Memory Radio

There are amazing grave markers throughout New England. Many are expectedly creepy. Some are poignant, interesting, but all are fascinating in the amount of information provided. 

This one on Cape Ann, reads:

Abigail, Wife of Oliver Steevens, Jun, (? 3rd Daughter of Rev Ebenezer Cleaveland) Whose first husband was Rubin Brooks, taken in the Yankee Hero 1776, and died in Halafax. Her Seccon (sic) Husband James Henderson was lost in the America, privateer in 1781.

I found this information about the Yankee Hero, which matches the year:

The two vessels lay a hundred feet apart, yawing back and forth in the wind, for an hour and twenty minutes, all the while keeping a steady fire upon each other. When the Milford’s foremost guns slackened fire, Tracy saw a glimmer of a chance. He tacked under Milford’s stern again and got clear of the smoke and fire that hung in a cloud over the water. As he ran clear Tracy saw that Yankee Hero’s rigging was cut to pieces: yards were flying without braces, sails tattered. Dead and wounded men lay on the deck: it looked as if half the crew were down.

Further Google-fu resulted in a more complete history of Abigail herself, born in 1751, married yet another sailor who drowned in Sandy Bay, no date, and she died while her fourth husband Oliver, mentioned earlier, was still alive in 1790.

We have to be careful about branding these gentlemen as revolutionary war heroes. Both ships, the Yankee Hero and the America were privateer ships which preyed on British merchant ships. They were, in the eyes of the British, for British intents and purposes, pirates. :)