Cenotaph/Grave With Cause of Death: Margaret Fuller-Ossoli, Husband and Son - Watertown, MA

Margaret Fuller-Ossoli

Marquis Giovanni Angelo Ossoli

Giovanni Angelo Ossoli

Watertown, MA

N 42° 22.192 W 071° 08.755

Short Description: 

A memorial cenotaph honoring American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate Margaret Fuller-Ossoli, her husband  Marquis Giovanni Angelo Ossoli, and which also the grave of her son Angelo Eugene Philip Ossoli is located between Pyrola and Bellwort Paths in Mount Auburn Cemetery.

Long Description:

American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate Margaret Fuller-Ossoli and her Italian husband Marquis Giovanni Angelo Ossoli along with her one year old son Angelo Eugene Philip Ossoli died in a shipwreck just a few yards off Fire Island, NY.

The marble cenotaph, which also serves as and grave marker for their son, honoring Margaret Fuller-Ossoli contains a cross on top, a relief sculptures of Margaret Fuller-Ossoli in left profile with a sword hilt and a book, and a bronze tablet which is inscribed:

IN MEMORY OF

MARGARET FULLER-OSSOLI

BORN IN CAMBRIDGE, MASS., MAY 23, 1810

BY BIRTH A CHILD OF NEW ENGLAND

BY ADOPTION A CITIZEN OF ROME

BY GENIUS BELONGING TO THE WORLD

IN YOUTH

AN INSATIATE STUDENT SEEKING THE HIGHEST CULTURE

IN RIPER YEARS

TEACHER, WRITER, CRITIC, OF LITERATURE AND ART

IN MATURER AGE

COMPANION AND HELPER OF MANY

EARNEST REFORMER IN AMERICA AND EUROPE

AND OF HER HUSBAND

GIOVANNI ANGELO, MARQUIS OSSOLI

HE GAVE UP RANK, STATION AND HOME

FOR THE ROMAN REPUBLIC

AND FOR HIS WIFE AND CHILD

AND OF THAT CHILD

ANGELO EUGENE PHILIP OSSOLI

BORN IN RIETI, ITALY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1848

WHOSE DUST REPOSES AT THE FOOT OF THIS STONE

THEY PASSED FROM THIS LIFE, TOGETHER

BY SHIPWRECK JULY 19, 1850

On the marble below is the inscription:

United in life the merciful father took them together

and in death they were not devided.

Sarah Margaret Fuller was born on May 23, 1810 in Cambridge, MA. She attended the Boston Lyceum for Young Ladies from and later the School for Young Ladies in Groton. She aspired to be a journalist. At age 23, she published her first work in the North American Review - a response to historian George Bancroft.

From 1840 to 1842, she served with Ralph Waldo Emerson as editor of a literary and philosophical journal, The Dial; for which she wrote many articles and reviews on art and literature. Her essay The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men, Woman versus Women was a call for women's equality.

After she published Summer on the Lakes, in 1844, she was invited to joined Horace Greeley's New York Tribune as literary critic, was the first full-time book reviewer in America, and the first female editor of the New York Tribune. In 1845, she published Woman in the Nineteenth Century, which is considered to be a classic of feminist thought.

On a trip to Europe, she met and married Marquis Giovanni Angelo Ossoli. Together they has a son, Angelo. All three died in a shipwreck only 50 yards off Fire Island, NY on July 19, 1850. Her body and that of her husband were never recovered. She was 40 years old.