Lucius D. Mower (1793-1834)
Lucy Munson Mower (1802-1838)

Bryant Numbers: 9 & 10
Type of Memorial: Marble and sandstone monument
Stonecarver: Attributed to Rev. Thomas Hughes by historian Henry Bushnell, although monument is not signed.

Inscription:

On the west panel:

In Memory of
Lucius D. Mower
of Granville
Licking Co. Ohio.
Born at Barre Mass.
May 1, 1793
Died at
St. Augustine East Florida
Feb. 19, 1834.

In life he was an efficient business
man and accumulated an ample
fortune. In Death, he sought and
found that peace which worldly
wealth had failed to give.

On the north panel:

Lucy Munson
wife of
L.D. Mower
Died
in Granville, O.
Aug. 6, 1838
Aged 36 years.

Commentary: The prominence of this massive, “broken-pillar” monument at the front of the Old Colony Burying Ground is symbolic of the citizen it honors. Lucius Doolittle Mower was early Granville’s most prominent and successful businessman, exercising a substantial beneficial impact on the Granville economy of the 1820s and early 1830s. His enterprises ran the gamut from canal construction to general store proprietorship to livestock, and notably to part-ownership of the Granville Furnace, the village’s briefly successful iron foundry. Mower’s financial success, however, was no protection from an early death – a fate that plagued others in his family as well. Lucius Mower died in 1834 at the age of 41, a victim of “consumption,” the illness that probably was the disease we call tuberculosis today. His untimely death rocked the Granville community financially, putting a damper on his businesses and reducing the availability of capital locally. In his historical writings, the Rev. Jacob Little counted Mower’s death as the first among five great disasters, divinely ordained, that afflicted Granville in 1834.

Despite the presence of his imposing monument, Lucius Mower is not actually buried in the Old Colony. His grave lies in St. Augustine, Florida, where he had gone in the hope that the climate would improve his health. Mower’s Granville memorial, a towering pillar that appears to be broken off, is believed to represent a man cut off in his prime, an apt image for Lucius. His brothers Sherlock and Horatio (gravesites 164 & 165) also died young at the respective ages of 39 and 33; and his sister Isabella Mower Richards passed away at age 30. Even Mower’s wife, Lucy, died at the age of 36, four years after her husband.

A religious skeptic, Mower underwent a deathbed conversion that inspired his brother Sherlock to make a substantial gift toward the construction of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Granville.

Find a Grave link: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/19418245/lucius-d-mower