Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1895 — MARKED BY A TREE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

MARKED BY A TREE.

The Lightning Blasted Hickory that Stands by Jas. G. Blaine’s Grave. The graves of Walker Blaine and his sister, Mrs. Alice Stanwood Coppinger, in Oak Hill Cemetery, are marked by plain monuments, the first a roundtopped slab of marble, without a line of ornamentation except the inscription, says the Washington Post. This neads: “Walker Blaine, born Augusta, Me., May 18, 1855. Died Washington, Jan. 15,1890.” The grave of Mrs. Coppinger is marked by a Celtic cross about four feet high, inscribed as follows: “Alice Stanwood, daughter of James G. Blaine and wife of Col. J. J. Coppinger, U. S. A. Born Augusta, Me., March 18, 1860. Died Washington, Feb. 2, 1890. Erected by her sorrowing husband.” Over the grave of James G. Blaine there is neither monument nor inscription, save a small footstone with the initials: “J. G. B.” At the head of the gyave stands a blasted tree, which is, •a accordance with the dead statesman's wish, his only monument. The tree was a magnificent hickory, one of the many of its kind that divide the honors of the hillside with the magnificent oaks that give the cemetery its name.

The absence of a monument is not a sign of neglect, but was his own request. Upon the death of his favorite son, Walker Blaine, the then Secretary of State selected a lot in Oak Hill Cemetery, one down the hill from the red sandstone chapel and overlooking the waters of Rock Creek. Here Walker Blaine was buried, and when, not long afterward, Mr. Blaine’s daughter, Mrs. Coppinger, died, he bought the adjoining lot, where she >was interred. On

this lot there stood an old hickory tree. It had been struck by lightning some years before and had died at the top. but it was trimmed and revived and how bids fair to reach as green an old age as any other tree in the cemetery. Mr. Blaine requested when he. bought the second lot that this tree should never be destroyed, and that on his death he should be buried beneath it.

JAMES G. BLAINE’S GRAVE.