A Fascinating Woman: Anna Stockton Pettit

    One of my favorite parts about doing the Bayside Cemetery Grave listing is researching the people buried here. One of the most fascinating persons I have found is a woman by the name of Anna Stockton Pettit. Anna was born April 15, 1865 (history lovers should recognize this date as the day Abraham Lincoln died after being shot the night before). What I found most fascinating about her was her level of education because most women of her day were not as well educated as she was. She died Jul 14, 1899. Mrs. Pettit was originally buried at Garfield Cemetery in Potsdam, but she was moved to Bayside by Julia Crane and laid to rest in the Crane Family Lot (Sec C Lot 59). Here is Anna's Obituary from the July 26, 1899 issue of the Canton Commerical Advertiser:

Anna Stockton Pettit

Anna Stockton Pettit, wife of H{erbert}.D. Pettit, died in Potsdam July 13, 1899, aged 36 years. Mrs. Pettit received her early education in Canton and took her degree of A.B. at St. Lawrence University in 1882. In addition to her literary work, she was a student of drawing and painting, and after a short period of school teaching, she went to New-York City to continue her art study. Here she met Mr. Pettit and became his wife in 1888. Having similar tastes in both literary and artistic fields, they continued their studies together. Mrs. Pettit entered Barnard College and took first the degree of M.S. and later Ph.D. from the University of Columbia. The original investigations which she made to secure the doctor's degree have attracted considerable attention and only a few weeks before her death a most flattering letter came to her from Germany acknowledging assistance received from her work, and noting further investigations which the writer was making along the same line.

The illness which attacked her was lingering and so subtle as to defy the skill of the best physicians. Skilled specialists of New-York city and the treatment and care of the best sanitariums all proved equally unavailing even to still the pain which racked her body. Last November Christian Science treatment was begun, and a Christian Scientist was employed to be her constant attendant. The relief was almost instantaneous, and since that time she has been entirely free from pain and nervousness; serene, peaceful and happy. Insanity and all its horrors had been predicted as the natural end of her malady, but she passed away as peacefully as one lies down to sleep, having retained a clear mind to the end. During the first year of her blindness she learned two new alphabets, the point type and the Morse alphabet. By the point type she was enabled to keep up her reading and after deafness overtook her, it was through the Morse alphabet that her friends conversed with her. No one was better posted on the history and geography of the Spanish-American war, or more interested in all its passing events than she. By the means of raised maps and articles copied in point type from papers and encyclopedias, as well as through current topics read to her, she kept throughly informed. Bright and witty of speech, her room was the congregating room for all her friends, and not one who were there did more to make good cheer and happiness than she. Her life was a practical lesson whose influence can not but reach out to many a weary mortal, speaking in unmistakable tones of the truth that true happiness comes not from riches or fame, not from the gratification of the senses, but from spiritual life- Courier & Freeman

Anna Pettit's Gravestone