition is that the whole town turned out for her funeral."

The Salem Mercury told the story, and later it appeared in newspapers as far away as Charleston, S.C. From such stories, people in Hartford, Conn., recognized Elizabeth Whitman, a woman from a good family, at home in drawing rooms discussing literature with Yale graduates like Noah Webster - or vice president-to-be Aaron Burr.

"She participated as much as a woman was allowed to participate in literary culture," Waterman said.



Learning her identity did not solve the mystery, however. Was she married? Who was the child's father? Candidates include Pierpont Edwards, son of hellfire preacher Jonathan, and Jonathan Edwards' grandson, Burr. Short of invading Whitman's grave and taking DNA, Waterman said, the father will probably never be known.

Whitman's story, meanwhile, rivets his young students. Independent - "Someone who had a clear sense of herself" - she passed on marriage early in life and when, apparently, she found love, it only led to tragedy.

Her gravesite became a favored spot for couples to become engaged.

"She was a symbol of loyalty to this person she loved," Waterman said.

Thanks to efforts by the historical society's Bill Power, Whitman was given a new headstone, alongside the remains of the old one, in 2004. At that time, library director Martha Holden conducted a reading of "The Coquette," which thinly disguised Whitman's unhappy end as fiction.

Not everyone agrees that Whitman's story can still arouse the feeling it once did. Unwed motherhood is no longer the scandal it once was, the society's Ann Birkner said. Young people might not comprehend the obstacles Whitman faced.

On the other hand, her contemporaries can surprise.

"People cared," Birkner said. "Beyond what you might think."

So they came to her grave for more than a century, and the legend on the tombstone came true.

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