Daily AncestorSickle
A sickle on a gravestone, often with wheat, marks a person who lived to a ripe old age and was harvested by God.
The short curved blade cuts grain at harvest. Victorian stones use it, alone or with a sheaf of wheat, for people of mature years, gathered in when ripe as the Bible describes.
With wheat, it can also recall Christ's parable of the harvest, when the wheat is gathered and the chaff separated. It remains one of the gloomier Victorian symbols, a softened form of the old scythe.
As seen in a recordMidwest or Pennsylvania town cemetery, 1850 to 1920
Sickle laid across a sheaf of wheat: Grandmother, Rachel Overholt, 1801 to 1893
Sources
How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "Sickle." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/gravestone-symbols/sickle. Last checked 2026-10-15.