The Redcoat Skeleton

The Grim is opening the gate and entering Bennington Centre Cemetery located in Bennington Vermont. Like bones catching the last light after sundown, the white marble gravestones gleam with an otherworldly brightness. Founded in 1762 beside Vermont's Old First Church, this extraordinary burial ground transcends its purpose to become something far more profound – a cathedral of carved mortality where American history, art, and memory converge in breathtaking ways.

What separates Bennington from other historic cemeteries is the remarkable collection of funerary artistry etched into its stones. Master carvers like Zerubbabel Collins, Ebenezer Soule, and Josiah Manning left behind over 40 distinct works featuring winged skulls, soul effigies, and haunting faces that stare across centuries. These weren't mere markers but sermons in stone, created by artisans whose family dynasties spanned generations and whose chisels shaped American memorial traditions.

The cemetery breathes with revolutionary significance. Just 15 years after its founding, the Battle of Bennington saw local militias led by General John Stark defeat British forces in a pivotal moment that weakened Burgoyne's campaign and helped secure American victory at Saratoga. Today, 75 soldiers from that conflict – American, British, and Hessian – share the same quiet ground, their divisions dissolved by death's democracy.

Perhaps most poignant is the modest slab marking Robert Frost's final resting place, bearing his immortal epitaph: "I had a lover's quarrel with the world." The celebrated poet, who buried his wife and four children and whose deceptively simple verse concealed profound meditations on isolation and mortality, found his perfect resting place among these colonial dead and carved masterpieces. Nearby lies David Redding, a loyalist spy whose skeleton wandered nearly 200 years before finally receiving proper burial in 1976, a reminder that some stories refuse easy conclusions.

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Episode Transcript

Kristin (00:14):
Grim.
Morning and welcome to theGrimm.
I'm your host, kristen.
On today's episode we'll beopening the gate and entering
Bennington Center Cemetery,located in Bennington, vermont.
So grab your favorite mug, cozyup and let's take a dig into
history.
The weather is shifting, springhas arrived, softening the last

(00:34):
brittle edges of winter, andthe grim is nearing the end of
its first season.
Only a few episodes remain, butwe intend to make them linger.
This week we turn our attentionto Bennington, vermont, a town
wrapped in postcard charm,particularly during autumn's
firebreak crescendo.
But beyond the leaf papers andwhitewashed storefronts lies one

(00:55):
of the most quietly powerfullandmarks Bennington Center
Cemetery.
If you're drawn to oldgraveyards, not just for the
dead but for what the dead leavebehind, bennington Center
belongs at the top of your list.
Founded in 1762, the cemeterylies beside the Old First Church
, a stark white colonialstructure now spiritually

(01:16):
divorced from the graveyard itonce served.
The cemetery is lovingly tendedby the Bennington Center
Cemetery Association and thecare shows not just in the
trimmed grass to the old-growthtrees, but in the atmosphere.
This is a place that breathes.
The hillslopes gently, shadowsstretch long and if you look
past the trees, the greenmountains rise like ghosts in

(01:37):
the distance, but it's thegravestones that truly seize you
.
Many are carved from whitemarble, an unusually defiant
choice in the 18th century whenslate, granite or sandstone were
the norm.
Marble weathers poorly, softand vulnerable to time, but here
it lends the landscape anotherworldly brightness, like
bones catching light long aftersundown.

(02:00):
One of the grounds when you'llfind small signs, quiet place
cards that do more than name thedead.
They draw your eye to the stonecarvers, the artists, artisans
and the unnamed hands who gavedeath a face.
Carvings are fierce, precise,mournful.
There's sermons in stone.
Among them, zerubbabel Collinsis the most prolific.
Over 40 stones in BenningtonCenter bear his hand.

(02:23):
Unmistakably, once you know thesigns their wings, skulls,
blazing suns, soul effigiesetched into pale marble, the
grim iconography from aforgotten gospel.
His apprentice, benjamin Dyer,carried the tradition forward
and though the hands changed,the message remained you are
dust and you will return.

(02:43):
The message remained you aredust and you will return.
But Collins was not alone.
His work is joined by stonesfrom Ebenezer Soule, a master in
his own right and heir to aremarkable four-generation
dynasty of carvers.
Soule's legacy extended throughfour sons, two grandsons, an
adopted grandson and agreat-grandson, a lineage of
hands shaped by chisel andgranite.

(03:05):
He was an itinerant carver,moving between Massachusetts,
vermont and New Hampshire,leaving behind quiet
masterpieces in graveyards likebreadcrumbs through the
wilderness.
Southey likely passed throughBennington in the 1770s and his
stones, some of the earliest inthe cemetery, reflect a humble,
haunting beauty.

(03:25):
His winged heads stare straightahead, expressionless and
eternal.
Intricate feathers stretchbeneath them.
Wigs of curling stone rest atoptheir round faces and the crisp
curves of their carvings standin contrast to the cold finality
of their inscriptions below.
Nearby, the stones of JosiahManning offer a different kind

(03:45):
of presence heavier, more primal.
Manning's winged effigies don'tgaze blankly, they glare.
Some look startled, othersangry.
Their broad, simple faces echoAfrican masks or Mesoamerican
figures less refined but no lesspowerful.
On one of his works, the Latinphrase memento memoriae remember

(04:07):
you will die is carved like awhispered warning.
Manning knew the words well.
He died in Connecticut andcarved his own tombstone before
passing.
So much artistry scatteredacross centuries and stage
converses here in one smallVermont cemetery.
For those who understand whatthey're seeing, bennington
Center isn't just a burialground.

(04:27):
It's a cathedral of carvedmorality, a Louvre of funerary
art.
But for those who stop, who seeand who listen, it offers
something rare.
Not just beauty, but memory.
Not just memory, but meaning,and meaning here runs deep.
Bennington is more than a quiettown.
It's a name etched into thelong shadow of the American

(04:48):
Revolution.
In August 1777, just 15 yearsafter the cemetery was founded,
the town found itself drawn intowar.
The Battle of Bennington,though, fought across the border
, and while loomsack New Yorkwas aimed squarely at this place
.
The British came for a supplydepot, but they left in ruin.

(05:09):
A detachment of British andHessian troops, led by
Lieutenant Colonel FrederickBaum, marched on Bennington,
unaware that it would be metwith fire and fury.
Local militia led by GeneralJohn Stark and bolstered by Seth
Warner's Green Mountain Boysrose from the fields and forests
to repel them.
Stark's words still echo in thedirt there are the Redcoats and

(05:32):
they are ours.
Or this night, molly Starksleeps, a widow.
They fought not just forprovisions, but for their homes,
their dead and their right todecide what would be written on
their stones.
The British were broken,hundreds were killed or captured
, and the ripple of that defeatweakened Burgund's campaign,
clearing the way for Americanvictory at Saratoga and,

(05:53):
eventually, independence.
But what is a battle, after all,if not a prelude to burial?
Today, a monument near thecenter of the cemetery marks the
graves of 75 soldiers from thatconflict, british, hessian and
American.
All buried in the same earth,all claimed by the same silence.
But not every grave here speaksthe language of war.

(06:16):
Some speak in poetry.
The far edge of the cemetery'ssloping ground lies a modest
slab headstone, plain, unadoredand perhaps the most visited
grave in all of Vermont.
Beneath it rests Robert LeeFrost, one of America's most
celebrated and most quietlyhaunted poets.
Frost was born in 1874 in SanFrancisco, a world away from the

(06:38):
frost-britten woods and stonefences that would later define
his work.
His early life was shaped byinstability.
His father, a volatilejournalist with Confederate
sympathies, died of tuberculosiswhen Robert was just 11.
The family, penniless,relocated east to Massachusetts
and from that moment on,hardship followed Frost like a

(06:59):
shadow.
He attended Harvard but nevergraduated.
He labored as a teacher, afarmer, a factory worker, always
writing, always observing.
For a time he and his familymoved to England, where his
first two collections werepublished to quiet acclaim.
But it wasn't New England,especially New Hampshire and
Vermont, that etched itself intohis bones and became the bleak,

(07:21):
beautiful stage for his poetry.
Frost's verse is famouslydeceptive, written in rural
vernacular with pastoral imageryand conversational rhythms.
But beneath the surface liessomething colder.
He wrote of walls that dividedneighbors, woods that tempt with
sleep, roads diverging inFrostlite's woods and truths too

(07:42):
harsh to speak aloud.
His world was one where naturewas not a bomb but a mirror,
vast, uncaring and deeplyindifferent.
Though the public saw him asthe voice of rustic American
wisdom, frost was not a manunburdened.
He won the Pulitzer Prize fourtimes, read at John F Kennedy's
inauguration and became anational symbol.

(08:04):
But beneath the accolades was alife frayed by loss.
He buried his wife, eleanor,and four of their six children
and then struggled with mentalillness in the family, including
a son's suicide and adaughter's institutionalization.
As the decades passed, hispoetry grew starker, the
sentimentality eroded, leavingbehind something sharper, more

(08:26):
resigned.
Death was no longer a metaphor.
It was real, present,inevitable, among the colonial
dead, carved masterpieces andthe casualties of war.
A place heavy with history andhaunted by memory, not in a

(08:47):
theatrical way but in the stillinescapable way of frost
creeping in under a doorframe.
His headstone is humble a plainslab of marble bearing his name
, alongside Eleanor and severalof their children.
Beneath it, an epithet carvedlike a final, reluctant truth, I
had a lover's quarrel with theworld.
It's a line from his 1941 poemthe Lesson for Today, and it

(09:11):
reads both like a confession anda closing argument.
Not quite bitterness, not quitepeace, just a weary
acknowledgement that the world,for all its beauty and cruelty,
was never quite home here, inthis quiet cemetery, surrounded
by the carved faces of the 18thcentury sole effigies and the
long shadows of war.
Frost is exactly where hebelongs, not exalted but

(09:35):
embedded, and another voice inthe silence.
Another name on the stone,still quarreling quietly with
the world.
Another name on the stone,still quarreling quietly with
the world and the cemetery.
On one side of the monumenthonoring the soldiers of the
American Revolution reads asimple inscription, easy to
overlook David Redding, loyalist, hung 1778.

(09:55):
At first glance it reads like asimple conclusion, final,
uncomplicated.
But Redding's story, like thetimes he lived in, was anything
but simple.
It's a tale of war, betrayal ofjustice and doubt.
Obonzo would not rest fornearly two centuries, a name
nearly lost to history and a manwhose death echoes still in the

(10:17):
soil where he fell.
Reading was a loyalist, a manwho sided with King George III
in the blood-slick chaos of theAmerican Revolution While others
in Bennington were pledgingthemselves to independence.
Reading threw in his lot withthe British, enlisting in the
Queen's loyal rangers andfighting under General Boyan
during the failed 1777 campaign.

(10:40):
He escaped the disaster atSaratoga, but he didn't
disappear.
He stayed in the shadowscarrying messages, gathering
intelligence and slippingbetween enemy lines in plain
clothes.
It was his second life, not asa soldier but as a spy, that
sealed his fate.
In 1778, redding made a fatalmistake he attempted to steal

(11:01):
muskets from a barn-turned-arsonowned by Colonel David Robinson
.
It was a bold act of sabotage,and a clumsy one.
He was caught red-handed.
Worse, he was in civilianattire, stripping him of any
protection as a combatant.
He was a traitor, plain andsimple, and the Republic of
Vermont, barely two years in itsown radical experiment, was

(11:22):
eager to make an example of him.
Years in his own radicalexperiment, was eager to make an
example of him.
Redding was jailed in the barnbehind the Canamunt Tavern, then
broke out and fled towardHoosick Falls, new York.
But he didn't make it.
He was dragged back in chains.
The gallows were raised.
His first trial was flawed sixjurors instead of 12, a
technicality under English lawwhich Vermont still observed

(11:42):
despite its independence.
His lawyer, john Burhampetitioned for a new trial and
the Council of Safety agreed.
The execution was postponed by aweek, but the crowd was already
gathered.
Hundreds came to see a man die.
When the news broke of thedelay, the mood turned violent
until Ethan Allen himselfarrived, just released from

(12:03):
British captivity, allen quietedthe mob by promising blood.
You shall see someone hung atall events, for if Redding is
not then hung, I will be hungmyself.
The crowd dispersed and on June11, 1778, justice, or something
like it, was carried out At hissecond trial, this time with a
full jury.

(12:24):
Allen served as prosecutor.
Redding was again found guiltyof amical conduct.
His guards, sacked at the sameman who had once let him escape,
drove him to the execution site.
The noose was waiting.
David Redding became the firstperson ever executed by the
Republic of Vermont.
But that should have been theend.
Instead, his body was claimedby Dr Jonas Fay, one of the men

(12:46):
who had helped draft Vermont'sDeclaration of Independence.
Fay preserved Redding's skeletonfor study, but something was
off.
According to local legend, hecould never get the bones to
quite fit properly together.
The joints wouldn't align.
The frame refused symmetry.
Whispers grew that there wassomething wrong and maybe
justice had not been fullyserved.

(13:07):
The skeleton passed in thehands of Dr William Towner of
Massachusetts, who had notrouble assembling it.
Redding's bones were used inmedical instruction, passed
through the generations of theTowner family, eventually stored
in a chest in a dusty atticpart relic, part curse.
In the 1970s the skeletonresurfaced.

(13:28):
John Spargo, president of theBennington Historical Museum,
recovered the remains and placedthem in the collection, but
they were not put on display.
They were not honored.
A single photo in 1975 byCentennial Publications showed
the bones folded, anonymous andwaiting.
And then finally came theburial.
In 1976, nearly two centuriesafter his hanging, david Redding

(13:53):
was laid to rest just milesfrom where he once swung from
the gallows.
His grave is marked now, notgrand, not forgotten.
A name, a date, a footnote instone.
Bennington Center Cemetery ismore than a resting place.
It's a ledger of lives andlosses, chiseled in stone and
softened by time.
Here the revolutionary dead liebeside poets, spies and

(14:16):
forgotten souls, all watchedover by the work of hands long
vanished.
The trees whisper and themarble gleams like old bone.
Every path is lined withreminders that the past is never
truly silent and though timemoves on outside its gates,
within them it stands, stillwaiting for the living to
remember and to reckon.

(14:36):
The grave grind for BenningtonCenter Cemetery was a maple nut
brevet from the coffee bar.
For more honorary grinds in thearea, please visit the-grimcom.
For now we're closing the gateon Bennington Center Cemetery.
We hope you enjoyed our diginto history.
If you did subscribe today tojoin us next time when we open

(14:57):
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