Queer Places:
Forest Hills Cemetery and Crematory, 95 Forest Hills Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02130 United States
Caroline Crane (c. 1853–1875) was a young woman from Massachusetts who was a close friend and associate of Dr. Susan Dimock, a pioneering Boston physician.
Caroline Crane was the daughter of a retired Massachusetts sea captain who later became a farmer. She lived with her brother, the Reverend Silas A. Crane, and worked as a teacher at a boarding school for young ladies for three years.
Historical accounts describe her as a "slim, serious, dark-eyed girl" of 22 years at the time of her death.
She was known to be a volunteer nurse at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, where Dr. Susan Dimock served as resident physician.
In April 1875, Caroline Crane joined her two close friends, Dr. Susan Dimock and Elizabeth "Bessie" Willard Greene, on a voyage to Europe. They departed from New York on the iron-rigged steamship SS Schiller.
On May 7, 1875, the SS Schiller encountered heavy fog and was wrecked on the Retarrier Ledges off the Isles of Scilly, near the coast of Cornwall, England. The tragedy resulted in the deaths of 335 passengers and crew, including Crane, Dimock, and Greene.
Colonel William Batchelder Greene, Bessie’s father, arranged to have the bodies the two companions of his daughter brought back to the United States. The body of his own daughter was never recovered. Dimock and Crane were interred together at the Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.
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