I was out on a run a couple weeks ago, on US 6 coming from the Glade Bridge toward Crescent Park.

Safest place to run? Probably not.

So I ducked into Oakland Cemetery at its side entrance on Dorcon.

The place is beautiful but that’s not why I’m writing this.

After I had made it to the top of the hill, I was working my way back down and saw a headstone with an odd last name – “deMontesanteau.”

Underneath the names – Jerome E.D. and Beatrix Serman – is the phrase “one of the greatest silhouette artists.”

My first thought was “Sure, one of the greatest in… Warren County.” Sorry, but that doesn’t necessarily bring a lot of notoriety.

I snapped a photo of the grave stone and kept running, not giving it a second thought.

A couple days later, at work, I ‘googled’ the name.

While Serman is a misspelling – it’s Sherman – the woman buried there, Beatrix Sherman, well, actually one of the greatest silhouette artists.

Known as “A Girl That Cuts Up,” the list of people she interviewed, silhouetted and then had sign her work is impressive by any standard.

Some of the names?

Thomas Edison.

Henry Ford.

Winston Churchill.

Albert Einstein.

US presidents including Coolidge, Harding, Wilson, Hoover and Kennedy.

And, she’s buried at Oakland Cemetery, along with her parents.

Sherman, born Beatrice Sherman, appears to have been born in Scranton on January 10, 1894.

She left home at an early age, studying art in Chicago as early as 1905.

While records from the Warren County Historical Society aren’t completely clear, it appears she must have lived in Warren at some point before her art studies commenced, which included stints in Chicago, London, Paris and New York.

In a 1985 column in the Times Observer, Ernest C. Miller wrote that Sherman still had two cousins in the Warren area, “namely, Mrs. Martha Shattuck of 212 Madison Avenue and the late Paul Mathis.”

Miller said that Sherman was the “daughter of George and Josephine Sherman and apparently left home at an early age. Records indicate that she did not attend Warren High School.”

From a different column in the Times Observer, Miller wrote that Sherman “was a recognized miniature portrait painter and revised shadow cutting. Between the years 1915 and 1925 she ‘cut’ five presidents of the United States, members of the royal families of five European countries, the presidents of four South American republics and hundreds of famous men and women in all walks of life.”

“All of the famous people she ‘cut’ were interviewed by her and she secured the autograph of each,” Miller wrote.

Miller wrote that she was “the only living artist since August Edouart, 1830, who could cut complete silhouette forms, free hand with scissors, producing the essence of character with accuracy and delicacy of feeling.”

But she also was quite the businesswoman in an age where you wouldn’t have seen as many women in business for themselves.

“Her collection contained over 10,000 subjects and shortly after 1919 she had a distinctive display box containing forty-eight sets of silhouettes prepared; these she marketed to stores, gift shops, decorators and boutiques. They sold very well,” Miller wrote. She also “produced a variety of designs using a special black paper that was treated on the back so that when moistened it could be stuck on such things as lamp shades, candle sticks, favors, place cards, letter paper and a wide range of party decorations.”

A catalog of her work, found at the Warren County Historical Society, said that her “designs are superior, because of her remarkable ability and practical experience in the field of cutting silhouettes from life.”

She kept a studio on West 57th Street in New York until the 1950s. Later in her life, she married Jerome E.D. deMontesanteau and lived in Palm Beach, Florida until her death in 1975.

Miller wrote that she is buried “in the family plot, but… Her name is spelled incorrectly on her marker” and noted that deMontesanteau is buried elsewhere.

Casting a wide net, I searched for her on eBay and several of her works are listed on the site as for sale. Suffice it to say that this story is a whole lot more than I thought it would be when I came across that grave stone.

The lesson I learned? I’m continually amazed at all the remarkable things in Warren County; we just have to take the time to look.