Miscellaneous Famous Graves

Noah Webster, Jr. Dictionary Publisher. Thanks to him, the American and British versions of the English language became separate, unique languages. Born in Hartford, Connecticut to a colonial farm family of five children, Noah Webster was a descendant of Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony. He began attending Yale College at age 16, then the only college in the British colony of Connecticut, graduating in 1778, after a short break to serve in the American Army during the Revolution. Unable to afford law school, he became a schoolteacher in Hartford, continuing his law studies part time. He eventually earned his law degree in 1781, and was admitted to the bar the same year. Dissatisfied with the school textbooks then in use, which were imported from Britain, Webster decided to write his own three-volume American book, consisting of a speller, a grammar and a reader. For the next one hundred years, it would become the most popular American schoolbook of its time, selling more than one million copies every year. Proudly American and anti-British, he chose to ignore the common British pronunciation and spellings in favor of his native New England pronunciations and spellings. As a result, after American independence, Americans learned to speak and write differently from their British cousins despite a common origin. In 1789, Webster married Rebecca Greenleaf, and they would have eight children. In 1793, the Webster family moved to New York to be closer to the President and the country’s new administration (initially, New York was the capital of the new United States). There Webster started New York’s first daily newspaper, the American Minerva, and later, a weekly publication, The Herald. In 1798, he sold his interests and moved back to New Haven. In 1807, he began to write an expanded dictionary, “An American Dictionary of the English Language,” which would reform the language again, drawing it closer to his New England roots and making it a unique American language. The dictionary was published in 1828, and was an instant best seller. The book was also unique in that it contained a large number of Biblical definitions, more than any previously published reference, because Webster believed that the Bible and Christianity should play an important role in the lives of a free people and its government. A second edition of the dictionary was published in 1840, and a few days after Webster had finished revising the appendix to the second edition, he died.

Jack LaLanne. Public Health Pioneer. He became one of the first and best known advocates of public fitness and health, and gained fame through his personal appearances and his long running fitness and exercise television program “The Jack LaLanne Show”, which ran from 1951 to 1986.

Mary “Typhoid Mary” Mallon. Two-Time Typhoid Epidemic Source. Born in County Tyrone, Ireland, she emigrated to New York as a teenager. In the summer of 1906, she was employed as a cook by a wealthy NY Banker, Charles Henry Warren, in Oyster Bay, NY. Within 3 weeks, six of the 11 people living in the house came down with Typhoid, a fairly common disease then among the poor, but very unusual among the rich. George Soper, a sanitary engineer hired to find the source of the outbreak, was the first person to determine that typhoid could be carried by a healthy appearing person who had survived the disease earlier. Tracing her work history, Soper determined that she had worked for 8 families in the past 10 years, and seven of the families had had typhoid outbreaks, with one death. The NYC Health Dept isolated her in 1907 to the grounds of Riverside Hospital, on condition that she never cooked again. The press dubbed her “Typhoid Mary,” a name she hated and she insisted that she was healthy. In 1910, she disappeared and was later found in 1915 under an assumed name, working as a cook for the Sloane Maternity Hospital in Manhattan. During her 3 months there, she spread typhoid to 25 doctors, nurses and staff, and 2 died. She was sent to North Brother Island, where she spent the rest of her life, living in isolation. In 1938, when she died, a newspaper noted that there were 237 others living under city health department observation for typhoid.

Dr George Washington Crile. Physician, Surgeon. He performed the first successful human blood transfusion and developed the Electrochemical Theory of Life.

David Reimer. Medical Figure. Born as Bruce Reimer, one of twin boys to Janet and Ron Reimer, Bruce’s penis was destroyed in a circumcision accident when he was 8 months old. His parents consulted Dr. John Money at Johns Hopkins Medical Center, who advised Bruce’s parents to also have his testes removed and raise him as a girl. He was renamed Brenda and treated as female by his family from then on. Dr. Money theorizied that gender identity is largely the result of social learning, and believed that if Brenda never knew the truth of her birth, she would successfully transition to a female. However, Brenda’s childhood and adolescence was difficult. She and her twin brother Brian were extensively studied by Dr. Money; both twins later alleged they were sexually abused by Money during some of the treatments. By the age of 14, Brenda was suicidially depressed and begged her parents to discontinue her treatment with Dr. Money. The Reimers ceased her treatment and finally told the twins the truth of Brenda’s birth. Brenda then decided to live as a male, and changed her name to David. In the next few years David underwent further surgeries to reverse his sex reassignment, and later married a woman and became a stepfather to her children. Dr. Money, however, continued to describe David’s original sex reassignment (from male to female) as a success, which lead David to speak out in 1997 to make his side of the story known, and to try to dissuade other physicians from treating other infants as he had been treated. Brian, David’s twin, began having mental problems after learning the truth about his sibling, and eventually committed suicide in 2002. In 2004, David, depressed over his failing marriage and continued psychological problems, also took his own life. The story of Bruce/Brenda/David Reimer was the subject of the book “As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl” and the BBC documentary “Dr. Money and the Boy With No Penis.” Dr. Money died in 2006.

Alexander Melville Bell. Parents of Alexander Graham Bell the inventor of the telephone.