Several days ago I went for a "butterfly hike" in a rural part of south-central Wisconsin. Nearby was a very old but well-tended graveyard, where my attention was drawn to several of the monuments.
The one at top, Henry Teel, was born in 1787. Prescott T. Brigham, in the bottom photo, was born in 1780.
They died in 1856 and 1862, respectively. Wisconsin had only become a state in 1848.
I returned to my butterflying, but while hiking did a lot of thinking about what their lives must have been like.