In my fathers house there are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you. John 14.2
This inscription occupies the bottom half of Fannie Margaret's headstone. The stone lay broken for many years with a crack through the first line of John 14.2. The stone has been repaired thanks to a Howell Family cousin and a Find A Grave contributor who added the photo in February 2013...151 years after Fannie Margaret Pittman's death.
The inscription in all likelihood, held a special significance to Fannie's family, but one that may have been lost on those of us who read it all these years later. The verse has often been chiseled on grave markers for those who died young...as did Fannie. She was a few months away from her 30th birthday, and for all of those nearly 30 years she was devoted to her parents and siblings. From birth to death, records indicate this to be so.
Fannie Margaret Pittman was born ten years before the end of the Antebellum Era and died twenty years after the end of the Civil War. Thirty years of unrest, turmoil, and uncertainty. Is it any wonder her family would think of The Fathers house of many mansions as a place of peace and tranquility.
She was the second daughter and sixth of ten children, born two years after Eugenia and two years before Emma. So, she was almost a middle child with older siblings who watched out for her and also a big sister to Emma, Elizabeth, Isaac and Savannah. Is it any wonder 'for I go to prepare a place for you' were words of comfort for those who mourned her. Fannie's earthly body lies beneath a cracked stone, but her spiritually whole soul lives in peace and tranquility in one of the many mansions in The Fathers House. I am comforted.
