You can call Elijah Sikes a “carver” because of his profession or an “artist” based on the detail and beauty of his work.
However you look at Sikes’s work, much of it is slowly wearing away. Sikes carved about 1,000 gravestones in six states over his career, including about a dozen in Brookfield Township Cemetery, said historian and photographer Gavin Esposito, presenting Feb. 12 for the Brookfield Historical Society.
Sikes lived in Brookfield for a while and is buried in Brookfield Township Cemetery. No, he did not carve his own gravestone.
Gavin Esposito and Samantha Ensminger
Sikes came by the profession honestly – his father, Joseph, a Revolutionary War vet, was a gravestone carver, and an “eminent” one at that, according to Esposito,
“Gravestones carved by Joseph Sikes commonly included a spoon-faced soul effigy, big eyes, thick eyebrows, small mouth, twining vinery, crude geometric borders and reminders of one’s own mortality,” Esposito said.
Elijah Sikes was born in January 1772 in Belchertown, Mass., one of six children. The first known stone by Elijah was carved in 1792 and is in Belchertown. He signed “E.S.” on the stone.
Sikes signed much of his early work. Other, unsigned stones – including all of his Ohio output – have been attributed to him based on stylistic characteristics, said Esposito, who has started attributing stones to Sikes. Sikes has been studied and his stones cataloged by cemetery historians for at least 100 years, Esposito said.
In 1794, when Joseph moved to Chester, Mass., Elijah also moved there, and married Lucretia Anderson. They would have five children, three of whom survived infancy.
Stylistically, Elijah started to move away from the soul effigies that were popular at the time and into neoclassical symbols such as weeping willows, urns, columns and drapery. However, he never let go of his roots, becoming “spectacularly good” at blending old and new symbols,” Esposito said.
By 1799, Sikes was living in Lenox, Mass., and started carving in marble, moving away from the brownstone that was popular, but that erodes much more quickly.
Sikes moved to Dorset, Vt., in 1805 and, in 1808, opened his own marble quarry from which to get the raw material for his work.
Sikes was again in Massachusetts by 1816, in Norwich, and reached his “stylistic maturity,” Esposito said. Many of the stones he carved there were templates for the work he would do when he lived in Ohio.
In 1827, Sikes moved to Brookfield. No one knows the reason that he moved, Esposito said. A Hartford Township property ownership map lists Sikes as living southeast of the intersection of Warner Road and King Graves Road, Esposito said.
In 1828, Sikes reached his highest output – he carved 28 stones, possibly because of a typhoid epidemic, Esposito said.
Elijah Sikes carved 13-year-old Edward Burton’s headstone for Burton’s grave in Brookfield Township Cemetery.
An outstanding example of Sikes’ work in Brookfield Township Cemetery is the stone for 13-year-old Edward Burton, who died in 1828. Edward’s stone is next to the unusual “billboard stone” for the Burton family, which is in the oldest section of the cemetery, in the northwest corner.
Although Edward’s stone was carved in brownstone and has become discolored and damaged by lichen, the stone still shows ornate decoration. A tasseled urn takes center stage under a weeping willow, with a book containing a verse on the right side. To the left stands an hour glass and another willow, and it’s all under tasseled drapery.
There’s a lot going on on the Burton stone, and that excites Samantha Ensminger, the marketing manager at Trumbull County Tourism Bureau and a cemetery enthusiast. She presented with Esposito.
“One of the coolest ways you can be a tourist through cemeteries is look at those symbols,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you know the history of who did it and why they did it, but just think about what that meant to them at the time, why that family specifically would have chosen those symbols at the time and what you think they meant to them. There’s no right or wrong answer. It’s just a good way to ponder the art that you’re looking at.”
Lucretia Sikes died in 1829 at age 55 and was buried in Brookfield Township Cemetery. Two years later, Sikes married Clarissa Giddings, who also was widowed.
After 1833, Sikes’ output appears to drop, although he still is listed as a stone carver in the 1850 census, Esposito said. Sikes had moved to Hartford in 1842.
Sikes died Sept. 11, 1855, at age 83, and was buried next to Lucretia. Their graves share a single, simple stone that can barely be read.
Sikes left behind “a body of work spread across six states,” Esposito said, with 553 stones attributed to him in Massachusetts, 195 in Connecticut, 15 in Vermont, 200 in Ohio, 4 in Pennsylvania, one in New York.
“Elijah Sikes was a man of unparalleled talent,” Esposito said, noting that no two of his stones are alike.
You can read Esposito’s blogs on Trumbull County cemeteries under the “historic cemeteries” tab at the tourism bureau website, trulytrumbull.com
