Relatively Speaking

From our 19th Century historian, Eudora Dickinson:

​Members of the Dickinson Organization of Poetry Enthusiasts gathered in Richmond, Virginia, this past weekend for a special tour of the Hollywood Cemetery with the cemetery's caretaker, Mortimer Titian.  Many relatives of  the families of both Emmett Lee Dickinson and Emily Dickinson are buried there.

Named for its numerous holly trees and characterized by rolling hills and winding paths overlooking the James River, Hollywood Cemetery is a large, sprawling cemetery located near the downtown area of the state's capital.
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​Top left & right:  The grave marker for Hiram Dickinson, his wife Mary Bell Dickinson, and their son, Hiram Dickinson Jr. 

Right:  The grave of Elizabeth Dickinson Smith, the daughter of Hiram and Mary Dickinson.

Below left to right:  Hiram and Mary Bell Dickinson; their son Hiram Dickinson, Jr.; their daughter Elizabeth Dickinson Smith. 

Hiram Dickinson, a first cousin to Emmett Lee Dickinson (Emily Dickinson's third cousin, twice removed -- at her request) was a potato badger in Ireland.  A badger was a middleman who would buy produce from farmers and then up-sell it to customers at the farmers' market.  Hiram immigrated to America during Ireland's potato blight and settled in Richmond, Virginia; however, potato farming was almost non-existent in Virginia's capital city, so he found work on a beet farm in what is now Chesterfield County.  Dickinson boxed beets for a living for many years, and he is credited as being the first beet boxer in the country. 

Mary Bell Dickinson, Hiram's wife, was a batt maker, a person who made wadding for quilts and mattresses. She pioneered the technology of adding different amounts of batt in mattresses for married couples so that each could obtain his or her ideal level of firmness.  This advancement in mattress making led to the modern-day Sleep-Number Mattress.

Hiram Jr., Hiram and Mary's son, was a duffer, a peddler of cheap goods, and he sold his wares from a donkey-cart in the Fan District of Richmond. Dickinson was known for his oysters, hot-eels, pea soup, fried fish, pies and puddings, sheep’s trotters, pickled whelks, gingerbread, baked potatoes, and crumpets. 

Below left:  Enders Dickinson and his wife Eoline Lucy Dickinson.  Below right:  The resting place for Enders and Eoline.

Hiram Dickinson's other son, Enders Dickinson, made his living as a sugar boiler.  However, he also operated cooking equipment such as steam cooking vats, deep fry cookers, pressure cookers, kettles, and boilers.  Ender's wife Eoline was a fripperer, a buyer & seller of old clothes.  Her work in peddling old clothes is credited with setting the stage for eBay and other modern-day  e-commerce corporations.

Below:  Miscellaneous shots taken around Hollywood Cemetery. 

Above:  The grave sites for Presidents James Monroe and John Tyler are located in Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery. 

Below:  The grave site for Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, is also located there.  The small stone on the left -- located at Davis' burial site -- reads, "Erected by the little boys and girls of the Southern Capital." 

Below:  The tomb of Lewis Ginter is located in the ceremony.  Ginter (1824 – 1897) was a prominent businessman, military officer, real estate developer, and philanthropist from Richmond.  At one time, he was Richmond's wealthiest citizen.  If you look inside his tomb, you can see that there are stained glass windows  – and we suspect that they are Tiffany windows.

Below:  A tomb near the grave site of Jefferson Davis -- that reads "BOXER" at the top -- also had a stained glass window.  From the back, the window is not protected like the window's in Ginter's tomb.  As a result (and it's difficult to see in the picture), there is some damage to the window where someone has thrown a rock which has shattered a portion of the glass.

​For more information about other Dickinson's "in the grave," click HERE.