Profits from the sale of Bette Hunt notecards, which were launched in April this year at the Marblehead Museum, have raised over $1,200. Hunt is donating all the proceeds to the Old Burial Hill restoration fund.
The town historian emeritus who retired in 2015, Bette Hunt, 93, is renown for her walking tours of Marblehead. In July this year she was presented with a Marblehead Forever Award by the Select Board chair, Dan Fox, for her work “keeping the spirit of Marblehead alive”.
While many are aware of her tireless efforts on behalf of the Marblehead Museum and the town, fewer people know that Hunt studied at the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston and for the last fifty years or so has been creating beautiful pen and ink drawings of Marblehead as
Christmas cards.
“The idea for notecards was really fine-tuned by Gene Arnould of the Arnould Gallery”, said Vicki Staveacre who formed the production team with her husband Rhod Sharp. “We initially thought about putting some of Bette’s drawings into a calendar but Gene pointed out that they have a limited shelf life which is why we went with the cards.”
The cards, which come in sets of twelve, feature two each of six distinctive drawings including the Marblehead Light, Lookout Court, Fort Beach and Abbot Hall as seen from Crocker Park.
“The first printing of 60 boxes of cards launched at the Marblehead Museum in April sold out – so we ordered more in time for the July 4 holiday weekend,” Staveacre said. The cards are now exclusively available from the Arnould Gallery.
The Old Burial Hill Cemetery was established in 1648 and contains approximately 1000 grave markers of various types. Out of 640 headstones, 120 pre-date 1740. There are grave markers of 60 Revolutionary War veterans.
Care and maintenance of the cemetery is the responsibility of the Old Burial Hill Committee established by the Select Board in 2009 to oversee the restoration of Old Burial Hill. One of its greatest accomplishments was the creation of the Old Burial Hill Cemetery Archive, completed by committee member Standley Goodwin in 2014. The archive includes complete details of all the graves including names, inscriptions and photographs of the headstones.
It can be found on the town of Marblehead website: https://marbleheadma.gov/old-burial-hill-committee/ One of the oldest stones and described as the crudest is for Deliverance Beenlan who died on August 21, 1719 aged 3 months and 7 days.
Committee Chair Alex Finigan said several important restorations were done last year including reinstating two gravestones — those of Jane Waters (c. 1698) and Archibald Selman (1778) — that had been held off site for years after the stones had broken into pieces. These repairs were made possible by the generosity of many Headers — most notably Biff Michaud and Standley Goodwin, both of whom made significant contributions to the preservation of Old Burial Hill in 2024.
This year, in addition to continuing to repair and preserve important monuments, the most exciting project is returning the gravestone of “Agnis Negro”, an enslaved Black woman who died in 1718. This historically significant gravestone was stolen from Old Burial Hill approximately 50 years ago and long thought permanently lost. However, due to the efforts of the Marblehead Racial Justice Team, which led an effort to learn more about Agnes’s life and fund the creation of a reproduction gravestone, the original stone was remarkably returned.
The work of the committee and the preservation of Old Burial Hill’s monuments is entirely donor-funded. Sustaining and growing the support of a generous donor base is one of the key missions of the Old Burial Hill Committee said Finigan.
“We are therefore endebted to Bette Hunt for her work on the committee for many years and also for the generous donation of the $1,200 profits from the sale of her notecards”, Finigan said. “We would like to see if we cannot raise a further $1,200 from the community to match Bette’s generous donation.
For those who would like to donate, please make a check payable to the Town of Marblehead with “Old Burial Hill – Bette Hunt” in the memo line. Checks can be sent to Abbot Hall at 188 Washington Street, Marblehead, Mass. 01945.