Harry Weir Casey’s Headstone & Footstone

Emma and Thomas Lincoln Casey suffered the loss of two sons twenty years apart. In 1860 Robert Jerauld Casey died at less than a year old. On September 1, 1880, Harry Weir Casey died at age nineteen. In addition to collecting each letter Harry had written to his parents and binding them into a book, Thomas Lincoln Casey labeled Harry’s final letter, “My darling Harry. His last letter. Aug 21, 1880.” Harry’s note to his parents was a conversational correspondence, making mention of the weather, dancing with a “Miss Anderson,” and how the waves down at the beach were rocky – a young woman had drowned the day before while bathing and she had perhaps swum out too far. Harry drowned near Narragansett Pier just ten days later.

Harry’s parents placed a granite headstone and footstone at the farm’s cemetery for their son that was carved in Washington, D.C., by D. McMenamin. The sculptor also carved two of the commemorative state plaques in the Washington Monument whose construction was overseen by Thomas Lincoln Casey in the 1870s. The restrained markers (unusual for 1880) are decorated only with a Greek key and a Christian cross. The family worshipped at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Greenwich, where a stained glass window is also dedicated to Harry.