The Eastern Cemetery in Portland, Maine holds the memories of around 7,000 persons. Some of them are known; some are not. As we uncover stories of their lives, we share them through our e-newsletter. Sometimes the tidbits are not of life, but only of the artifact that remains. These are our subterranean celebrities.
Subterranean Celebrity: Thankful Bootman
Thankful Bootman head stone photo by Diane Brakeley
Thankful Parker Sawyer Bootman had a long life. Residing in Cape Elizabeth, she first married Barnabas Sawyer in November 1775, but he died 4 years later during the Revolutionary War in 1779. Their children, Rueben and Barnabas, were in their 20s when she married Bradstreet Bootman on Christmas day 1794, when she was 41. Bradstreet was also a Revolutionary War veteran.
Though he lived in Cape Elizabeth, Bradstreet and his widowed mother had been "warned out of" New Gloucester (now Gray) in 1775. That meant the town didn't want to take care of them financially (either they had no money or they were a risk for welfare), and officially asked them to leave.
In an interesting turn of events, Thankful's son, Rueben, lived his life in Gray with his wife and at least 7 children. He died there in 1862 at age 84.
Thankful has a pretty slate headstone complete with corner fans, a border, an urn set in a palladian window and a weeping willow (thanks to Ron Romano for the description). It's curious that there is no epitaph below her death date (1834) which is the norm.
In memory of
THANKFUL BOOTMAN,
who died
Aug. 21, 1834,
AEt. 83.
This information was first published in the April 2016 issue of Spirits Alive eNews. It will be updated here as more information is available, but my contain information that is not quite right or needs to be corrected. Text may have been edited to make sense for this page as opposed to the eNews issue it had been a part of.
Last update: November 2026