The daughter of fisherman Samuel Whitford and Rebekah Hawks of Lynn, Rebekah is one of the many young children buried in Charter Street (nearly 20% of the surviving inscriptions are for children under 10). Not much is known about her family life beyond her father’s profession and the fact that later on in life he would be declared “insane”, an unhelpfully broad term in the 18th century. What is unique about her stone is its epitaph, which declares her ‘being willing to die’.
While perhaps a bit ghoulish to modern sensibilities, comfort with the idea of death, especially in a time with such high child mortality, was seen as a laudable virtue in children. Stories of children who faced death with exceptional bravery and piety were widely spread, including in the publication of collections of these anecdotes into the 19th century. A Token for the Children of New England, published in 1795, is a collection of similar tales of young children bravely facing death, and while Rebekah Whitford does not appear in any of the New England examples, one common phrase found throughout the book is the familiar “willing to die”.