Do you think he was a mason?

Silas E. Sheldon M.D. *1837, 1900† was born in Lorain County. The family moved to Berea, and he went to Baldwin-Wallace College, then the Univ. of Michigan. He was a surgeon in the War for the Union from 1862-64, just recently have become a physician in Cleveland. He went to Topeka, Kansas and became a State Senator immediately. For years he was chief surgeon for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway. His wife was a Clevelander, she remained in Kansas till her death, too. All in all, he spent very little time in Cleveland alive. Jeremy Cross *1783, 1861† was a masonic lecturer, ritualist and writer. In a book published in 1819, he has a drawing by a copper engraver, Amos Doolittle, much like supra. They brought together the following: broken column, evergreen [acacia] branch of burial and immortality, scroll, weeping woman, Saturn/father time/reaper with harvesting scythe, sand glass of time. And this broken column (and chorus) is meant to be the proper monument to an important, dead free mason.

'lambskin' apron with the all seeing eye, and the tools of the Geometer

Oh, i can't go without comment. He became the grand commander of the Knights Templar of
Kansas in 1876. And it is an ugly monument. The cluttered design of the central motif has no appeal outside of masonry. It is everything but the handshake.