Starting today, I'm going to start running a series called "101 Ways to Say Died." In this project, I will be cataloging all the synonyms for "died" that appear in early American epitaphs.

In order to qualify, the word/phrase must appear in the main part of the text, not the verse. That is to say, I'm looking at the part where it says, "Here lies John Doe, died January 1, 1750," rather than the poetic epitaph that sometimes appears after the primary epitaph. If I can't make it to 101 with this criterion, I'll look at the verses. Similarly, I'm going to limit eligibility to pre-1825 stones with the option to extend that to 1850 if I fall short of 101.