Robert Paine Carlson, whose website, capecodgravestones.com, documents some 44,000 names and gravestone inscriptions on Cape Cod dating from 1683 to the late 1800s, died at his home in North Eastham on March 21, 2025. He was 91.
The son of Walter Nicolas Carlson and Ruth Paine Carlson, Bob was born on March 14, 1934 in Providence, R.I. His father sold bunker oil, a super-thick fuel for ships, and his mother was a fundraiser for Pembroke College, from which she graduated in 1928. Bob and his brother, Donald W. Carlson, grew up in Riverside, R.I.
He studied organic chemistry at Brown University, graduating with honors in 1955. He married classmate Nancy Stevens in 1956. He enrolled in the Ph.D. program in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin but soon changed course and earned an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Bob worked for over 35 years in the chemical industry, focused on the manufacture and marketing of high-temperature and high-performance carbon and boron composites for the aerospace industry. His first job was with Shawinigan, a Canadian chemical company, but he spent most of his career with Monsanto in Springfield, where he and Nancy raised their two sons.
Every year, the family vacationed in Eastham, where Bob enjoyed surfcasting on Coast Guard Beach and Nauset Beach, even though he rarely caught a fish. More than fishing, Bob enjoyed hunting for gravestones of the Paine family; the earliest, for Thomas Paine in Truro’s Old North Graveyard, dates to the 1680s.
In the 1960s, Bob and Nancy bought land overlooking Sunken Meadow Marsh and Cape Cod Bay in North Eastham with the hope of building a house, which they did in the 1980s. After Bob retired in 1995, he occupied himself with photographing sunsets over the bay and carving wooden “happy whales,” both of which he gave away to visitors. He painted the oil tank in the basement to look like a cow, but soon returned to wood to carve flocks of egrets and seagulls.
His interest in colonial-era cemeteries sustained him in his retirement. Working with a genealogical society, Bob learned gravestone conservancy. He could be found cleaning gravestones and recording their details in graveyards throughout the Cape. His website includes 4,000 photographs of gravestones in addition to brief studies of the work of 46 noted gravestone carvers.
Bob was instrumental in forming the Eastham Cemetery Commission in 2004 and served multiple terms as its chairman. Under his leadership, the commission used the Community Preservation Act to preserve gravestones in Eastham’s Cove Burial Ground dating to before 1666 and the Bridge Road Cemetery, a decade-long effort that used ground-penetrating radar to identify unmarked graves and buried structures.
Bob wrote articles for the Cape Cod Genealogical Society Bulletin and gave lectures on Cape Cod gravestones; he was a featured speaker in Eastham’s 350th anniversary lecture series. His graveyard adventures were featured in South Coast Today, Cape Cod Life, and the Cape Cod Times.
Nothing made Bob happier than seeing people use his website to identify gravestones, and he loved talking to visitors who were trying to find a particular relative. As he told the UMass Boston Memories project, “You form a nice connection with some very interesting people from all over the country and from other countries like Australia and England who have ancestors here.”
After running out of gravestones to document, Bob turned to the historical records of Eastham. He set out to transcribe all the birth, marriage, and death records from the earliest years of the town, a work still in progress.
In 2020, Nancy succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease. Bob, with his Yankee independence, continued to live in their North Eastham house until his death, fulfilling his wish to die there through the help of caregivers Maria Volpe and Laurie Fulcher.
Bob is survived by his sons, Steven Paine Carlson and wife Ann of Ridgefield, Conn. and Douglas John Carlson and husband Jim Poe of Provincetown; and two grandchildren, Andrew Paine Carlson and wife Maggie of Clifton Park, N.Y. and Connor Michael Carlson and wife Maria Rose Belding of Washington, D.C.
The family plans a private interment of his ashes at the Truro Congregational Church.
In lieu of flowers, donations in Bob’s memory may be made to any local historical or genealogical society.
