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The inclusion of Elisha Cowles in this book is based upon a single stone of his, east of the Connecticut River, in the small Ackley Cemetery in East Haddam (the stone for Obed Clark, 1798). What little we know as present of the carver is found in the Caulfield manuscripts. His stones are found commonly within a fifteen-mile radius of his home in Meriden. There is no doubt that he was a skilled carver, for not only are there several probate documented payments for gravestones, but his estate contained numerous stone cutting tools as well as four sets of gravestones and a number of unfinished stones. His most distinctive stones are profiles carved in considerable relief with rounded smooth shoulders, somewhat blank expressions and usually partial torsos. However, the other stones can also generally be recognized by his habit of carving bilateral protruding “shelves” on either side of the lunette giving the stones a somewhat ear-like appearance. Much still remains to be known of his work and how it relates to other carvers. His son Roswell was also a carver and his brothers Ebenezer and Issac may have made gravestones. The enigmatic Brewer family is also involved, for a stone in the Cheshire burying ground very similar to those carved by Elisha is signed “S. Brewer Sculpt.” Perhaps here is another example of a shop at work or two craftsmen working on a single stone.
From: Slater, James A. The Colonial Burying Grounds of
Eastern Connecticut and the Men Who Made Them. Memoirs of the
Connecticut Academy of Arts & Sciences, vol. 21. Hamden,
Connecticut: Archon Books, 1987.
*Homer Babbidge Library call number f/Q/11/C85/v.21