The year is 1800 and at just 24 years of age, Bartlett Adams, a young stone cutter from Kingston Massachusetts, arrives in the bustling seaside town of Portland Maine. He’s single, talented and has a bit of money in his pocketbook when he sets foot on Maine soil. Many families had already settled in the well established area over the last 150 years, with access to much of everything they could need, everything except gravestones. On that September day, Adams probably had little inkling that he would become such an important fixture in the local funerary business but considering mortality rates during this era was nearly one death every three days, it is no surprise that his first stone-cutting shop would be in extremely high demand.