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TRINITY CHURCH. 
 
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Walks in our Churchyards 
 
Walks in Our Churchyards 
 
 OLD NEIV YORK 
 
 
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 FELIX 
 
 OLDBOY 
 
 
 
 
 
 (JOHN FLAVEL MINES, LL.D.) 
 
 NEW YORK 
 GEO. GOTTSBERGER PECK. Publisher 
 
 II MURRAY STREET 
 1896 
 
(^5 
 
 4ritbre^{ akccordlr^g ^o Ajct.bf'fongress, in the year 1895, 
 ' By GEO. GOTTSBERGER PECK, 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 
 
NOTE 
 
 This volume is compiled to preserve in permanent 
 form the sketches entitled 
 
 " WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS," 
 
 which, undertaken at our request, appeared in the 
 Trinity Record during 1890-92. 
 
 Felix Oldboy's work is too well known to require 
 either preface or introduction. All who appreciate 
 studies and recollections of Old New York will recall 
 with pleasure how much his facile pen has done to 
 rescue associations from oblivion, which otherwise 
 would have been swept away with the structures with 
 which they were connected. 
 
 It is well said that we cannot buy with gold these 
 
 old associations. It therefore seems to us timely to 
 
 place in permanent form these recollections of the past, 
 
 which cling to the graves and tombstones in the 
 
 churchyards of Trinity Parish. 
 
 FiTzHuGH Whitehouse. 
 Henry Cotheal Swords. 
 
 Christmas, i8g^. 
 
 m;126045 
 
- CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 No. I. -TRINITY CHURCHYARD i 
 
 II.— TRINITY CHURCHYARD ...... 15 
 
 III.— TRINITY CHURCHYARD 29 
 
 IV.— TRINITY CHURCHYARD ...... 47 
 
 v.— TRINITY CHURCHYARD 61 
 
 VI.— TRINITY CHURCHYARD 74 
 
 VII.— TRINITY CHURCHYARD 87 
 
 VIII.—TRINITY CHURCHYARD 103 
 
 IX.— TRINITY CHURCHYARD 116 
 
 X.— ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD .... 130 
 
 XI.— ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD 141 
 
 XII.— ST. JOHN'S CHURCHYARD .... 152 
 XIII.— TRINITY CHURCHYARD 165 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 TRINITY CHURCH, Frontispiece 
 
 ST. PAUL'S CHAPEL, 47 
 
 ST. JOHN'S CHAPEL, 87 
 
 TRINITY MISSION HOUSE 141 
 
 TRINITY HOSPITAL, 165 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 I. 
 
 An English gentleman, Mr. John Lambert, who 
 visited New York in 1807, when the entire city- 
 lay below Canal Street, was severely critical in 
 regard to the churchyards on Broadway. In his 
 diary, after speaking of Trinity Church and St. 
 Paul's as " both handsome structures," he added : 
 "The adjoining churchyards, which occupy a 
 large space of ground railed in from the street 
 and crowded with tombstones, are far from being 
 agreeable spectacles in such a populous city." 
 The population of New York in that year, as he 
 gives it, was 83,530, and in our more modern eyes 
 would betoken rather an overgrown village than 
 a metropolis. 
 
 In still another part of his journal, Mr. Lam- 
 bert returns again to the assault on the church- 
 yards, and insists that they are " unsightly 
 exhibitions." *' One would think," he says, 
 " there was a scarcity of land in America to see 
 such large pieces of ground in one of the finest 
 streets of New York occupied by the dead. The 
 
2 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 continual view of such a crowd of white and 
 brown tombstones and monuments as is exhibited 
 in the Broadway must tend very much to depress 
 the spirits." Now, if it is well to see ourselves as 
 others see us, we have here a very plain-spoken 
 opinion about our city graveyards from the pen of 
 a traveled Englishman, who generally spoke in 
 terms of nothing but praise concerning the young 
 metropolis, its inhabitants and their customs. But 
 it is a poor rule that will not work both ways, and 
 the fastidious critic might have found it profitable 
 to carry a mirror in his trunk. 
 
 As a citizen, and not a stranger, I find few so 
 attractive spots as these churchyards on Broad- 
 way. People write sentimentally about sleeping 
 under the grasses and daisies of the country, and 
 one good Bishop years ago dropped into poetry 
 and requested to be so interred. But it has al- 
 ways struck me that the rural cemetery is intoler- 
 ably lonesome. Even if the sleepers there do not 
 need the comradeship of the living, it is undeni- 
 able that the grass is as green, the sunshine as 
 golden, and the flowers as fragrant in the glebe 
 around St. Paul's and Trinity, as where no piles 
 of brick and mortar have blotted out the fields. 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 3 
 
 The dead have company here. The feet of the 
 living pass up and down the street hard by, and 
 among these footfalls are those of descendants of 
 the quiet ones — of men who admire their record 
 and women who love their memory. They are 
 sleeping, too, in the shadows of the homes in 
 which they lived and were happy. The roar of 
 business is around them as they knew it in life, 
 and once a week comes the quiet of the Sunday 
 they observed. If no longer the waves of the 
 river break against the pebbly beach that at first 
 bounded St. Paul's churchyard, and through the 
 bluff which looked down into the waters of the 
 Hudson back of old Trinity, a street now passes, 
 with two more streets of artificial make beyond, 
 the burial place of the dead is there unchanged. 
 
 I have long believed that Trinity Parish has 
 done New York no one greater benefit than in 
 leaving the breathless dead to be companions to 
 the thoughtless living. It is true, O eminent 
 philanthropist, that these acres might have been 
 sold for many pence and the money given to the 
 poor ; equally true, Sir Speculator, that the dust 
 of the dead could not have resented being carted 
 away to other dust heaps, but something would 
 
4 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 have been lost to the living that no power of 
 earth could restore. I never pass these colonies 
 of tombstones without thanking the men who 
 have stood sentinel over them and kept them in 
 place. As they stand in their impressive silence, 
 tall shaft and crumbling slab, they are more elo- 
 quent than any sermons, more full of tears and 
 pathos than any print can create, more prompt to 
 teach faith and hope than so many volumes of 
 dogmatic theology. They who sleep beneath are 
 not the dead, but the living. We know about 
 them ; have read of their faults and their virtues; 
 have been told how they dared and endured ; have 
 looked into their eyes in galleries of old portraits, 
 touched the hem of their garments still cherished 
 by their grandchildren, held in our hands the little 
 battered spoon in which their childish teeth made 
 dents so many years ago. Go to ! We are the 
 dreamers and they are the folk of action. You 
 shall be passing any night when the moon is 
 shining on these grasses and look through the 
 iron rails that keep out a disturbing world, and 
 every stone shall cry out to you from its sculptur- 
 ings and make you long to know the story of the 
 ashes that was once a man or woman of your 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 5 
 
 world, and then you shall turn away and gaze 
 upon the painted names of men that gleam from 
 the walls of buildings across the way and that 
 eagerly announce their business to the world, and 
 you shall feel no such throb of sympathy nor 
 sense of weird comradeship as when your face 
 was set towards the dead. Did I not say that we 
 are the dreamers ? 
 
 There is no pleasanter spot in New York than 
 the churchyard of old Trinity on a quiet Sunday 
 morning in the Summer. There are flowers and 
 grasses, the shade of graceful elms, fresh air and 
 the twittering of birds — even the oriole and the 
 robin still come back there every year in spite of 
 the aggressive sparrow — and there is no end of 
 companionship. It is a companionship which I 
 like, because it is open and free. Here every 
 man, woman and child, except the unquiet prowl- 
 ers above ground, -presents to our eyes a card of 
 granite or marble, gravely telling his or her name, 
 age and a few other particulars set forth, more or 
 less elaborately — a quaint custom, but not a bad 
 one for the living to adopt, if they would be 
 equally frank about it. 
 
 Even in the days when the present church 
 
6 WALKS IN OtJR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 building was new — more than forty years ago by 
 the calendar — I found no more pleasant place in 
 which to pass a half hour as a boy. It was a 
 more unkempt place then, than now, and blue- 
 birds and thrushes were more frequent visitors. I 
 found an endless pleasure in tracing the inscrip- 
 tions on the tombstones, and it was not long be- 
 fore I had familiar acquaintances, heroes and 
 heroines, in every corner. Huge was my delight, 
 too, when, with two or three companions, we 
 could escape the eye of old David Lyon, the sex- 
 ton, and hie down into the crypt beneath the 
 chancel. There we saw yawning mouths of 
 vaults, revealing to our exploring gaze bits of an- 
 cient coffins and forgotten mortality, and we poked 
 about these subterranean corridors with dusty 
 jackets and whispered words, finding its atmos- 
 phere of mould and mystery a strange delight. 
 For somehow the unknown sleepers, then who 
 seemed to have no means of making themselves 
 known — unless it was through the musty tomes 
 of Trinity's burial records — took strongest hold 
 upon our sympathies, to say nothing of our 
 curiosity. 
 
 Everybody who passes old St. Paul's can read 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 7 
 
 for himself the patriotism of General Montgomery, 
 the civic virtues of Thomas Addis Emmet and the 
 eminence of Dr. McNevin, for monument and 
 shaft tell the story. So all visitors to the church- 
 yard of old Trinity easily learn which are the 
 tombstones of Alexander Hamilton, Captain Law- 
 rence, of the Chesapeake, or William Bradford, 
 the first Colonial printer, and where rest the bones 
 of quiet Robert Fulton, the inventor, or dashing 
 Phil Kearney ; but there is no herald of the ordi- 
 nary dead — of those who were simply upright 
 men and good women in their day, and there 
 could be none of the unknown dead who are said 
 to far outnumber the lucky minority, the front 
 doors to whose graves still stand and yet pre- 
 serve their door plate, though the latch-key is 
 gone. 
 
 The unknown dead ! Perhaps I dwell upon 
 them because in their ranks is the only one of my 
 own family who sleeps beneath the spire of 
 Trinity Church. So often, when I have slipped 
 into the churchyard for a little respite from the 
 world and the company of those who shall be my 
 companions in the to-morrow, I think of my little 
 uncle, Oscar, who died in the homestead of his 
 
S Walks in our churchyards. 
 
 mother's family in Catharine Street nearly ninety 
 years ago and was buried in this churchyard. 
 Eldest born of the children, at five years of age 
 his little feet went bravely climbing the hills of 
 Beulah all alone. So often there comes to me a 
 glimpse of a little golden head, a quaint little 
 figure in old-time coat edged with lace — you 
 ought to see his miniature for yourself and smile 
 back into its sweet, serious baby eyes — and I 
 wonder under which sod lies his tiny mite of dust 
 and whether he knows that I am thinking of him 
 as I pass. Sometimes I wonder if he ever regrets 
 that he did not live to grow gray and scarred or 
 whether he is not glad that he went to sleep just 
 as the sun rose over the hilltop of his life, blessed 
 by his mother's tears and his father's kiss. These 
 things come to my thought even in the most un- 
 quiet hour of the day, after I have passed the 
 iron gates that keep the sordid outside life away 
 from me, and they do me good, I know. So 
 much does one little grave, that blossoms all un- 
 known in this garden of God, have power to teach 
 things lovely and of good report. Even for the 
 grasses that grow unidentified over my own dead 
 I bless the church that has witnessed to a good 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 9 
 
 profession in the fight with mammon and that has 
 kept God's acre green in city streets, that it might 
 preach to men's withered hearts of sunshine, the 
 soft dews and eternal peace. 
 
 Everybody knows the story of Alexander 
 Hamilton's tragic death, and almost every stranger 
 who enters Trinity Church yard asks to have his 
 grave pointed out. But few know the tragedy 
 that sent his eldest son to his death at nineteen, 
 or ask to know which is his tomb. It was in 1801 
 that George L. Backer, a brilliant young member 
 of the New York bar and ardent friend of Aaron 
 Burr, delivered the Fourth of July oration, and 
 during the political campaign in the Fall his elo- 
 quence was derided by young PhiHp Hamilton, in 
 the presence of a lady, and a duel followed. It 
 was the fashion of the day to fight, and while the 
 famous actor, Thomas Apthorpe Cooper, was 
 second to Eacker, David S. Jones, private secre- 
 tary to Governor Jay, did the same friendly office 
 for young Hamilton. The latter fell mortally 
 wounded, dying the next morning, and was buried 
 in Trinity churchyard. Young Eacker died of 
 consumption before three years had passed — be- 
 fore the elder Hamilton had also fallen victim to 
 
lO WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 the hideous custom he had sanctioned in behalf of 
 his son — and is buried in St. Paul's churchyard, 
 on the Vesey Street side. There is no difference 
 between the blades of grass that blossom out 
 from their dust in either churchyard every spring. 
 
 Statistics are a pet abhorrence of mine in age, 
 as arithmetic used to be in youth, so it shall be 
 sufficient to say just here that Trinity Church was 
 first opened for worship in 1697, ^^^ ^^^^ the 
 original building was enlarged in 1735-36 and 
 burnt down in 1776. The burial ground was 
 granted by the city in 1703, on condition that it 
 be neatly fenced and that the fees of burial be 
 limited to ^s. 6d. for grown persons and is. 6d. 
 for those under twelve years of age. It was the 
 choice spot of burial for the English population 
 of the city up to the time of the Revolution and 
 afterwards. 
 
 I love to read in the newspapers of the period, 
 the story of those who were interred here during 
 this period. The names are but a sound in our 
 ears, and they are among the unknown, but if the 
 quaint obituaries are to be credited, they have 
 risen to royal rank beyond the fogs and mists of 
 Jordan. On the 19th of May, 1740, died Mrs, 
 
Walks in our churchyards. n 
 
 Clarke, wife of the Lieutenant-Governor of the 
 province, and it is worth while to listen to her 
 praises, as told by the newspapers of the day : 
 " She was a most Affectionate and Dutiful Wife, 
 a Tender and Indulgent Parent, a Kind Mistress 
 and sincere Friend ; she was a fine, graceful Per- 
 son, a most agreeable companion and of that 
 Sweetness and Calmness of Temper that nothing 
 could ruffle it or draw a hard Expression from 
 her. She never failed of attending on the Public 
 Worship of her Maker, when her Health would 
 permit, and she dyed with that Calmness, Serenity 
 and Resignation, that showed her truly Christian." 
 The language is stilted, but is it not a sweet and 
 satisfying picture ? One could wish to have been 
 present at her funeral. It was a rare spectacle for 
 the little city. " On Thursday evening she was 
 interred in a Vault in Trinity Church, with Re- 
 mains of her Mother and the late Lady Cornbury, 
 in the most handsome and decent manner ; her 
 Pall being supported by part of His Majesty's 
 counsel for this Province, and some of the Minis- 
 ters of the General Assembly, and attended by all 
 the Ministers and most of the Principal Inhabi- 
 tants of the city (minute guns being fired from 
 
12 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 the Fort and sundry Vessels in the Harbour, dur- 
 ing the Solemnity). And as it was a pleasure to 
 Her in her Life to feed the Hungry, so on the 
 day of the Funeral, a Loaf of Bread was given to 
 every Poor Person that would receive it." 
 
 Side by side with this sweet portraiture cf ** a 
 perfect woman nobly planned," should be placed 
 the notice of the death of " the Worshipful and 
 worthy John Cruger, Esq., Mayor of this City, 
 whose affable, humane and most obliging Temper 
 and Deportment justly gained him the Respect 
 and esteem of all." He died in August, 1744, 
 and was '* very decently interred " in Trinity 
 churchyard. Says the Weekly Post Boy : "He 
 was a most tender and indulgent Parent, a kind 
 Master, an upright Magistrate and a good Friend ; 
 and those to whom he was known, must acknowl- 
 edge that he had and practised many excellent 
 quaHties, wortliy of imitation ; and as he always 
 lived a sober, religious, good Life, so he died with 
 great Calmness and Resignation." 
 
 There was another notable funeral in old Trin- 
 ity when Sir Henry Moore, the only native 
 American who was ever appointed governor of 
 the Province, was buried with great pomp ** in 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 1 3 
 
 the chancel." This took place in January, 1768, 
 while the stamp act disturbances were at their 
 height A visitor to the city about ten years pre- 
 viously says, that "the church stands very pleas- 
 antly upon the banks of Hudson's River and has 
 a large cemetery on each side, inclosed in the 
 front by a painted paled fence." Exteriorly it 
 was a fine edifice, 148 feet in length, including 
 tower and chancel, and 72 feet in width, with a 
 steeple 175 feet high. The inscription which now 
 stands over the great door opening upon Broad- 
 way was then placed over the door facing the 
 river. A glimpse within shows a noteworthy 
 structure for a little city of 15,000 inhabitants. 
 "The church," says the visitor just quoted, "is, 
 within, ornamented beyond any other place of 
 public worship among us. The head of the chan- 
 cel is adorned with an altarpiece, and opposite to 
 it, at the other end of the building, is the organ. 
 The tops of the pillars, which support the gal- 
 leries, are decked with the gilt busts of angels 
 winged. From the ceiling are suspended two 
 glass branches, on the walls hang the arms of 
 some of its principal benefactors. The aisles are 
 paved with flat stones." A funeral service of 
 
14 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 state, with all the pomp and trappings of such 
 ceremonial, must have been a most impressive 
 sight, especially when, as was often the case, the 
 burial took place by night. Yet the choice dust 
 thus pompously and carefully put away on the 
 stone shelf of a vault did not rest in more secure 
 faith and hope than the more common dust 
 around, which the roots of the elm entwined and 
 from which the rose bushes and early violets drew 
 their nourishment. 
 
 As I close this article the bells of Easter week 
 are still speaking of resurrection and from the 
 sod of the churchyard a myriad fresh buds reach 
 up eagarly to add their witness, and a robin on 
 the brown branch of an old elm is twittering to 
 its sweUing tips, all ripe with a wealth of green 
 leaves. In my veins the blood of youth is cours- 
 ing as delightedly as if I had not long since flung 
 a half century of life behind me. And pausing 
 as I passed out of the churchyard, at the border 
 line of sod and flagging, I look up through the 
 sunshine to see the shining faces of my friends 
 who have been so long sleeping in this enclosure, 
 and I know that their hearts are not older than 
 mine, while their bodies have been dipped in the 
 river of eternal youth. 
 
II. 
 
 April showers have brought May flowers. All 
 through the land the woods are filled with the 
 fragrance of wild honeysuckle and violets, and 
 through the overarching sky of green leaves the 
 blossoms of the dogwood shine in their whiteness 
 like so many stars. In narrow city gardens the 
 lilacs have begun to bloom, and the wistaria vines 
 droop with their burdens of clustering flowers. 
 Here, in the sleeping places of the dead. Spring 
 has also put on her resurrection robes. Upon 
 the elms the safiron buds have shot out tiny taper 
 fingers of living green, as if the trees were ready 
 to clap their hands and rejoice that the sunshine 
 of Summer is coming again, while the grasses be- 
 neath their shadows, which cover quiet hearts that 
 were restless enough in life, are eloquent with the 
 lesson of seed-time and harvest The seed-time 
 of earth is the best pledge of the harvest of 
 heaven, outside of a divine revelation. Surely 
 the remembrance or earth's loves and losses, its 
 songs and its tears, its laughter and its prayers, 
 its fire- side circles and its happy homes, is proof 
 that all is not ended here, but that in the here- 
 
 15 
 
l6 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 after the broken household group shall be made 
 complete, and that we shall repeat in heaven all 
 of earth but its tears and its graves. 
 
 This is a very democratic congregation which 
 sleeps outside the walls of old Trinity. Death, 
 like politics, makes strange bed-fellows. Within 
 the church rises up daily the prayer for all sorts 
 and conditions of men, and beneath the shadow 
 of the cross that crowns the spire the ashes of 
 saint and sinner make undistinguishable dust. 
 God drops his mantle of forgiveness upon all, in 
 the guise of daisies in summer and snowflakes in 
 winter. Is it not strange that man cannot afford 
 to do as much as his Maker ? There came to me 
 a letter, once, to say that if I eulogized a certain 
 man who sleeps in the old churchyard, the dead 
 would be assailed. O, pitiful weakness ! A dag- 
 ger thrust into a handful of dust is but a poor 
 means of vengeance. On this sweet May morn- 
 ing, as I walk through the ancient acre of the 
 dead, I thank God that there is in my heart no 
 room for hatred, either of the living or of those 
 who have passed beyond the swellings of Jordan. 
 I have outlived them all. Let him who would 
 also walk here in peace pause for a moment at 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 1 7 
 
 the gateway, and if he still cherishes any poor 
 shreds of resentment, let him go and bury them 
 out of sight before he brings his heart into the 
 presence of the dead for judgment. 
 
 This is the special lesson for the month of May. 
 From afar there comes the echo of martial music, 
 the distant tread of advancing columns, the fra- 
 grance of a treasure-house of flowers, a sound of 
 the flapping of torn and tattered banners, pro- 
 claiming that Decoration Day is at hand. Upon 
 the graves of the patriot dead who are buried 
 here, garlands of bud and blossoms will be laid. 
 The graves of these men are found beside every 
 pathway. Here stout old Francis Lewis, signer 
 of the Declaration of Independence, rests ; there 
 repose the ashes of Alexander Hamilton ; yonder 
 is the grave of Marinus Willett, hero of two wars 
 and recipient of high civic honors ; there the 
 tomb of General John Lamb, most ardent of Lib- 
 erty Boys; here is the monument which com- 
 memorates the heroism of the gallant commander 
 of the Chesapeake and his young lieutenant, 
 and elsewhere one can find the stone which covers 
 the vault in which impetuous Phil Kearney has 
 found peace after life's fitful fever, and the memo- 
 
1 8 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 rial erected by the firemen to brave Colonel Farn- 
 ham, slain at Manasses, while in a far corner of 
 the churchyard rises the tall freestone shaft which 
 commemorates the unknown dead of the Revolu- 
 tion, the countless heroes who died of wounds or 
 starvation in the prison pens over which the Brit- 
 ish flag floated, but whose memory smells sweet 
 and blossoms in the dust. To deck the graves of 
 these men and their comrades the people of the 
 land are coming with their hands filled with flow- 
 ers and their hearts fragrant with forgiveness for 
 those whose error cost their lives. It is well for 
 the country that it has added this festival to its 
 calendar, if only to teach the wonderful beauty of 
 charity. 
 
 It has been the habit of certain writers to rep- 
 resent the Episcopal Church in this country as 
 having been the enemy of the movement for 
 popular freedom in 1776, and the champion of 
 England and her policy. The facts of history tell 
 a different story. There was no American Episco- 
 pate until after the close of the Revolution, and 
 hence at the outbreak of the war many of the 
 clergy were Englishmen sent out here by the 
 Venerable Society for the Propagation of the 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 19 
 
 Gospel, whose home ties and education naturally 
 led them to take sides with the mother country. 
 But the native clergy of the church were behind 
 no others in unfaltering allegiance to the cause of 
 independence. When the clash of arms came, 
 the Rev. Peter Muhlenberg threw off his surplice 
 after a farewell sermon in his church at Woostock, 
 Virginia, stood before his flock in the full dress of 
 a colonial colonel, and mustered almost his entire 
 male audience into the service. Three hundred 
 recruits marched away with him that day, and 
 the close of the war found him a major-general 
 and one of the most trusted advisers of Washing- 
 ton. Two future bishops of the Church, Croes of 
 New Jersey and Ravenscroft of North Carolina, 
 carried muskets, and won promotion on the field 
 of battle. The Rev. Samuel Provoost, a native of 
 this city, and assistant minister of Trinity Church, 
 was forced to retire from his charge during the 
 period of British armed occupation, because of 
 his outspoken patriotism. When he returned the 
 church was in ruins and the clergy of the parish 
 scattered. But his energy speedily rebuilt the 
 walls of Zion, and having been elected and con- 
 secrated Bishop, he lived to consecrate the new 
 
20 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 edifice, and as he spoke the words of dedication 
 he saw among his congregation the stately pres- 
 ence of Washington, the first President of the Re- 
 public. 
 
 So, in later years, when the country sought 
 a final resting-place for the honored ashes of 
 James Lawrence, commander of the Chesapeake^ 
 whose war-cry, " Don't give up the ship," still 
 rang like a trumpet throughout the land, and no 
 other place so fit as Trinity churchyard was found. 
 Masbachusetts claimed him, and Salem, whose 
 citizens had watched the conflict from a distance, 
 gave his remains magnificent obsequies ; but New 
 York was selected as the spot in which the hero's 
 ashes should ultimately rest. On the i6th of 
 September, 1813, a long procession, composed of 
 members of both branches of the service and 
 civilians, moved from the Battery up Greenwich 
 Street to Chambers, and thence down Broadway 
 to Trinity churchyard, where the body of Captain 
 Lawrence was laid in a grave in the southwest 
 corner of the grounds, far removed from public 
 observation. Subsequently the city corporation 
 erected there a simple but appropriate monument 
 — a broken column of white marble, with the dis- 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 21 
 
 membered capital lying at its base. A generation 
 later the corporation of Trinity Church determined 
 to remove the remains to the more conspicuous 
 position which they now occupy, and the hand- 
 some mausoleum, surrounded by eight trophy 
 cannon attached by chains, which stands close by 
 the southernmost entrance to the Church, is the 
 first object that attracts the eyes of visitors. The 
 cannon were selected from the arms captured from 
 the English during the war of i8 12-15, ^^^> 21s 
 in accordance with the law, each gun bore its 
 national insignia, and an inscription declaring the 
 time and place of capture, the vestry of Trinity 
 Church, with a courtesy worthy the imitation of 
 all Christian bodies, directed that they should be 
 buried so deep that no evidence of triumph should 
 be paraded before the public eye so as to seem 
 unfriendly to the stranger within our gates. It 
 was a fitting return for the gratifying respect paid 
 to the remains of Captain Lawrence and Lieuten- 
 ant Ludlow on their arrival at Hahfax, when the 
 entire British garrison marched in the funeral 
 procession, and the navy furnished the pall- 
 bearers and guard of honor. 
 
 It is in this spirit that all the world can keep 
 
^^ Walks in our churchyards. 
 
 Decoration Day, and stand with bowed head and 
 proud tears by the grave of any man who gave 
 up Hfe for love of country or humanity. Those 
 who were among the men who marched down 
 Broadway on their way to the front during the 
 long, dark struggle of thirty years ago can recall 
 how the flag waved from the spire of old Trinity, 
 and made them stronger with the remembrance 
 that the prayers of good men and tender women 
 would follow them to camp and field and burial 
 trench. There was no one to question the pa- 
 triotism of Trinity Parish then, for these graves of 
 heroes — from Alexander Hamilton's at Trinity to 
 Gen. Richard Montgomery's at St. Paul's — had 
 for four-score years been preaching eloquently of 
 the unflinching virtue of men trained up on the 
 plain old-fashioned lines of ** My duty to God " 
 and " My duty to my neighbor." 
 
 I have spoken of this churchyard as a pure 
 democracy. Look around and you will find it 
 so. Actors and artists, soldiers and lawyers, mer- 
 chants and firemen, two former federal Secretaries 
 of the Treasury, three men who filled the office 
 of Chief Justice in colonial times, two in New 
 York and one in New Jersey, a score of aldermen 
 
Walks in our churchyards. 23 
 
 and assemblymen, printers, clergymen and sailors 
 without limit, are close together here, but never 
 jostle one another. Their tombstones were all 
 familiar to me once, for boyish curiosity led me 
 on from grave to grave to decipher the inscrip- 
 tions, and I used to spend hours on my knees be- 
 fore them, poking the moss out of the letters and 
 out of the eyes of the graven cherubs above the 
 inscriptions, a rosy, merry antiquarian, and the 
 antithesis of Walter Scott's restorer of tomb- 
 stones. The graves were familiar to my eye, but 
 I had a deep reverence for the people who occu- 
 pied them ; an awe, partly born of the inscrip- 
 tions, which in former days always had the tend- 
 ency of a funeral sermon and sought to flatter 
 the deceased, somewhat as modern art rouges the 
 lips of a corpse and seeks to rob death of its ter- 
 rors. But there is one grave which lies so close 
 to Broadway that a keen eye can catch upon the 
 memorial stone its legend, which used to have a 
 different effect upon me. I felt that I would have 
 liked to know the occupant, and pictured him to 
 myself as a gentleman of rotund build and rosy 
 cheek, whose face beamed with good nature and 
 who would have been tolerant of boys, even if 
 
24 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 they were inclined to mischief. The stone is the 
 memorial of a New York merchant, once an offi- 
 cer in the English army, one of whose descend- 
 ants, Samuel F. B. Morse, was the father of the 
 world's telegraph system, and beneath it rests 
 earth that was once Sydney Breese, who died in 
 1767, and before death wrote the inscription which 
 he desired on his tombstone. Here it is : 
 
 Ha, Sydney, Sydney! 
 Lyest thou Here ? 
 
 I here Lye, 
 'Til time is flown 
 To its Extremity. 
 
 A quaint soul he must have been, and staunch 
 withal, for he was ancestor of an eminent line, to 
 some of whom he bequeathed sparkling bits of 
 his humor. 
 
 One of the distinguished citizens who became 
 Chief Justice of the colony of New York, was 
 James De Lancey, who was also Lieutenant-Gov- 
 ernor, and during vacancies administered the gov- 
 ernment for several years. He was found dead in 
 his library, at his handsome country-seat on the 
 Bowery road, in 1760, and was buried in the 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 2$ 
 
 middle aisle of Trinity .Church. Daniel Horse- 
 manden, who married the widow of the Rev. 
 William Vesey, rector of Trinity Church, was ap- 
 pointed Chief Justice in 1763. At the outbreak 
 of the Revolution he espoused the royal cause, 
 liaving been born and educated in England, but 
 died in this city in 1778, and was buried in Trin- 
 ity churchyard. David Jamison, who was at one 
 time Chief Justice of New Jersey, and afterward 
 Attorney- General of the Province of New York, 
 and Recorder of this city, belonged to an earlier 
 period of colonial history, having begun to hold 
 office in 1693 as Clerk of the Council. A Scotch- 
 man by birth, he had been banished to America 
 because he had become identified with a religious 
 society called the " Sweet Singers," who believed 
 in burning all books except the Bible. His re- 
 ligious views changed with his advancing years, 
 and he became one of the leading vestrymen of 
 Trinity Church, had a notable funeral, and was 
 ** very decently '* interred in the graveyard. 
 
 One of the most noteworthy tablets in the 
 whole assemblage of stones is that which covers 
 the dust of William Bradford, fifty years printer 
 to the colonial government, the first to print the 
 
26 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 English Prayer- Book, and to issue proposals to 
 print the English Bible here, and always an ex- 
 ample of piety, integrity and patriotism. Revered 
 as the earliest champion of the freedom of the 
 press in this country, he left to his descendants an 
 inheritance of love of country and undaunted 
 couarge in its cause which bore fruit in the gallant 
 career of his grandson, Colonel William Bradford, 
 also a printer, who sacrificed life and fortune in 
 the war for independence. Very tame by the 
 side of such a record is the story of John Law- 
 rence, an eminent merchant, who married a daugh- 
 ter of Philip Livingston, and whose body was in- 
 terred in the family vault of the Earl of Sterling. 
 He died in 1765, and the celebrated George 
 Whitfield, then in the zenith of his renown, 
 preached his funeral sermon. But peace has her 
 victories no less than war, and who shall say that 
 the stainless life of the upright man of business is 
 not as proud a trophy in the eyes of the Creator 
 as the patriotic sacrifice of the soldier's life, or 
 the triumph that is won over the oppressor by 
 the wisdom of patriotic statesmanship ? 
 
 Of all the inscriptions in the churchyard of old 
 Trinity, the most pathetic, as well as the most of 
 
Walks in our churchyards. 27 
 
 a poem in stone, is that which tells of the death 
 of the widow of Captain Lawrence of the Chesa- 
 peake. More than fifty years of lonely life 
 elapsed between the bright May morning in 
 which she had kissed her brave young husband 
 good-bye and the quiet September evening in 
 which she set out to meet him again. She was 
 in the bloom of her youthful beauty when they 
 parted, and he passed beyond the veil in the glory 
 of his early manhood, stalwart and rosy and un- 
 wrinkled ; now, as she laid down her burden of 
 life she was bent, withered and white-haired. Did 
 they know each other when they met eye to eye, 
 and face to face ? Are these wrinkles and crip- 
 pling pains but marks of earth which we throw off 
 as we enter the portal of the house with many 
 mansions ? Will not the eye which is spiritual, 
 and not natural, see in its dear dead, only the 
 loveliness of the soul and the radiant beauty of 
 the heart which never grows old ? The fountain 
 of eternal youth was sought by Ponce de Leon in 
 vain, but the priests who bore the standard of the 
 cross in his expedition might have told him that 
 it lies just within *' the gate beautiful " of the tem- 
 ple eternal in the heavens. If it were possible 
 
28 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 that it should be otherwise, the disappointment 
 would imply the deception of a doomed world. 
 I know, as I look at this brief, but most pathetic, 
 story of woman's unforgetfulness carved on the 
 stone mausoleum, that some one who had been 
 listening long, but with no count of years, heard 
 her footsteps, and, hastening to clasp her hand 
 found her even lovelier than he had remembered 
 And to this belief every flower and leaf of May 
 answers back, ** Amen !" 
 
III. 
 
 If I were a physician, and one of those busy 
 men of Wall Street, who complain of the wear and 
 tear of an unresting brain which brings sleep- 
 lessness and prostration in its train, came to me 
 for advice, I should prescribe a daily half-hour 
 walk in the churchyard of old Trinity. As a 
 panacea, I believe that garden of the dead to be 
 worth its value in gold every year to the public 
 whose eyes turn from the dusty street to its 
 trees and flowers, and from grimy pavements to 
 the coverlet of white which is drawn by unseen 
 hands over the unconscious sleepers. The sight 
 of its green grasses that recall distant and half- 
 forgotten meadows ; of its banks of snow that 
 bring back the old farm-house of childhood and 
 the trees that waved their bare arms above it 
 in the wintry wind ; of the graves that are al- 
 ways tenderly eloquent of vacant chairs at every 
 hearthstone, changes the current of the blood, 
 quickens the sluggish beating of the heart and 
 breathes peace and healing into the tired and 
 overworked brain. 
 
 There is nothing sad but everything that is 
 29 
 
30 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 cheering in a walk among these graves. It was 
 the last survivor of the apostles, who, after nearly 
 a century of life, heard a voice from Heaven 
 which said: "Blessed are the dead." The dew 
 and the sunshine rest upon their sleeping places ; 
 the birds sing their sweetest songs to them as 
 they perch upon their crumbling tombstones, 
 and the din and tumult of the outer world is 
 unable to mar the slumber of the tenants of the 
 sod who now rest from their labors. So quiet, 
 so peaceful, so sure of a sweet awakening is 
 their sleep, that many an unresting laborer for 
 riches in the busy streets on which the shadow 
 of the church-spire falls, could envy them their 
 dreamless rest, if but his work were done and 
 the eventide had come to release him. 
 
 On a bright October afternoon, not many days 
 ago, I took my own prescription of a half-hour's 
 stroll in Trinity churchyard ; having full faith in 
 the medicine that I recommend to others. The 
 leaves had fallen from many of the trees, but the 
 grass was green and there was a radiant touch of 
 autumn in the foliage that remained. A blue bird 
 that had come in March, and who with his com- 
 rades had passed the skirmish line of the advanc- 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 3 1 
 
 ing army of birds sat piping a farewell song on 
 the branch of a little maple. It was not like his 
 merry melody in the spring, full of violets, run- 
 ning brooks and warm southwest winds, but was 
 a lament that the birds had gone and that he must 
 follow them. I heard him afterwards going round 
 from tree to tree, erecting his altar now here, now 
 there, in his leafy cathedral and making his offer- 
 ing, and I knew that he meant to come back with 
 another March. For it seems to me that the 
 same omnipotence which puts an unerring com- 
 pass in the head of the little feathered bunch of 
 melody to guide him, must also put there dreams 
 of the shadows and sunshine, the trees and flow- 
 ers of the old churchyard which is every year 
 vocal with the songs of birds, and so when spring 
 returns, they come back and cradle their young 
 on the branches in which they swung in their in- 
 fancy. 
 
 On the trunks of the elms the woodpeckers 
 were at work, like so many sextons, digging count- 
 less graves in the dark, hard bark. I watched one 
 who wore a red velvet cap and white underclothes 
 and seemed to have wrapped a silken shawl about 
 him and who was boring away at a decayed por- 
 
32 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 tion of the tree, hitching around, hammering and 
 digging, without paying the slightest regard to 
 my existence. I felt as insignificant in the pres- 
 ence of the busy, bustling httle fellow as if I had 
 intruded upon the business hours of a Wall street 
 broker. He is as reticent as the bluebird is talk- 
 ative, but I have a profound respect for that noisy 
 activity of his, which I have never been able to 
 imitate. Presently both woodpecker and bluebird 
 will be gone and then the senseless chattering of 
 the ubiquitous sparrow will alone be heard until 
 the warm winds once more blow from the south. 
 Now do you understand, O wearied man of cease- 
 less activities, how the song of that bluebird and 
 the sight of the redcapped woodpecker did me 
 more good that day than could have been accom- 
 plished by the contents of an entire apothecary 
 shop? 
 
 Yet birds and trees are but incidents of a half 
 hour's walk in the old city graveyard. To the 
 New Yorker who takes patriotic pride in the place 
 of his birth and to the American citizen who has 
 made his home here, there is not a crumbling 
 tombstone in the consecrated enclosure that does 
 not bring up recollections to stir his heart to the 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 33 
 
 core. There is a complete history of New York, 
 from the day when it passed into the possession 
 of those who spoke our language and professed 
 our creed, written on these stones, and in the 
 names graven on the slabs that cover the en- 
 trances to family vaults, there are links that con- 
 nect with the time of Governor Petrus Stuyvesant 
 and reach back almost to the day when Governor 
 Minuit purchased from the red man the title to 
 the territory of Manhattan Island. 
 
 Come with me to the southwest corner of the 
 building where in the pavement is inserted a slab 
 which bears the inscription ** Anthony Lispenard 
 Bleecker, 1790." Five generations of the family 
 sleep there, and though the stone is but a century 
 old, it has nearly two centuries and a half of new 
 world history attached to it. Jan Jansen Bleecker 
 came to New Amsterdam in 1658, but he settled 
 at Albany and became mayor of that town and 
 the father of ten children. It was an era of abun- 
 dant olive branches around the family table, and 
 when his grandson, Jacobus Bleecker, who mar- 
 ried a daughter of Anthony Lispenard, of New 
 Rochelle, looked around to see how he should 
 dispose of his nine children, one of the flock 
 3 
 
34 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 Struck out for himself and came to New York, 
 where fame and fortune awaited him. 
 
 It was in 1768 that he set up in business at No. 
 10 Pearl Street, on Hanover Square, as a merchant 
 and the only licensed colonial auctioneer. His 
 early advertisements offered for sale puncheons of 
 Jamaica rum and " likely negro boys and 
 wenches," as well as choice bits of city real estate 
 below Wall Street and" farms above the canal and 
 the Collect Pond. Like other merchants of his 
 day he lived in the rooms above his store and it 
 was not until his thirteen children demanded more 
 space to turn around in that he settled down at 
 No. 74 Broadway in a house of old-fashioned yel- 
 low brick imported from Holland, which grey- 
 haired men of New York can yet recall. A 
 staunch churchman, he was a vestryman of Trinity 
 Church and his son and grandson have filled the 
 same office. The grandson, Anthony J. Bleecker, 
 was perhaps the most famous of his line. A fine 
 scholar, a courteous gentleman and celebrated for 
 his wit, no social gathering of my boyhood was 
 complete without his presence. He had rounded 
 four-score and four years of a spotless life, when 
 he was called to go up higher. His body was the 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 35 
 
 last one interred in the family vault, his funeral 
 taking place January 19th, 1884. 
 
 The record of the Bleecker family illustrates 
 what I had in mind to say, that the mossy broken 
 letters carved on these crumbling tombstones are 
 as complete a story of the past of New York as 
 in their way are the countless hieroglyphics on 
 the tombs and public buildings of Pharaohs that 
 aim to tell of the glories of ancient Egypt. A 
 score of lines converge at a single square of brown 
 stone that bears but a name and a date. The 
 earliest of the Bleeckers married into the Rutgers 
 family. One of his sons wedded a daughter of 
 the Schuyler lineage, at Albany. The father of 
 Anthony J. Bleecker took for his bride a daughter 
 of Theophylact Bache, first President of the New 
 York Chamber of Commerce. It is but a step 
 from the Bleecker vault to that of the Lispenards, 
 who were early allied to them by marriage. Both 
 families were originally Huguenot and came natur- 
 ally into the fold of the mother church of Eng- 
 land, defender of the old, pure faith. Leonard 
 Lispenard, most famous of his line, was a member 
 of the Stamp Act Congress and an ardent patriot. 
 The male line has disappeared and the Lispenards 
 
36 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 all sleep in the family vault, but the blood of these 
 brave old Huguenots and churchmen comes 
 through the veins of men and women who bear 
 the names of Stewart, Webb, Livingston, Le Roy 
 and Winthorp, and who have reason to be proud 
 of their lineage. A street which bears the name 
 of the last of the Lispenards is said to have led 
 from Broadway to his country seat, built on a 
 hill near the present junction of Hudson and Des- 
 brosses Street, overlooking the swampy ground 
 on which St. John's Church was built and the 
 little lake that afterwards formed part of St. John's 
 Park. 
 
 South of the Bleecker vault and on the row 
 east of the monument to Albert Gallatin, Secre- 
 tary of the Treasury under Jefferson, is the burial 
 place of the Livingston family. The slab bears 
 the inscription: *'The Vault of Walter and 
 Robert C. Livingston, sons of Robert Livingston, 
 of the Manor of Livingston." Among its tenants 
 is the body of Robert Fulton, the builder of 
 America's first steamboat, and he could not sleep 
 in more illustrious company. It is worth while to 
 pause here and look over the gap in the history 
 of the colonies, which this one family filled. 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHtJRCllYAkBS. 37 
 
 Robert Livingston, scion of a noble Scotch house, 
 first appears in colonial history with Sir Edmund 
 Andros, as Secretary of Indian affairs. From that 
 time his life reads like a romance. Through 
 Andros he became possessor of a manor and an 
 extensive patent of lands and his fortune seems 
 to be made. Next we see him imprisoned in the 
 fort at the Battery by command of Governor 
 Leisler ; then standing in front of the scaffold on 
 which Leisler and Milborne were executed and 
 denounced by the latter as his murderer ; pres- 
 ently at the Court of King William, in England, 
 introducing Captain Kidd, the renowned privateer 
 and subsequent pirate, to his Majesty ; after a 
 while denounced to the authorities, and his entire 
 possession confiscated to the crown, and in the 
 end dying with his hands full of riches and honors, 
 none of which could the ambitious man carry 
 away with him. His son Philip, while succeed- 
 ing to his father's honors, took life more easily 
 and sought and found enjoyment in his three 
 princely establishments. When in March, 1749, 
 his funeral was celebrated from his imposing town 
 mansion on Broad Street, a pipe of spiced wine 
 was opened, gloves and handkerchiefs were given 
 
38 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 to each of his tenants, and in case of the eight 
 pall bearers, scarfs, mourning rings and monkey- 
 spoons were added. 
 
 Yet these men, though born to luxury, were 
 none the less self-sacrificing patriots when the 
 pinch came. Judge Robert R. Livingston, third 
 of his line, was made chairman of the Revolu- 
 tionary Committee of Correspondence and mem- 
 ber of the Stamp Act Congress, while his cousin, 
 Philip Livingston, a merchant of this city, be- 
 came a delegate to the first Continental Con- 
 gress, signed the Declaration of Independence, 
 remained at his post when Congress fled from 
 Philadelphia to York, Pa., and died there, in the 
 harness, before he could see the fruit of his la- 
 bors and sacrifices. The fame of the colonial 
 Livingston family culminated in Chancellor 
 Robert R. Livingston, the intimate friend of 
 Washington and of the great builders of the 
 republic, at whose hands the first President took 
 the oath of office. He did good service in the 
 Continental Congress and in having the federal 
 constitution adopted by his native state, and as 
 Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Minister to 
 France developed rare statesmanship. Follow- 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 39 
 
 ing these heroic founders of the house of Liv- 
 ingston come an innumerable company who have 
 done good service in field and forum and di- 
 plomacy and in our municipal government. 
 Looking back over their past, one is tempted 
 to say, that nothing better can be told of a 
 good citizen than can be said of them, that the 
 history of their family is the story of the land 
 and city in which they live. And yet there is 
 one thing better still than the civic crown. The 
 shadow of the cross to which they trusted lies 
 over their grave and back from the sod comes 
 an echo to say that these all died in the faith. 
 
 There is one of those squares of brown stones 
 which is a special object of interest to thousands 
 with each recurring Decoration Day, because it 
 points out where after hfe's fitful fever the restless 
 heart of Gen. Philip Watts Kearney is sleeping 
 quietly. His body was placed in the tomb of his 
 ancestors — the Watts family vault — and the vete- 
 rans who recall the hero of Chantilly and many 
 another hard-fought field, gather here year by 
 year and with bared head and proud words of re- 
 membrance cover the stone with the blossoms of 
 May. But apart from the brilliant record of its 
 
40 Walks In our churcHyarIds. 
 
 soldier tenant, the tomb deserves honors at the 
 hands of sons of New York. It has its own his- 
 torical renown. 
 
 About the year 1710 there came to New York 
 from the ancient family estate of Rosehill, near 
 Edinburgh, a young man of many personal at- 
 tractions and of rare culture, named Robert Watts. 
 He had money of his own, was a friend of the 
 government and in five years' time was appointed 
 a member of Governor Hunter's council. To him 
 was born in 1 7 1 5 a son who afterwards became 
 the celebrated John Watts, a member of the gov- 
 ernor's council, as his father had been, and recog- 
 nized as one of the leading statesmen of the 
 period. His marriage to a sister of Lieutenant- 
 Governor DeLancey, allied him to the leading 
 families of the little city and linked him to the 
 pioneer history of the colony. Socially he was a 
 power. He built a fine city mansion at No. 3 
 Broadway, whose gardens extended to the water 
 and his country seat reaching from the East River 
 to Broadway and covering Madison Square was in 
 summer a favorite resort of the then existing 
 Four Hundred of society. As the confidential 
 adviser of the governor he became imbued with 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 4I 
 
 the spirit of loyalty to the crown and was pro- 
 portionately obnoxious to the Liberty Boys. 
 When the British troops entered New York he 
 prepared to flee. A mob of excited citizens 
 caught him on the steps of his own house and 
 threatened death and destruction. Just at that 
 moment Judge Robert R. Livingston was return- 
 ing from court in his scarlet robes and saw the 
 danger of his friend whom he dearly loved though 
 differing from him politically. Whispering to 
 Watts where to conceal himself, he began a speech 
 to the throng and held them spellbound with his 
 oratory until his friend was safe. That night 
 Watts embarked on a man-of-war and before a 
 year had passed both were dead. The incident 
 came back to me as I turned from the tablet of 
 one family to the other and thought how joyful 
 must have been the meeting of the two friends in 
 the land where there are no wars. 
 
 John Watts, son of the exile, apparently did not 
 sympathize with his father's opinions but cast in 
 his lot on the patriot side. In the great Federal 
 procession of 1788, which celebrated the ratifica- 
 tion by the state of the Constitution of the United 
 States we see him, a model of masculine beauty, 
 
42 ' WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 clad as a farmer riding at the head of a troop of 
 gentlemen farmers; later we find him elected 
 Speaker of the Assembly and filling many offices 
 of trust ; founding the Leake & Watts Orphan 
 Asylum at the age of eighty and on the eve of 
 his death, seven years later, riding on horseback 
 past old Trinity, erect and graceful, the admira- 
 tion of the pedestrians who thronged the " Mall," 
 as the Broadway promenade between the Battery 
 and St. Paul's was then called. 
 
 The matrimonial connections of this family were 
 what society would call brilliant. Robert, the 
 oldest son of the first John Watts, married a 
 daughter of the Earl of Stirling, known in the 
 Republican court of Washington as Lady Mary 
 Watts. One daughter married Archibald Ken- 
 nedy, her next-door neighbor, at No. i Broadway, 
 who became the eleventh Earl of Cassilis. Three 
 other daughters married respectively Sir John 
 Johnson, Philip Kearney and Major Robert Leake. 
 None of the five sons of the second John Watts 
 were married, but one of his daughters married 
 her cousin Philip Kearney, and became the mother 
 of the hero of Chantilly, and another wedded 
 Frederic de Peyster, and her son is the well- 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 43 
 
 known General J. Watts de Peyster. It is a 
 famous family line, but as I stand by the side of 
 the stone that covers but heaps of crumbling ashes, 
 1 know that none of these things are written down 
 in the books of record that stand in the celestial 
 archives, waiting to be opened for judgment. 
 None, did I say ? The story of the gathering in 
 of orphans into an asylum of refuge, the good 
 deeds of a hand ready to give to all who were in 
 want, are written there in letters of gold. 
 
 One of the most picturesque spots on Manhat- 
 tan Island, and a relic of old times well worth a 
 pilgrimage, is the old Watts mansion, at about 
 141st Street, and midway between 6th and 7th 
 Avenues. For half a dozen blocks the streets 
 have not been cut through and this part of the 
 estate is a farm of substantial size, with all rural 
 accessories. The great square house with its tall 
 columns in front and its observatory which has 
 seen a city grow up about it of late years, was a 
 conspicuous object in the landscape when the 
 Watts family transferred their country house from 
 the East River and Madison Square to a spot 
 which they were sure the slowly- growing city 
 would not disturb for a couple of centuries. Now 
 
44 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 the authorities are eager to cut streets through 
 the green sward and level the great groups of 
 oaks and Cottonwood that lend an air of age and 
 dignity to the place. The old New York mer- 
 chant and man of affairs was a comfortable sort of 
 soul and liked to have his little farm and ample 
 mansion on the upper part of the island of Man- 
 hattan and of these few remain The Gracie man- 
 sion is to be swallowed up in the East River Park 
 in a few months, the " Grange " of Alexander 
 Hamilton has been moved and remodelled into a 
 new St. Luke's church, and none can tell how 
 long the old Watts homestead and the newer 
 stone mansion on the same street, a stately build- 
 ing whose owners still bear the name of Watts, 
 will resist the march of improvement. Old An- 
 thony Lispenard Bleecker had a farm which 
 reached from the Bowery to Minetta Lane and 
 from Bond Street nearly to Houston, but not one 
 acre of it now belongs to the family and only the 
 name of the street near its lower boundary recalls 
 the name of its early possessors. So goes the 
 world of change. In one case a family name be- 
 comes extinct in the direct line, in another its 
 wealth is diverted into the hands of innumerable 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 45 
 
 descendants, and we have no choice in the matter, 
 even if we desired to make it or knew how to 
 choose. And this is one of the lessons that a 
 walk in the old churchyard, under the golden sun 
 of October and amid falling leaves impresses upon 
 the overworked harvesters in the world's field. 
 The sheaves are golden but we cannot tell who 
 shall gather them. 
 
 The other day, as we walked from the old 
 Watts* place to the neighborhood of Hamilton 
 Grange, Master Felix Oldboy who walked by my 
 side and held my hand tightly in his own, said : 
 " New York is growing up into the woods — 
 look ! " Through little knots of forest trees and 
 across boulders of vine-clad primeval rocks, we 
 could see blocks of new houses that looked as if 
 they had been dropped there in a night. Close 
 at hand a laborer was plying his axe against the 
 trunk of a lordly oak, undoing in an hour the 
 work of centuries. With the stroke of the cruel 
 steel there came back to me the remembrance of 
 an old-time school in which, some fifty years ago, 
 I sat under the ministrations of an old-fashioned 
 teacher. Like many of his kind, he loved to hear 
 himself talk, and once in a while he uttered a 
 
46 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 thought worth keeping in memory. One of his 
 maxims, frequently heard, was this : " The boy 
 who would injure a shade tree would kill a man." 
 It was an exaggeration, of course, but I think it 
 taught us all to have a reverence for the leafy 
 children of the forest. 
 
 Often when I pass St. Paul's I think of old Sex- 
 ton Brown, who planted the ancient elms in the 
 churchyard. He passed away long decades ago, 
 and his grandson grew up to be a Bishop of the 
 Church and died, but the trees still live and give 
 out a grateful shade. What hands planted those 
 in Trinity's garden of the dead I do not know, but 
 they deserve to be chronicled, for they builded 
 better than they knew and through leaf and 
 branch have spoken words of hope and cheer to 
 countless thousands. If the many men who plod 
 outside will try my prescription, and come within 
 the sacred enclosure and walk under the over- 
 arching trees and between the graves, they will 
 gather health and something better still, for, even 
 in November the bare boughs will whisper to 
 them of a spring that is coming after the snows 
 of winter, and of a new life that will break the 
 sleep of bud and leaf and blossom and make all 
 the trees of the wood to rejoice before the Lord ! 
 
ST. I'AUl. S CHAl'EU 
 
t c t C I 
 
IV. 
 
 There has been a fall of snow upon the church- 
 yards, and the white flakes, after whirling like 
 disembodied blossoms of summer over the house- 
 tops and through the streets, settled down upon 
 the graves of the blessed dead as silently and 
 sweetly as if they were a benediction from 
 heaven. With the next day, the sun shone 
 brightly, and up through many a rent in the 
 white coverlet of the snow, the grass, that had 
 kept its greenness in spite of wintry blasts, 
 peeped triumphantly again, speaking of resurrec- 
 tion in the language God gave it; when, after 
 having created it and realized its loveHness, He 
 •' saw that it was good." A ragged urchin stood 
 at the iron railing of the churchyard of old Trin- 
 ity, and pointing to the grass that was struggling 
 up to the sunshine, said to a boy as unkempt as 
 himself: " See, Billy, it's summer yet under the 
 snow ! " The lad who spoke may never know 
 why a man with white hair who was passin^g and 
 heard him, pressed something into his hand and 
 with " Thank you, my boy," walked quickly away, 
 leaving him dazed with astonishment. Yet it 
 
 47 
 
48 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 may be that the chance word of the child of the 
 streets — if anything be chance in a world where 
 no sparrow falls to the ground without notice — 
 has already been sunshine upon the snows of a 
 heart that had thought its roots of tenderness 
 buried beyond hope of resurrection. 
 
 There is to me a pecuhar significance in the 
 fact that the oldest known grave in Trinity church- 
 yard is that of a child. It is as if He who knew 
 the hearts of men and understood the wild cur- 
 rents of human passion that swell and roar around 
 this quiet acre of the dead, had again taken a 
 little child and set him in the midst of the living. 
 Here is the quaint record of a babe whose death 
 left a vacant chair in a New York household of 
 more than two centuries ago : 
 
 wc- 
 
 HEAR • LYES • THE • BODY 
 
 OF • RICHARD • CHVRCH 
 
 ER • SON • OF • WILLIA 
 
 M • CHVRCHER • WHO • 
 
 DIED • THE • 5 OF • APRIL 
 
 1681 • OF • AGE 5 YEARS 
 
 AND • 5 • MONTHES 
 
 The brown and broken slab which bears this 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 49 
 
 inscription stands in the nothern half of the 
 churchyard, is of sandstone, and on its back are 
 cut in high relief a winged hour glass and a skull 
 and cross bones. The artistic care bestowed upon 
 this mute memorial shows that the little one left 
 aching hearts as well as a vacant chair behind him. 
 Next in point of age, and standing next to it in 
 the enclosure, is the tombstone of a young girl, 
 who was evidently a sister of little Richard 
 Churcher. Its inscription reads : " Here Lyeth 
 the Body of Anne Churcher. Died May the 14, 
 1 69 1, Aged 17 Years and 3 Quarters. Buryed 
 May the 16, 1691." 
 
 When these graves were dug. New York, a little 
 city of barely three thousand inhabitants, had but 
 recently come into possession of the English. 
 The members of the established church held ser- 
 vice in a little chapel in the Fort, to which Queen 
 Anne had presented a silver communion set, and 
 Trinity parish had not been organized. The first 
 church edifice was begun in 1696 and finished in 
 1697. I^ the Governor's glebe in which it was 
 erected a graveyard already existed, and when in 
 May of 1697 the Assembly, with the approval of 
 the Governor and Council, passed an act by which 
 
50 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 " a certain church and steeple lately built in the 
 city of New York, together with a parcel of ground 
 adjoining" was to be known as Trinity Church, 
 this burial spot was included, and the shadow of 
 the spire has ever since rested upon the tombs of 
 the young brother and sister. They passed away 
 in one of the most unquiet epochs that the city 
 has ever known. The revolution of the Edict of 
 Nantes in 1685, the imprisonment of the seven 
 bishops in the Tower by James the Second of 
 England and the revolution which raised William 
 of Orange to the throne of Great Britain, created 
 terrible alarm on this side of the ocean and finally 
 bore fruit in an uprising which made Jacob Leis- 
 ler, as a champion of Protestantism, the virtual 
 ruler of New York. On the very day in which 
 Anne Churcher was borne to her grave, Leisler 
 was hung, on a charge of treason, in his own gar- 
 den on Park Row, about where the statue of Ben- 
 jamin Franklin now stands, and was buried at the 
 foot of the scaffold, to be disinterred and carried 
 to an honored grave a few years later. There 
 was a striking contrast in the two funerals on that 
 stormy day of May (for history says it was tem- 
 pestuous) and between the fate of the fair young 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 5 1 
 
 girl and this first and last execution in New York 
 for a political crime. 
 
 I like to find tombstones erected over the dust 
 of little children. It is a matter of obligation to 
 place a stone upon the grave of the dead states- 
 man, soldier or merchant, but the babe is apt to 
 be forgotten except by the mother that nursed it, 
 and the world does not always take account of 
 these infants of a span whose angels behold our 
 Father's face. One cannot help but think the 
 better of human nature when he comes across the 
 memorials of white souls that cast no shadow in 
 the world and of little feet that left no print be- 
 hind them save on the loving hearts they left be- 
 hind when they walked with God up the hills of 
 Beulah. A strange character in this city, who 
 was known to everybody two generations ago as 
 " the mad poet," said, when he lay dying in one 
 of our hospitals, " In Heaven I shall have what 
 I love most — plenty of fresh air, flowers and little 
 children." I have always thought that the man 
 with such a heart was certainly not more crazy 
 than his critics. 
 
 In the southern half of the churchyard is a 
 tombstone which has withstood the storms of 
 
52 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 more than one hundred and thirty years, and 
 which attracted my notice even as a boy because 
 of the quaintness of the verses which testify to the 
 virtues of a child. More than forty years have 
 passed since I first read them and they preach 
 more powerfully now than then, in the light of 
 the intervening days. The inscription says that 
 beneath the stone " lies ye Body of Mary Wragg," 
 and that she "departed this Life, Oct. 29, 1759, 
 in ye nth year of her Age." Then follows this 
 remarkable tribute to her memory : 
 
 Her days Whear short as ye Winter's Sun 
 from Dust she came to Heaven return. 
 
 Beneath 
 this Child a-sleeping lies 
 to Earth whose ashes Lent 
 More Glorious shall hereafter Rise 
 tho' not more Inocent. 
 When the archangle's Trump shall Blow 
 and Souls and Bodyes Joyn, 
 What Crowds will wish their lives Below 
 Had been as short as thine. 
 
 It is noticeable in connection with this inscrip- 
 tion that our ancestors were not always gifted in 
 the art of spelling, and indeed nobody thought of 
 criticising so great a man as George Washington 
 because he was not as familiar as he might have 
 
Walks in oUr churchyards. 53 
 
 been with the mysteries of the spelling book. 
 Not far from the tombstone last mentioned are 
 two small headstones which stand side by side 
 and indicate the graves of two infants belonging 
 to the same family, who successively bore the 
 name which is spelled **Hellen " on one stone and 
 •* Hellin " on the other. The same peculiarity is 
 even observable in some of the family names, 
 which, as graven on stone, differ from the com- 
 monly received nomenclature. 
 
 In walking among these ancient tombstones I 
 am grimly reminded of a remark made by the 
 late Rev. Dr. Hallam, of New London. Sitting 
 in the library of Bishop Williams, at Middletown, 
 Connecticut, he startled that prelate by abruptly 
 exclaiming, " I wonder whether we shall have to 
 live in the next world with the sort of cherubim 
 that we see carved on tombstones. I really 
 hope not, for I fancy that it might be disagree- 
 able." The fancy might readily be forgiven by 
 one who has made a study of the winged heads 
 that adorn many of the funereal slabs in Trinity 
 churchyard. They are of every degree of grue- 
 someness, only each a little more horrible than 
 the others. Yet the artists meant well and have 
 
S4 Walks in our churchyards. 
 
 discovered their mistake by this time. That there 
 is no accounting for tastes is a truism learned 
 early in life, and some of these memorial stones 
 emphasize the fact. One in particular which con- 
 sists of two slabs joined in one, has a skull carved 
 in relief at the head of each division of the slab, 
 but turned in different directions. The inscrip- 
 tion on one side is "T. S., H. S., D. S., I. S.. 
 S. S., 1 73 1," and on the other " H. L., 173 1." As 
 a bid to provoke curiosity the inscriptions are a 
 success. 
 
 I have spoken of the variation in the spelling 
 of family names, and a conspicuous instance is 
 the inscription on the stone which marks '* Mari- 
 nus Willit's Vault." His autograph reads "Mari- 
 nus Willett," and by this name he is equally dis- 
 tinguished in martial and civic annals. The ca- 
 reer of this illustrious son of a Long Island 
 farmer covers a wide stretch of this country's his- 
 tory. At eighteen he was lieutenant in a colo- 
 nial regiment that participated in the disastrous 
 attack on Ticonderoga in 1758 ; at thirty- five he 
 was one of the most active leaders of the Liberty 
 Boys in this city; as colonel of a Continental 
 regiment he accompanied Gen. Montgomery in 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 55 
 
 the expedition against Quebec and fought at 
 Monmouth; made a Brigadier- General by Presi- 
 dent Washington, he fought in the Indian wars; 
 subsequently he was sheriff and mayor of the city, 
 and in 1830, in his ninety-first year, his body was 
 laid at rest in the family vault. As I stood by 
 his grave and looked around the sacred enclosure, 
 I could not help thinking of the change that had 
 been wrought since his day in the conduct of our 
 municipal affairs. Elected Mayor in 1807, his 
 hands were upheld by a Board of Aldermen whose 
 members were men of acknowledged ability and 
 integrity, who accepted the office as a civic duty. 
 They were the fathers of the city, indeed, and to 
 the fact that they held the administration of muni- 
 cipal affairs to be a grave responsibility, New 
 York is indebted for its present prosperity. Close 
 to the tomb of Mayor Willett are the ashes of 
 some of the men who served with him in the city's 
 councils. Among these were Peter Mesier, who 
 was Alderman from 1807 to 181 8; John Slidell, 
 who held the same office in 1 807 and 1 808 ; 
 Augustine H. Laurence, Alderman from 1809 to 
 1 8 16 and Wynant Van Zandt, Jr., who served as 
 Alderman from 1802 to 1806. They were all 
 
56 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 gentlemen of high social standing, eminent in 
 business and professional life, and were members 
 of the vestry of Trinity Church. But we can hardly 
 fancy a vestryman of to-day consenting to allow 
 his name to be mentioned in connection with the 
 office of Alderman. 
 
 Near the railing at the Rector Street side of 
 the churchyard is a stone which is liable to escape 
 the scrutiny of most eyes by its modest insignifi- 
 cance. It bears two inscriptions. The first, " G. 
 Bend's Vault " is indistinct and evidently much 
 older than the second, which reads, '' Bishop 
 Benj. Moore and Charity His Wife." Second 
 Bishop of New York, President of Columbia Col- 
 lege, an accomplished scholar and a man of rare 
 loveliness of character, the entire ministerial life 
 of Benjamin Moore was identified with Trinity 
 Parish. The records show that during the thirty- 
 seven years of his connection with Trinity Church, 
 he baptized more than three thousand infants and 
 adults and solemnized no less than three thousand 
 five hundred marriages. My own family Bible 
 shows that in 1804 my grandfather was married 
 by him, and the other day as I looked at the little 
 stone half hidden among the grass and snow, I 
 
WALKS IN OUk CHURCHYARDS. 57 
 
 could not help wondering if they had met and 
 talked the wedding over in that land where there 
 are no such ceremonials. 
 
 In the early days of the Parish, the Bishop of 
 London was the nominal rector of Trinity Church, 
 and several years before the war of the Revolu- 
 tion broke out young Benjamin Moore went across 
 the Atlantic and was ordained deacon and priest 
 by the Bishop of London in the chapel of the 
 Episcopal palace at Fulham. But he did not 
 leave his heart in the mother country. At the 
 pretty country-seat of the widow of Captain 
 Thomas Clarke, formerly of the British army, 
 which extended from Twentieth to Twenty-third 
 Streets and from Ninth Avenue to the river, he 
 found his help-meet in her daughter Charity — a 
 name most appropriate to the gentleness of charac- 
 ter which distinguished both husband and wife. 
 Captain Clarke called his place Chelsea, in honor 
 of the home into which England gathers her vet- 
 eran and invalided soldiers, and the designation, 
 which afterwards gave its name to a lovely, rural 
 village clustered on the banks of the Hudson, still 
 adheres to the locality, though all traces of village 
 lines were wiped out years ago. At this spot 
 
58 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 Bishop Moore passed the latter part of his life, 
 dispensing a generous hospitality, and partly be- 
 cause of his profession and in part for some fancy 
 as to its shape, his house was known in the neigh- 
 borhood as " The Pulpit." Cut down to the di- 
 mensions of a single block, the old tree-clad place 
 remained as a landmark up to some thirty years 
 ago, and I recall its loveliness vividly as a rustic 
 oasis in city streets. But to my eyes it was en- 
 chanted ground for the reason that in the old 
 house hidden among the trees dwelt Clement C. 
 Moore, the man — for whose profound scholarship 
 and for the fact that he was the son of Bishop 
 Moore I did not care — who had written the child's 
 jingle of the century : 
 
 " Twas the night before Christmas." 
 
 Looking back through the sweet associations of 
 more than half a century of Christmas days, and 
 writing with the fragrant dawn of another Christ- 
 mas upon us, I know not what happier fate could 
 befall one than to have generations of little ones 
 rise up to call him blessed because of the work of 
 his pen, which has added a fresh charm to the 
 
Walks in our churchyards. 59 
 
 season that belongs specially to them by right of 
 inheritance from the babe of Bethlehem. 
 
 As I close this day's walk through the church- 
 yard of old Trinity, a voice from the secular press 
 calls attention to a forgotten grave and in doing 
 honor to the dust which it encloses, pointedly 
 emphasizes the great historical value of these 
 monumental stones. Two gentlemen wandering 
 through the middle north side, came to a moss 
 covered slab, nearly hidden by the sod. The let- 
 ters of the inscription, worn by the weather of 
 nearly two centuries, were almost undecipherable, 
 and it needed patient tracing to read the legend : 
 '*Benj. Faneuil, Died March 31, 1719, Aged 50 
 yrs. 8 mos. Born in Rochell, France." All the 
 world has heard of Faneuil Hall, in Boston, fam- 
 ous as the " Cradle of American Liberty," built 
 by Peter Faneuil and by him presented to Boston 
 in 1 740. But few New Yorkers know that Ben- 
 jamin Faneuil, father of Peter Faneuil, was a resi- 
 dent of this city, and sleeps beneath the trees of 
 Trinity churchyard. The family, driven out of 
 France by the cruel revocation of the Edict of 
 Nantes by which Protestants were tolerated in 
 that kingdom, came to this country with a large 
 
6o WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 colony of Huguenots in the latter part of the 
 seventeenth century. Industrious, godly and de- 
 vout, they were a welcome addition to the pop- 
 ulation of New York, and they were not long in 
 building a church of their own on Pine Street — 
 now known as the Episcopal Church Du Saint 
 Esprit — and in founding within sight of the salt 
 waves of the Sound a New Rochelle which should 
 recall at least by name the memory of their old 
 home. Their identity as a distinct class has long 
 been lost, but old men have told me that they 
 have a distinct remembrance of the throng of 
 worshippers who came to the city every Sunday 
 to worship in the Pine Street church. They left 
 New Rochelle at dawn and walked to the city in 
 a body, men, women and children, returning at 
 nightfall, and thinking nothing of the journey in 
 comparison with the blessing they sought and 
 found. When the heat and cold of earth are 
 ended and the sunshine of the resurrection has 
 come, and these devout children of the kingdom 
 go trooping up to the great white throne, I won- 
 der if some of us who have had more privileges 
 will not be glad to sit at the feet of those men of 
 simple faith ? 
 
A PERSON has written to one of the daily papers 
 suggesting that a monument shall be erected in 
 Trinity churchyard to the memory of Benjamin 
 Faneuil, father of the patriot who gave Faneuil Hall 
 to Boston. But unfortunately there are scores of 
 candidates for immortality in marble ahead of 
 the worthy old Huguenot, and if once the special 
 monument business is entered upon it will not be 
 ended until the pretty rural burial place is trans- 
 formed into a grove of glittering shafts. Begin- 
 ning with such men as Bishop Moore, Robert 
 Fulton, Alexander Hamilton, Gen. Willett, Fran- 
 cis Lewis, signer of the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence, the Earl of Stirhng, Gen. Lamb, Chief Jus- 
 tice Horsmanden, and a host of old time worthies, 
 where shall the list end ? The shaft in modern 
 times has become merely the marble finger that 
 points down to a grave in which the erstwhile 
 possessor of riches is buried, and is no longer the 
 indication of love and trust that looks up to 
 Heaven. Far better is the suggestion of the Rev. 
 Dr. Mulchahey that old St. Paul's shall be made 
 a Pantheon of memorials to the illustrious dead 
 
 6i 
 
62 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 of the church. If this were done the old walls 
 would become a history of the city in stone. The 
 stranger would pass through the aisles and read 
 in every nook and corner the story of heroic pa- 
 triotism, of lives devoted to the welfare of church, 
 commonwealth and city, of the men who in each 
 century towered above their fellows crowned with 
 laurels that were not visible until they were dead. 
 Men would read the records with a quickening of 
 sluggish hearts such as they had not known for 
 years, and it would not need the presence of the 
 vested priest in the chancel and the pealing of the 
 organ, to send them across the threshold of the 
 church with the feeling that they had never stood 
 so close to the glories of eternity. 
 
 If, on the other hand, I were asked to whom 
 the first shaft in the churchyard of Trinity should 
 be erected, I should say, unhesitatingly, to the old 
 merchants of New York. It was a merchant and 
 vestryman of Trinity Church who signed the 
 Declaration of Independence, and gave his fortune 
 freely to the patriot cause. Other merchants and 
 vestrymen drew the sword, and like General 
 Matthew Clarkson, won high military honors in 
 the field. From the business men of New York 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 63 
 
 the parish has for two hundred years drawn the 
 prudent, sagacious counsellors who have so ad- 
 ministered its affairs as to have made it a blessing 
 to the entire municipality. At the upper end of 
 the churchyard stands a shaft to the unknown 
 soldiers of the Revolution whose dust mingles 
 with the soil of God's acre, and it would be an act 
 of justice to balance it by a shaft at the lower end 
 telling how much the parish owes to the business 
 men whose graves are scattered over the ground. 
 In a book that has to do with the old merchants 
 of New York, and that was written some thirty 
 years ago, I read, recently, that " a fair test of the 
 standing of a man in this city is to be found in 
 the fact that he has been a Governor of the 
 New York Hospital." Then the writer goes on 
 to say that "perhaps the best test, as it is the 
 oldest, for selecting worthy men, is the corpora- 
 tion of Trinity Church. For 160 years that so- 
 ciety has selected its vestrymen from the very 
 cream of the cream of our best citizens. You 
 cannot point to a black sheep in the entire list 
 from 1698." Is not this a compliment and in- 
 asmuch as business men furnished the large ma- 
 jority of the vestry, said I not well that the first 
 
64 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 shaft ought to be to the memory of the old mer- 
 chants of the metropolis ? 
 
 But if I were a vestryman, I would vote on 
 every possible occasion against disfiguring the 
 grounds with a shaft. I like the churchyard as it 
 is, with its crumbling stones, mossy inscriptions 
 and quaint records of the dead. It has a rural 
 air that is in keeping with its history of two cen- 
 turies, and in the course of half a century I have 
 become so well acquainted even with the wild- 
 eyed cherubim that haunt tops of the gravestones 
 that I have come to fancy they look kindly at me 
 when I stand before them yet once again to read 
 the records over which they keep watch and ward, 
 and I would not for the world exchange them for 
 the smooth lustre of polished granite and a new 
 inscription. No, let the ancient tombstones stand 
 sentinel as long as their rocky fibres will hold to- 
 gether. They are at their worst just now, as to 
 looks. But walking under elm and sycamore I 
 fancy that I can already hear the stirring of the 
 infant leaves in the buds at the end of the branches 
 and I know that the bluebird will be here before 
 my next paper is written, and with coming of bird 
 and leaf and grass and the sunshine of Spring the 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 6$ 
 
 old churchyard will do its best to hide the defects 
 in the tombstones which bird and tree alike revere 
 as comrades of their infancy. Then, too, once 
 more those who pass by will look in upon the 
 quiet beauty of these acres of the dead and carry 
 away from these mossy stones a panacea of peace 
 for their unquiet hearts such as no collection of 
 shafts and mausoleums could supply. 
 
 I have spoken of the Clarksons as typical mer- 
 chants of New York, and I might also add as 
 typical vestrymen of Trinity. The family name 
 became illustrious in the colony from the time 
 Matthew Clarkson came to this city, towards the 
 close of the seventeenth century, and took up his 
 duties as Secretary of the colony. From his 
 nephew David a site for St. George's Church on 
 Nassau Street was bought in 1748 for five hun- 
 dred pounds, which was afterwards exchanged for 
 a site on Beekman Street. At the time of the 
 breaking out of the war, the elegant town house 
 of the Clarksons (their country seat was at Flush- 
 ing) was considered one of the show places of the 
 city. It stood at the corner of Whitehall and 
 Pearl Streets, was sumptuously furnished with 
 London upholstery, and its fine table service of 
 5 
 
66 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 silver, cut glass and costly porcelain was the talk 
 of the town. After the battle of Long Island the 
 Flushing mansion was turned into a hospital, and 
 the disastrous fire that followed the British occu- 
 pation of New York immediately afterwards, swept 
 away the city residence. Yet the patriotism of 
 the Clarksons did not flinch. Two of the sons, 
 David and Matthew — the latter a lad of nineteen, 
 followed Washington into the field, and Matthew 
 returned a major-general. The descendants of the 
 old colonial secretary became allied with the Jays, 
 De Peysters, Van Cortlands, Verplancks, Ruther- 
 fords and the old New York families, and it would 
 be difficult and lengthsome to follow out their 
 genealogies. There are three vaults in Trinity 
 churchyard bearing the name Clarkson, and orig- 
 inally there were three brothers, David, Levinus 
 and Matthew, merchants in London, Amsterdam 
 and New York respectively. David came to this 
 city in 1723, married and settled and became one 
 of the most tenacious advocates of colonial in- 
 dependence. 
 
 The close of the Revolutionary war found David 
 M. Clarkson in business at 73 King near Pine 
 Street ; later he removed his counting house and 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 6/ 
 
 dwelling to No. 3 1 Broadway. Thomas S. Clark- 
 son lived next door at No. 33 Broadway. David, 
 son of David M. Clarkson, lived at 16 Cortlandt 
 Street at the beginning of the century and for 
 some years afterwards. In 1793 Gen. Matthew 
 Clarkson purchased the site of the old family resi- 
 dence, at Whitehall and Pearl Streets, and here 
 built a large brick mansion where he lived till his 
 death in 1825. I have heard old men who knew 
 these and other members of the family speak of 
 them as noble specimens of their race. One of 
 their contemporaries said to me once, " It was a 
 sight to see them all go to Trinity Church as they 
 moved slowly and dignifiedly up Broadway in the 
 early twenties and thirties. And the women of 
 the family were as gracious as they were stately 
 in my eyes." 
 
 Close by one of the family vaults of the Clark- 
 sons is the burial place of John B. Coles, eminent 
 as a merchant, philanthropist and civic official. 
 He was Alderman of the First Ward from 1797 
 to 1 801 and again from 181 5 to 181 8, in the time 
 when most of the wealth and aristocracy of the 
 city was embraced within its limits, and it was 
 an honor to be its municipal representative. Dur- 
 
68 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 ing most of these years, too, he served as a ves- 
 tryman of Trinity parish. A flour merchant on a 
 large scale, he had his store at No. i South Street 
 and his home at No. i State Street. In the whole 
 city there were no pleasanter places than those in 
 which to live and do business. He could stand 
 upon the mansion steps of his home and watch 
 the ships pass up and down the East and Hudson 
 Rivers, and he could stroll upon the Battery with 
 his business cronies and drink in the salt air un- 
 sullied by the smell of steam and the oil of ma- 
 chinery and with its breezes unbroken by the 
 screech of the steam whistle. Here he lived un- 
 til about sixty years ago, when he was gathered 
 to his fathers, leaving a name for rectitude and 
 charity which any man might envy. And yet he 
 was only one of many such who have helped bear 
 the burdens of Trinity Parish with honor during 
 its career of two centuries. 
 
 Such men shine at best in times of trouble. 
 Probably there was never more distress in New 
 York than in the summer of 1798 when the yel- 
 low fever made its first visitation. An old mer- 
 chant, who was taken sick at his store on Coen- 
 ties Slip, was the first victim, and several of his 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 69 
 
 neighbors followed, and then a universal panic en- 
 sued. Nearly all who could leave town did so, 
 moving up to Greenwich Village, Chelsea and 
 Harlem, far away from infection. John B. Coles 
 was one of those who remained behind and stood 
 at the post of danger. He went from house to 
 house, bearing relief in his hands and encourage- 
 ment in his speech, and of all men, had no idea 
 that he was doing anything beyond his bare duty 
 to his race. The section of the city in which he 
 lived was boarded in, but this did not frighten 
 him. Custom-house, post office, banks and in- 
 surance companies had all been removed to 
 Greenwich Village, but he kept right on at his 
 work, and left his business to take care of itself. 
 It is curious to read in the publications of the day 
 how this brave citizen levied his contributions on 
 the absentees who, it is only just to say, gave 
 willingly of everything except themselves. John 
 Watts, from his farm on the Harlem River, sent 
 down oxen, sheep and forty barrels of Indian 
 meal. Dominick Lynch, the friend of Irving, 
 sent pigs, oxen, sheep and chickens. John Mur- 
 ray, Jr., brother of Lindley Murray, the gram- 
 marian, came generously forward in September 
 
70 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 with a gift of $10,000, and Archibald Gracie, 
 Gen. Horatio Gates, Charles L. Camman, Her- 
 man LeRoy, Thomas Buchanan and other well- 
 known citizens, chiefly merchants, contributed 
 freely of their means. John B. Coles sleeps un- 
 der a plain tombstone slab, as he would have 
 wished, but if a time comes for distributing shafts 
 to the meritorious, will not those who have the 
 passing of judgment be compelled to decide that 
 the plain, old-fashioned citizen and merchant, who 
 served God and his country with all his heart, 
 mind, soul and strength, and never dreamed that 
 he was doing aught but the plain, everyday duty 
 of his life, deserves the first of the honors dis- 
 tributed. 
 
 The peculiarity of the inscription upon the 
 stone that covers the vault of the Earl of Stirling, 
 has often attracted me to it, as it lies on the west- 
 ern slope close by the fence in the southern half 
 of the graveyard, and yet, perhaps, the only pe- 
 culiarity about it is that it differs from the modern 
 American mortuary inscription and groups the 
 family together at the grave. The stone bears 
 these words : "Vault built 1738. James Alexan- 
 der and his descendants, by his son William, Earl 
 
WALKS IN OtJR CHURCHYARDS. ^I 
 
 of Stirling, and his daughters Mary, wife of Peter 
 Van Brugh ; Elizabeth, wife of John Stevens ; 
 Catharine, wife of Walter Rutherford ; Susane, 
 wile of John Reid." The story of the third Earl 
 of Stirling, who figured with such conspicuous 
 honor in the war of the Revolution, is familiar to 
 every child who studies history, and the loveliness 
 of his two daughters, Lady Mary Watts and Lady 
 Kitty Duer, shed brightness upon the Republican 
 court of President Washington. There are a 
 score or more of our leading families of to-day 
 who are proud to trace a connection with the il- 
 lustrious Earl and his daughters. The Livings- 
 tons, Jays, Stuyvesants, Rutherfords are of these, 
 and the commercial and military, the banking 
 business and the literary profession, are strangely 
 blended among those who gather about this tomb 
 and claim kinship to the stout old Scotch Earl, 
 who sacrificed a coronet in drawing the sword for 
 freedom. 
 
 As I turn from the tomb of this race of warriors 
 and look around upon the familiar city and colo- 
 nial names of Hamersley, Mesier, Hoffman, Ap- 
 thorpe, Seymour, Davis, Desbrosses and others 
 that meet my eye as I walk up and down under 
 
72 WALKS IN OtJR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 the eaves of the grand old church, I think how 
 well adapted to the dead as to the living is the 
 prayer of the church for all sorts and conditions 
 of men. Surely no such petition for humanity 
 has been framed before or since. Those who 
 sleep here were gathered in to hold the faith in 
 unity of spirit, and after patience under their 
 sufferings there came to all — priest and soldier, 
 merchant and lawyer, physician and storekeeper, 
 the little child and the famous statesman — a happy 
 issue out of all their afflictions. I could fancy 
 that if they could now step up for a moment 
 from their graves how gladly they would greet 
 one another, forgetful of the class distinctions 
 that had mouldered into dust with their coffins 
 and remembering only the bond of peace. I had 
 never realized as I did then, standing amid the 
 graves of long ago, the sweet and loving wis- 
 dom of this prayer which our mother the Church 
 puts daily into our mouths. I never understood 
 so well what it meant to give a cup of water, in 
 His name, to the perishing. 
 
 It is beginning to rain again and I leave the 
 churchyard reluctantly. I had been wishing to 
 hear once more the song of my old friend the blue- 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 73 
 
 bird who has already been reported within less 
 than a hundred miles of his old haunts above the 
 tombstones, but he will only come with the sun- 
 shine. If he could only bring us a message from 
 the land beyond the swellings of Jordan, in which 
 there is neither night, nor storm nor sea, and the 
 work of the kingdom shall keep hand and heart 
 busy perpetually in His service, or bid us whisper 
 about it to the silent sleepers under the sod ! But 
 the time is not long. Happy is it for him who 
 is glad to he down to sleep with all sorts and con- 
 ditions of men, with other birds to sing over his 
 grave and God's sunshine to lighten his darkness. 
 
VI. 
 
 One of the most peaceful and pathetic spots of 
 earth that I ever saw, is the graveyard of the 
 Moravian community in the old-fashioned village 
 of Nazareth, in Pennsylvania. A bit of meadow, 
 shaded by forest trees under which the Indian 
 once pitched his tent, it was set apart as God's 
 Acre nearly a century and a half ago. It is 
 now thickly sown with the dead, but in its en- 
 tire extent there is no monument : only on a 
 hillock just beyond the enclosure, stands a mod- 
 est shaft to commemorate the missionaries and 
 their red converts who were slain at their posts 
 by bands of hostile savages. A broad path di- 
 vides the graveyard in twain. On one side lie the 
 men who died in the faith and the women rest 
 on the other side. A plain slab of brown stone 
 or of marble rests upon each quiet bosom, and 
 rich and poor alike are equal there as they will 
 be when risen. There is still another division of 
 the sleepers. Here, in a long line and clustered 
 close together with almost military precision, sleep 
 a row of married men, next comes a row of single 
 men and a row of boys follows. So it is on the 
 
 74 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 75 
 
 other side. The Httle girl babies form one group 
 and another is made by the single women of the 
 community, and side by side lie the wives and 
 mothers who made home happy. Each is placed 
 in death where he or she belongs by rule, and the 
 grave next to the last that has been filled always 
 opens to the next that dies. It may seem arbi- 
 trary, but the Moravians are very tender towards 
 their dead. They use no hearse or hireling bear- 
 ers, but carry their dead with their own hands 
 from his home in life to his final place of rest, and, 
 preceded by the clergyman and the four official 
 players on the trombone, the long line of men, 
 women and children follow reverently on foot and 
 sing hymns of faith at the grave. Then on Easter 
 morning, before it is yet day, the trombones sum- 
 mon all the people to the graveyard, and there at 
 the rising of the sun they march through the 
 broad paths and scatter flowers upon the graves 
 of all the sleepers, while they sing hymns that 
 are full of the promise of the resurrection. 
 
 I know no more peaceful and impressive spot 
 than this ; impressive because of its lack of pre- 
 tension — and yet, as I have said, the picture had 
 a deeply pathetic side. It seemed unnatural that 
 
^6 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 the wife should be separated from the husband 
 and the child from its parents. I ventured to ex- 
 press this feeling to the grey-haired minister upon 
 whom I had called for information, and he said 
 quietly that it was the rule of the Church, and 
 that he was opposed to any display or favoritism 
 in death. But his wife, gentle-eyed and grey as 
 himself and keeping the sweetness and simplicity 
 of girlhood even in age, asked me if I had no- 
 ticed that in one case it had so happened that a 
 minister and his wife lay buried at either end of 
 a row so that their graves came next to each 
 other and only separated by the main path. Then 
 she added, with a look of unutterable love bent 
 upon the quiet old scholar at the fireside, " I have 
 always hoped it may happen so to my husband 
 and myself when we come to die." 
 
 The look and the words were the unprompted 
 revelation of a loving though reverent heart and 
 they have come back to me more than once when 
 wandering among the old brown stone slabs that 
 cover the entrance to so many family vaults. 
 Usually there is but a name and perhaps a date 
 also, upon the stone, but that is enough to indi- 
 cate to the survivors all that they need to know 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 77 
 
 and to point to the antiquarian its mute tiiough 
 most interesting connection with the past. In 
 the narrow home to which that stone is the only 
 door, half a dozen generations may sleep, but the 
 family tie is perpetuated in the ashes gathered 
 there, and the simple slab is more elegant than a 
 Grecian temple in Woodlawn or an architectural 
 Pantheon in Greenwood. I am to a prejudice in 
 favor of the family vault, perhaps for the reason 
 that half a dozen States hold the ashes of those 
 of my own family whom I knew and loved. It 
 was only the other day that in walking through 
 this ancient churchyard I said to Master Felix 
 — whose little hand has been in mine through 
 all my antiquarian researches in old New York 
 — that I should like, when brain and pen have 
 ceased from work, to lie down to sleep some- 
 where in the city I have loved so long and 
 well, after the organ of old Trinity had pealed 
 and the rosy-cheeked little choristers, of whom 
 I was one once, had sung a hymn of triumph 
 over my dust. Then my heart spoke out but not 
 in words, and I thought that if far in the next 
 century he was brought to sleep at my side, his 
 hand would be next to mine and I would reach 
 
yS WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 out to take it first of all in the morning of the 
 resurrection. 
 
 On the south side of the church and close to 
 the sacred edifice is a plain slab of brown stone 
 bearing the names of Michael and Elizabeth 
 Thody in letters that seem almost as perfect as 
 when first inscribed, nearly one hundred and 
 thirty years ago. Who this couple were I do not 
 know, for they left no mark in the history of the 
 little city of their day beyond the fact that Mi- 
 chael Thody was assistant Alderman of the South 
 Ward from 1756 to 1766. But I made a pause 
 here in my pilgrimage because this record of the 
 parents is followed by the names of eleven of their 
 children, who were all called away in infancy or 
 the bloom of youth. Such patriarchal households 
 are not common in these days, and there is some- 
 thing touching in the fact that the Good Shepherd 
 gathered these lambs into His bosom one by one, 
 not letting their tender feet be bruised by the 
 rough pathways of earth, and that the family 
 circle was unbroken in the grave that garnered its 
 members. There is something irrepressibly sweet 
 in this recognition of the family tie in God's field 
 of the dead, especially where, as in this case " He 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 79 
 
 giveth thus households like a flock " and then 
 takes them away in one unbroken group from the 
 snares and sorrows of earth to the green pastures 
 beside the still waters. 
 
 Perhaps the family idea finds no better example 
 than in the vaults that bear the honored name of 
 Ludlow. From the time of the foundation of the 
 parish, that name has been prominent in its an- 
 nals. Gabriel Ludlow, ancestor of the family on 
 this side of the Atlantic, was a member of the 
 vestry from 1697 to 1704, and was buried in his 
 vault which is now under the present edifice. His 
 son Gabriel held the same position for twenty- 
 seven years prior to 1 769, and another son, Henry, 
 acted in the same capacity for twelve years of 
 that period. Since then, Gabriel H., Charles, 
 Thomas W., Gabriel W. Ludlow and other mem- 
 bers of this numerous family have held office in 
 Trinity parish, and have created an enviable 
 record for their labors in behalf of church and 
 charity. The gallant young Lieutenant Ludlow 
 whose name is imperishably associated with that 
 of the heroic Captain Lawrence, of the Chesa- 
 peake, belonged to this old New York family, 
 whose first representative, the original Gabriel, left 
 
8o WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 twelve children to perpetuate his name and en- 
 twine it with the leading families of the city and 
 state. Descended from ancient and noble ances- 
 try in England, they naturally became connected 
 here by marriage with their social peers in the 
 English colony — the Livingstons, Harrisons, Ver- 
 plancks, Waddingtons, Ogdens and Mortons. 
 Many who read this paper have still a vivid re- 
 membrance, no doubt, of the fine old mansion 
 erected on State Street by Carey Ludlow (grand- 
 son of the original Gabriel) in 1784, and inhabited 
 for many years later by General Jacob Morton, 
 who married Carey Ludlow's daughter Catharine, 
 the belle of her day. Its oak chimney-pieces, 
 wainscoting imported from England, its double 
 stairway to the porch and its ample balcony which 
 gave a magnificent view of the harbor, made it 
 a noteworthy edifice. As to its builder, I shall 
 always feel a debtor to the great-hearted citizen 
 who set out three hundred trees on State Street 
 and the Battery to give shade to a coming gen- 
 eration. No doubt it is a pleasant thing to recall 
 as he sits in the shade of the Tree of Life and lets 
 memory come back to these scenes. 
 
 Very different from these family gatherings in 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 8 1 
 
 the windowless homes under the sod, is the record 
 of a soHtary headstone at the rear of the church 
 and towards the north. Its inscription reads : 
 *' In memory of Michael Cresap, First Captain of 
 the Rifle BattalHons and son to Colonel Thomas 
 Cresap, who departed this hfe October i8th, 
 A. D. 1775." The soldier who rests beneath was 
 the son of a neighbor and friend of General 
 Washington, had done brilliant service in the In- 
 dian wars on the frontiers of Virginia and had at- 
 tained the rank of Colonel of Volunteers in that 
 state. Unfortunately the men in his command, 
 without his orders, exterminated the family of the 
 Indian chief Logan, " the friend of the white 
 man," and many a schoolboy of my day declaimed 
 the noble speech of Logan in which he denounced 
 Colonel Cresap, declared that he had glutted his 
 vengeance and asked '* Who is there to mourn for 
 Logan ? Not one ! " without the least idea that 
 Logan's foe slept quietly in Trinity churchyard. 
 At the beginning of the Revolution, Michael 
 Cresap raised a cpmpany of picked riflemen, 
 drilled them carefully and marched to take his 
 place by the side of Washington, the friend of his 
 family, who was then besieging Boston. So much 
 
82 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 had been said about their marksmanship and drill 
 that when they reached New York, the riflemen 
 from the Blue Ridge were compelled to give an 
 exhibition in " the Fields," now the City Hall 
 Park. His military career lasted but a few 
 months. The doctors say he died of a slow 
 fever ; tradition declares that his heart was broken 
 because of the unjust accusation made against 
 him in connection with the massacre of Logan's 
 wife and children. In October he came back to 
 New York, dying here a week after his arrival 
 and being interred in Trinity churchyard. His ob- 
 sequies were marked by an unusual display. A 
 newspaper of the time says : " His funeral was at- 
 tended from his lodgings by the independent com- 
 panies of militia and by the most respectable in- 
 habitants, through the principal streets to the 
 church. The Grenadiers of the First Battallion 
 fired three volleys over his grave. The whole was 
 conducted with great decency and in military form." 
 Alone and apart from all their kindred are the 
 graves of Cresap and Logan. It may be a mere 
 coincidence, but the student of history may think 
 otherwise. 
 
 Not far from the grave of this soldier of the 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 83 
 
 Revolution is a memorial in stone which tells 
 of another sort of warfare and other and more 
 lasting triumphs. It hes upon the ground a sim- 
 ple and unpretentious slab, but it has a story of 
 its own to tell and an interesting one. This is the 
 graven legend : ** Here lieth ye body of Susannah 
 Nean, wife of Elias Nean, born in ye city of Ro- 
 chelle, in France, in ye year 1660, who departed 
 this life 25 day of December 1720, aged 60 years." 
 " Here lieth enterred ye body of Elias Nean, cat- 
 echist in New York, Born in Soubise, in ye Prov- 
 ince of Caentonge in France in ye year 1662, who 
 departed this life 8 day of September 1722 aged 
 60 years." *'This inscription was restored by or- 
 der of their descendant of the 6th generation, 
 Elizabeth Champlin Perry, widow of the late 
 Com'r. O. H. Perry, of the U. S. Navy, May, 
 Anno Domini, 1846." Thus much the stone says, 
 but it does not tell that Elias Nean suffered im- 
 prisonment and was sent to the galleys in France 
 because he would not renounce the reformed re- 
 ligion; that he was not merely catechist and 
 schoolmaster but a vestryman of Trinity Church 
 for many years, and that such distinguished 
 names as the Behnonts and Vintons as well as 
 
84 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 the Perrys are numbered among his descendants. 
 The number of Huguenot refugees and their de- 
 scendants who are buried in Trinity churchyard 
 is very large. The first burial vault at the south- 
 ern entrance bears the name of ** D. Contant," a 
 victim of the revocation of the edict of Nantes 
 which cost France so dearly and enriched America 
 with the best blood of that kingdom. It was this 
 persecution which gave us the Bayards, Jays, Bou- 
 dinots and Tillons, and peopled South Carolina 
 with such Revolutionary leaders as Marion and 
 Laurens, which erected Bowdoin College, the 
 literary cradle of Longfellow and Hawthorne and 
 which, as we have seen, erected Faneuil Hall to 
 be the cradle of liberty. One of the most unique 
 of the Huguenot memorials in Trinity churchyard 
 is a headstone with a quaint inscription in Latin, 
 which tells that Withamus de Marisco, " most 
 noble on the side of his father's mother," born on 
 the 8th of May, 1720, died January ii, 1765, and 
 is buried here. His family had lived in the colony 
 for nearly a century and their name had become 
 Anglicised into Marsh, but when the exile came 
 to die, his thoughts turned to the home of his an- 
 cestors and his forgotten glories, and his last act 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 85 
 
 in life was to write the inscription which says so 
 
 little and suggests so much about the pioneers 
 
 of church and state in the colonial days of the 
 
 republic. 
 
 As I turn away from this humble gravestone 
 
 and its unwritten romance, an inscription that 
 
 looks like poetry catches my eye and I stop for a 
 
 moment to read it. The stone bears the date of 
 
 a death that occurred in the year 1730, before the 
 
 genius of poesy had crossed the Atlantic to our 
 
 shores. Here is the record as engraved by a 
 
 sculptor who evidently had no rhythm in his soul, 
 
 or he would have divided the lines differently : 
 
 Let no 
 One Mourn, the Reason 
 Why her soul Ascended 
 To God on high. There 
 With Angels and Arch 
 Angels for to dwell 
 Hallelujah! Hallelujah. 
 
 Made by herself. 
 
 Poor soul ! Her little vanity causes a smile after 
 all the years have passed and yet her triumphant 
 faith must have blotted its memory out of the 
 great Book of Remembrance long ago. There is 
 no undertone of doubt to this dead woman's liv- 
 ing cry of victory. 
 
86 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 They tell me that already half a dozen blue- 
 birds have made their appearance in the old 
 churchyard and whistled a melodious greeting to 
 their old friends the sparrows. A pioneer robin 
 also paused there in his flight on a sunshiny day, 
 rested for a moment in an elm and then flew down 
 and chirped to the tombstones a promise of the 
 near coming of spring. I have seen none of these 
 messengers yet, but I marked the swelling of the 
 brown tips of branches on tree and shrub. I 
 know that they are ready to burst out with the 
 new life of another spring, and that presently they 
 will put forth slender fingers of green, as fair and 
 delicate as the fingers of an infant. Then, awak- 
 ened from their sleep the trees of the wood shall 
 clap these hands of verdure, as they swing to 
 and fro to the motion of the breeze, for very joy 
 at the coming of the Lord in the sunshine of 
 another summer. 
 
c c c 
 
 c c c 
 
VII. 
 
 " My beloved spake, and saith unto me, Rise 
 up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, 
 lo. the winter is passed, the rain is over and gone ; 
 the flowers appear on the earth ; the time of the 
 singing birds is come, and the voice of the turtle 
 is heard in our land." Was there ever a sweeter 
 song of spring than this which echoed in the vine- 
 yards of the Holy Land three thousand years ago 
 when the tender grape leaves " gave a good 
 smell " and the orchards of pomegranates were in 
 blossom ? Its melody sweeps by me now as I 
 walk in the old churchyard and mark how the air 
 is fragrant with the freshness of the buds that 
 have groped theit way through the brown earth, 
 with the scent of blooms on the lilac bush and 
 the delicate odor of leaves that have slumbered 
 all winter in the heart of the elm and dreamed of 
 the spring upon which they are entering. The 
 birds have come with the warm south wind to 
 make music at the wakening of tree and flower, 
 and they thrill with joy as they hail this new crea- 
 tion and each tiny, swelling breast is a fountain of 
 gratitude which shames the race that receives so 
 
 8; 
 
SB WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 much and gives back so little. If there were no 
 other preachers of the resurrection, bird and bud 
 would proclaim it in this old churchyard to the 
 living and in behalf of the dead. 
 
 For more than two hundred years the time of 
 the singing birds has come to some of those who 
 now sleep under the shadow of the massive pile 
 which is known to a new generation as old Trinity. 
 A score of years before the first church edifice of 
 the parish was erected, a burial plot was opened 
 by the city authorities outside of the wall of pali- 
 sades built for the city's defence and this was 
 added to the church grounds a few years after the 
 church was opened for service. It was a sightly 
 place. The green sward stretched down to the river 
 and ended in a bold bluff. At the end of the city 
 wall was a green knoll known as Oyster Pasty 
 Mount, surrounded by a battery of guns. The 
 commerce of the little metropolis passed by in 
 sight of the stones above the sleeper's dust. 
 Church and graveyard lay beyond the toil and 
 traffic of the town, embowered in green and amid 
 a rural landscape. The original charter of Trinity 
 parish provided for the erection of a church 
 "near " to the city of New York. It is difficult 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 89 
 
 to imagine the scene that was presented to the 
 eyes of the first worshippers in the church that 
 was even in that day the pride of the city. They 
 came from city homes on the BowHng Green, in 
 Hanover Square, on Queen Street and in the 
 Broad Way and as they neared the church door 
 they saw green fields stretching before them and 
 a river on either hand. At their feet, then as now, 
 were the graves of the dead. But there were no 
 noises of the workaday world to break upon the 
 music of the wild-wood singers and trees of the 
 primeval forest stood sentinel above the graves 
 and wild flowers of the wood crowned them with 
 their dainty beauty. In the warm, bright sun- 
 shine of to-day and with the sweet scents of spring 
 around me, as I close my eyes for a moment I 
 can leap across the separating gulf of two centu- 
 ries and see the little churchyard in its framework 
 of green fields, bits of forest, lumbering windmills 
 and distant villas, a spot most fit to be called 
 God's acre. 
 
 One of the earliest burials in the immediate 
 neighborhood of the church edifice was that of a 
 noble English lady, daughter and sister of an earl 
 and a viscountess in her own right. When the 
 
90 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 workmen were removing the foundation of the 
 tower of Trinity Church, in 1839, ^ vaulted grave 
 was opened which was found to contain the frag- 
 ments of a coffin, a large plate and the ashes of 
 Lady Cornbury, wife of the royal Governor of 
 New York, who died in this city August 11, 1706, 
 and was buried in the churchyard, close to Broad- 
 way and opposite Wall Street. A daughter of 
 the Earl of Richmond, she was in her own right 
 Baroness Clifton, and her arms, together with her 
 pedigree, date of death and age were found rudely 
 graven on the plate. Lord Cornbury was son of 
 the Earl of Clarendon and first cousin to Queen 
 Anne. A man of many faults, he was devoted to 
 his wife, watched by her bedside night and day 
 and mourned her sincerely. His name is affixed 
 to the charter of Trinity Church. A new vault 
 was provided for the remains of Lady Cornbury 
 and in this the poor relics of the dead, with the 
 plate of silver whose rude emblazonment made a 
 strange contrast to its pompous display of heraldic 
 pride, were deposited. Solitary and alone in its 
 tomb, the dust of this noble and gracious lady, 
 who perished in her youth in a land of strangers, 
 has echoed for nearly two hundred years the foot- 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 9I 
 
 Steps of busy men and the roar of a multitude 
 who long since ceased to pay respect to royalty. 
 Not far from the resting place of one who could 
 call England's Queen her cousin and who in life 
 had worn a coronet in court circles, is a grave 
 lying hard by the north door of the church, which 
 illustrates strikingly the strange contrasts pre- 
 sented by Trinity churchyard. The slab which 
 was restored and reverently placed above it by 
 the corporation of the parish tells in quaint style 
 the story of a useful life. A printer sleeps be- 
 neath it. But he was a man as exemplary for his 
 piety, patriotism and integrity as for his work as 
 a craftsman. Born in England, he emigrated to 
 Pennsylvania before the city of Philadelphia was 
 laid out. In 1693 he removed to New York and 
 established the first printing press in this city. 
 Here in his shop on Queen Street, at the sign of 
 the Bible, the first book published in the colony, 
 "A Letter of Advice to a Young Gentleman 
 Leaving the University, concerning his Behaviour 
 and Conversation in the World " was " printed 
 and sold by Wm. Bradford, Printer to his Majesty, 
 King William." Here also was isued, Oct. 16, 
 1725, the first newspaper in the city of New York, 
 
92 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 a small foolscap sheet called the ** New York Ga- 
 zette." A man of enterprise he was the first who 
 printed an English edition of the Bible in the 
 Middle Colonies ; the first who printed the Eng- 
 lish Prayer Book here ; founder of the first paper 
 mill in the country ; printer of the first map of 
 New York ; for upwards of fifty years printer to 
 the colonial government and the earliest champion 
 of the freedom of the press and its rights. To 
 such a man an Earl's coronet would be a bauble. 
 The venerable printer could better appreciate the 
 pension he had earned by half a century's labor 
 in the service of the government. Indeed, printer 
 Keimer of Philadelphia, from whom Benjamin 
 Franklin learned his trade, was moved to envy by 
 the liberality which made Bradford passing rich 
 on sixty pounds a year, and the envious dweller 
 in the City of Brotherly Love closed some dog- 
 gerel upon the event with these lines : 
 
 " Though quite past his age and old as my gran'num, 
 The government pays him pounds sixty per annum." 
 
 Every pilgrim to Trinity churchyard can read 
 the inscription on Bradford's tomb, but it is not so 
 easy to find the queer, old-fashioned obituary no- 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 93 
 
 tice written by one of his own apprentices who 
 sleeps in an honored grave on the other side of 
 the sacred enclosure. The '* New York Gazette, 
 Revived in the Weekly Post Boy," for Monday, 
 May 25, 1752, says: "Last Saturday Evening 
 departed this Life, Mr. Wm. Bradford, Printer, of 
 this City, in the 94th Year of his Age: as the 
 Printer of this Paper liv'd upwards of eight Years 
 Apprentice to him, he may be presumed to know 
 something of Him. He came to America upwards 
 of 70 years ago, and landed at the Place where 
 Philadelphia now stand, before that City was laid 
 out, or a House built there : He was Printer to 
 this Government upwards of 50 years; and was a 
 man of great Sobriety and Industry ; a real Friend 
 to the Poor and Needy ; and kind and affable to 
 all ; but acquiring of an Estate happened not to 
 be his Faculty, notwithstanding his being here at 
 a Time when others, of not half his good Quali- 
 fications, amassed considerable Ones: He was a 
 True Englishman and his Complaisance and Af- 
 fection to his Wives, of which he had two, was 
 peculiarly great ; and without the least Exaggera- 
 tion it may be said that what he had acquired 
 with the first, by the same Carriage was lost with 
 
94 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 the second : He had left off Business for several 
 years past, and being quite worn out with old Age 
 and Labour, his Lamp of Life went out for want 
 of Oil.*' As a picture of a good man's life, ap- 
 preciative but never seeking to flatter, this memo- 
 rial will take rank with the old masters of litera- 
 ture. The inscription on the tombstone gives the 
 age of Wm. Bradford as ninety-two and is prob- 
 ably correct, though his obituary notice adds a 
 year. In fact it has become illegible through 
 fracture of the stone, but where it drops into 
 poetry it can readily be read : 
 
 " Reader reflect how soon you'll quit this Stage : 
 You'll find but fev/ attain to such an Age. 
 Life's full of pain, Lo there's a Place of Rest 
 Prepare to meet your God then you are Blest." 
 
 In a vault on the south side of the church and 
 under a brownstone slab that bears his name and 
 a date, rest the ashes of Hugh Gaine, who for 
 more than forty years was a printer and publisher 
 in this city, and from 1 792 to 1 807 was one of the 
 vestrymen of the parish. Born in 1726, he em- 
 barked in business soon after reaching his major- 
 ity, and kept a book store in Hanover Square 
 under the sign of the Bible and Crown. Here in 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 95 
 
 1752 he established the ** New York Mercury" 
 which became in time an ardent advocate of the 
 rights of the colonies. As delineated by the 
 events of his life, Mr. Gaine seems to have been 
 an amiable sort of gentleman whose integrity and 
 morality were above suspicion, but with whom 
 business was business, for during the occupation 
 of this city by the British his paper maintained 
 the cause of the king and turned the cold shoul- 
 der to the ** rebels." After the evacuation of the 
 English forces in 1783, he retired to New Jersey 
 for a while, but, on petitioning the Legislature of 
 New York for pardon, he was allowed to remain 
 here. His book store was continued under 
 another sign than that of the Crown and he lived 
 to become a popular citizen under the republic, 
 passing away in 1 807 at the ripe age of eighty- 
 one. 
 
 Another printer who sleeps in the southern half 
 of the graveyard is James Oram. The white 
 marble headstone which marks his place of burial 
 says that he died on the 26th of October, 1826, in 
 the sixty-seventh year of his age. Another ex- 
 isting memorial of his busy life is the " New York 
 Price Current and Shipping List," which he es- 
 
96 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 tablished in 1795, and which is still published and 
 is a valuable property. When the completion of 
 the Erie Canal was celebrated in this city in 1825 
 by a great procession in which all the local crafts 
 and trades were represented, the printers displayed 
 in their ranks a platform on wheels drawn by four 
 horses and on the platform was placed the library 
 chair of Benjamin Franklin, in which the vener- 
 able James Oram, noticeable always by his re- 
 markable likeness to that eminent printer and 
 philosopher, was seated. Before the next year 
 had passed, he was called away to his reward. 
 
 In one of the vestry rooms of Trinity Church 
 is a mural tablet which bears the following in- 
 scription : 
 
 In memory of 
 
 Thomas Swords 
 
 Who was for fifty years an Eminent 
 
 Publisher and Bookseller in this city 
 
 And for thirty-five years a Vestryman 
 
 of this ('hurch. 
 
 Bom in Fort George, Saratoga County, N. Y. 
 
 Jany 5th 1764. 
 
 Died in this City 
 
 June 27th 1843. 
 
 This tablet has a peculiar interest for me, be- 
 cause I can recall so vividly the old church book- 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 97 
 
 Store of Stanford & Swords, at 137 Broadway, 
 which was not only the gathering place of the 
 clergy, but was frequented by all literary men and 
 antiquarians because it was the oldest estabHsh- 
 ment of its kind in the city. I remember dis- 
 tinctly the wrinkled, pleasant face of ** Uncle 
 Tommy " Stanford, as he was wont to be called 
 by his intimates, and can see him moving about 
 among his books in the dress coat which was then 
 habitually worn by many professional and busi- 
 ness men, and his invariable habiliments of black. 
 His partner, Mr. James R. Swords, was a man of 
 fine appearance, genial manners and great popu- 
 larity. The original firm of T. & J. Swords was 
 established 1787, and its place of business in 
 Pearl Street was known familiarly as the " Church 
 House " before the century had closed. Thomas 
 Swords, the senior partner, had commenced his 
 business career in the employ of Hugh Gaine. 
 The partnership of T. & J. Swords was continued 
 until the retirement of Mr. James Swords in 1829, 
 and the business was continued under the firm 
 name of Swords & Stanford, and subsequently 
 Stanford & Swords until the death of Mr. James 
 R. Swords in 1855, soon after which the old house 
 7 
 
98 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 ceased to exist. Mr. Swords was but thirty-nine 
 years of age at the time of his death, but such 
 was his popularity that unusual honors were paid 
 him. On the day of his funeral the publishers 
 and booksellers closed their places of business and 
 attended the funeral at Trinity Chapel in a body. 
 This has never been done since. The tide of 
 traffic in the city has become too great to be 
 stemmed by a funeral. 
 
 Thomas Swords, founder of the famous old firm 
 of publishers, was a son of Thomas Swords of 
 Maryborough, Town of Swords, Ireland, who 
 came to this country as an officer in the English 
 army. His father was in garrison at Fort George 
 when he was born there, in 1764. In the church- 
 yard of old St. Paul's, in this city, is a tombstone 
 with the following inscription : " Near this spot 
 were deposited the remains of Lieutenant Thomas 
 Swords, late of his Brittanic Majesty's 55 th Regi- 
 ment of Foot, who departed this Hfe on the i6th 
 of January, 1780, in the 42d year of his age; 
 and underneath this tomb lies all that was mortal 
 of Mary Swords, relict of the said Lieutenant 
 Thomas Swords, who, on the 15th day of Septem- 
 ber, 1798, and in the 55 th year of her age, fell a 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 99 
 
 victim to the pestilence which then desolated the 
 city of New York. As a small token of respect 
 and to commemorate the names of those who 
 deserved and commanded the esteem of all who 
 knew them, this tomb was erected Anno Domini 
 1799." The pestilence which then swept the 
 little city was the yellow fever which was so fatal 
 that " nearly one-half of those cases reported 
 died," and over two thousand deaths were regis- 
 tered in a few weeks. 
 
 I have seen an edition of Bishop Hobart's 
 " Companion to the Altar " bearing the imprima- 
 tur of P. A. Mesier and the date 1823, and in the 
 southern portion of Trinity churchyard is the burial 
 vault of Abraham and Peter Mesier, built far back 
 in the last century. The family was famous in 
 the annals of the city and the church, doing faith- 
 ful service in the municipal as well as the parish 
 corporation. Its members were wealthy, too, for 
 they lost no less than fifteen houses by the de- 
 structive fire of August 1778. There was an 
 Abraham Mesier who was Assistant Alderman of 
 the Out Ward in 1698. Peter Mesier served as 
 Alderman of the West Ward from 1759 to 1762, 
 and his son Abraham was Assistant Alderman 
 
lOO WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 from 1770 to 1773. Then came Peter A. Mesier, 
 merchant, Alderman of the First Ward from 1 807 
 to 1 8 1 8 and a vestryman of Trinity parish at the 
 same time. David Lydig, founder of the New 
 York family of that name, married the beautiful 
 daughter of the first Peter Mesier. In the " Diary 
 of Philip Hone," under date of December 14, 1847, 
 I find the following entry : *' Another old friend 
 is gone. Peter A. Mesier died suddenly, on 
 Wednesday night, in the seventy-fifth year of his 
 age. I attended the funeral as a pall-bearer this 
 afternoon, from his home. No. 5 1 Dey Street, next 
 door to the one in which I was married, more than 
 forty-six years ago. The funeral ceremony was 
 performed in Trinity Church." Mr. Mesier kept 
 a book and stationery store, first on Pearl Street 
 and afterwards on Wall Street, opposite the Man- 
 hattan Bank. It was a favorite haunt of business 
 men in the first quarter of the century, because it 
 gave a literary flavor to trade, and for the reason 
 that the head of the house was a pillar of church, 
 state and society. 
 
 Turning from the graves of these honored rep- 
 resentatives of the art preservative of all arts — 
 the printer's craft — I pause to read some of the 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. lOl 
 
 verses on the headstones that stand closely clus- 
 tered together in the older portion of the church- 
 yard. There is a fascination about graveyard 
 poetry which can neither be explained nor resisted. 
 To-day, I am in the mood for reading the expres- 
 sions of faith in their resurrection which are 
 graven on the tombstones of these sleepers. 
 Sometimes the versification is rude, buth the faith 
 is always sublime. Many stones bear that mag- 
 nificent stanza, beginning, ** My flesh shall slum- 
 ber in the ground " ; an infant's headstone shows 
 the legend, *' Sleep, lovely babe, and take your 
 rest " ; an old man's tomb tells that '* So He giveth 
 His beloved sleep." Everywhere is the testimony 
 that death is but a sleep to be followed by a joy- 
 ful resurrection. It is testimony in stone to the 
 doctrine that was last to be believed and first to 
 be doubted by the early disciples of Christianity 
 — the resurrection of the body. I had just risen 
 from reading in the published letter of a renegade 
 to the faith, a statement that the majority of the 
 clergy of the church had ceased to hold to this 
 old-fashioned dogma, and that it had grown obso- 
 lete among the faithful. I knew that this was a 
 palpable falsehood, but I felt that I needed the com- 
 
102 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 fort of these testimonies of the rock and the added 
 witness of bird and bud and blossom. There 
 would be for me no power in The Arm that 
 could not raise my flesh from the dust. The 
 slumber beneath the sod would lose all the sweet- 
 ness of its promise of rest, but for the certainty 
 of waking and looking into the eyes of the loved 
 and lost and being welcomed by them. And to be 
 a stranger in the house of many mansions, chasing 
 after phantasmal apparitions, looking in vain for 
 familiar faces and finding only the airy nothings 
 of agnosticism, would be torment even to the most 
 unselfish of souls. God be thanked that every 
 day, with every service in the old church, there 
 comes to every sleeper in the old churchyard the 
 undying testimony of the living worshippers, ** I 
 l^elieve in the resurrection of the dead." 
 
VIII. 
 
 The graves of the unknown dead in the upper 
 half of Trinity churchyard are more numerous 
 than the tombs of those whose names are regis- 
 tered in the burial records. The greater part of 
 this section was a city cemetery for twenty years 
 before the first church building was erected, and I 
 have heard that there is a tombstone there which 
 bears an inscription in Dutch to the memory of a 
 maiden from Holland, who died in 1639, but I 
 have never been able to find it. I had the story 
 from an antiquarian who insisted that the date of 
 the inscription was given in the Dutch language 
 and not in numerals and therefore it had escaped 
 my eye. The grave may be there, though the 
 old city charter, granted by Governor Dougan in 
 the time of James the Second, and bearing date of 
 1686, speaks of "the new burial place without 
 the gate of the city." When the young Dutch 
 maiden passed away. New York was a little Dorp, 
 or village whose houses clustered around that part 
 of the city which is now called Coentie's Slip and 
 the Bowling Green. It was a long and dreary 
 road by which they carried the dead girl's body 
 
 103 
 
164 Walks in our churchyards. 
 
 from her home beside the river to the green hill 
 far away from the little settlement. 
 
 There are other unknown graves in this portion 
 of the churchyard which no good citizen can con- 
 template without a thrill of pride, and which the 
 corporation of old Trinity has honored fitly by 
 the erection of the only monumental pile to be 
 found in the enclosure. This costly structure 
 faces Pine Street and calls to the hurrying multitudes 
 who bask in the sunshine of liberty, to pause and 
 remember the patriot dead who gave their lives 
 that the land might be free. In the immediate 
 neighborhood of the tall gothic shaft lie in un- 
 marked graves a little army of soldiers of the 
 Revolution. They were brought here for burial 
 from the loathsome cells of the Provost Jail in the 
 Fields — now the Hall of Records in the City Hall 
 Park — from the sugar houses in which they were 
 closely packed and left to die of starvation and 
 disease, and from the old Huguenot Church in 
 Pine Street which had been turned into a hospital. 
 Trinity Church had been burned down in Septem- 
 ber, 1776, when the British army under Lord 
 Howe occupied the city, and the flames at the 
 same time swept the entire west side of Broadway 
 
Walks in our churchyards. 105 
 
 as far as St. Paul's Chapel. The graveyard be- 
 came a scene of desolation and so continued for 
 the seven long years of captivity. No one was 
 interred there except the dead American prison- 
 ers and the interments usually took place at night, 
 without funeral ceremonies, and with cruel haste. 
 Philip Freneau, the spirited poet of the patriot 
 cause, who was for some time a captive in the 
 prison-ship Scorpion^ moored in the Hudson 
 within sight of the graveyard, wrote that ** suc- 
 cessive funerals gloomed each dismal day " of his 
 captivity and added: 
 
 " By feeble hands their shallow graves were made; 
 No stone meraorial o'er their corpses laid ; 
 In barren sands and far from home they lie, 
 No friend to shed a tear when passing by." 
 
 Among the builders of vaults in Trinity church- 
 yard, who were nearly always persons of distinc- 
 tion and wealth in the city or colony, there are 
 some names which may almost be classed with 
 the unknown. The name has been lost to the re- 
 membrance of the living through the breaking up 
 of the family, and death or removal have de- 
 stroyed the historical link between the past and 
 
I06 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 the present. A brown-stone slab hidden in the 
 grass to the south of the church building, bears 
 the legend, " Apthorpe Family Vault, 1801," yet 
 the name is not to be found in the city directory. 
 To the leaders of modern society it has no sig- 
 nificance, and yet there was a time when for a 
 long period the family held its own with the 
 proudest of the colonial aristocracy. Until within 
 a few months there stood on the westerly side of 
 Ninth Avenue, between 91st and g2d Streets, a 
 house famous in the annals of the city and the 
 history of this country and known as the Ap- 
 thorpe Mansion. It was stately and beautiful in 
 its architecture, and its recessed portico, high 
 arched door flanked by Corinthian columns, its 
 oaken beams and carved panels were the admira- 
 tion of the town for many a year. It was built 
 by Charles Ward Apthorpe, one of the counsellors 
 of the royal Governor Tyron, in 1767, and was 
 furnished with regal splendor. Locusts, pines and 
 elms shaded the house and diversified the land- 
 scape of its beautiful park of two hundred acres. 
 A scholar, a courtly gentleman and a born diplo- 
 matist as well, Apthorpe kept free from political 
 entanglements during the Revolution and was per- 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. I07 
 
 mitted to retain his property afterwards. In the 
 winter of 1789 the beauty, wealth and fashion of 
 the capital of the new republic, together with the 
 most distinguished representatives of the govern- 
 ment, were gathered at the house to witness the 
 marriage of Mr. Apthorpe's beautiful daughter 
 Maria to Dr. Hugh Williamson, member of Con- 
 gress from North Carolina. Charles Ward Ap- 
 thorpe became afterwards a vestryman of Trinity 
 parish, died in 1797 and was buried in Trinity 
 churchyard, but the Williamsons continued to live 
 in the beautiful old house for a generation after- 
 wards, and later it passed into the hands of 
 strangers. 
 
 That there was a skeleton in the house of the 
 proud Apthorpes is shown by the queer will made 
 in 1809 by Mistress Grizzel, a daughter of the 
 royal counsellor, which is on file in the surrogate's 
 office. I speak of it here to show how utterly 
 small seem all earthly quarrels when we stand in 
 the presence of the dust that lived and loved and 
 hated once but is now only a handful of faded im- 
 potence. The poor lady thought she had a griev- 
 ance and she bequeathed her forgiveness to her 
 " enemies " whose ** malice " she deplored. Yet 
 
loS WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 she had a fountain of unfailing kindness in her heart 
 which might have made the desert of her Hfe to 
 blossom as the rose if she had let it have full 
 play. If man was her enemy the beast of the 
 field was her friend and she remembered them 
 even in death. The will says : " I leave a legacy 
 for the support of my favorite cat and the two 
 little dogs intrusted to the care of my unfortunate, 
 kind sister, Ann Apthorpe ; for this purpose, I 
 particularly desire, if they are my survivors, that 
 seven dollars may be annually paid to some de- 
 cent person who will keep them and treat them 
 kindly. To those who have no regard for the 
 animal creation, this donation may be deemed an 
 absurd peculiarity, but my care of the dogs I con- 
 sider the last tribute of affection that I can pay to 
 the memory of a highly valued sister, and the 
 playful though mute affection of my cat has so 
 often soothed and cheered my solitary hours that 
 it is grateful to my feelings to believe that my only 
 remaining friend and sister will not consider this 
 request beneath her attention." The poor lady 
 and her sister sleep in the family vault and on its 
 shelves repose also the ashes of some of those 
 with whom she was. at war. In the full-orbed 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. lOQ 
 
 glory of the sun of the resurrection the mists of 
 prejudice will be found to have vanished and peace 
 will spread her white wings over the reunited fam- 
 ily as they troop up joyously to the throne of 
 judgment. 
 
 At the distance of less than a stone's throw 
 from the tomb of Alexander Hamilton is a slab of 
 sandstone, lying prone upon the earth, and bear- 
 ing the inscription, " Matthew L. Davis' Sepul- 
 chre, i8i8." The graveyard makes strange meet- 
 ings, for the man who sleeps in the sepulchre was 
 the friend and biographer of Aaron Burr, the 
 slayer of Hamilton. As the venerable Grant 
 Thorburn pathetically wrote in a letter, " Matthew 
 L. Davis was the last friend that Aaron Burr pos- 
 sessed on earth." In many respects he was a re- 
 markable man and though almost forgotten now 
 he was one of the most prominent figures in the 
 troublous political era in which Hamilton, Burr 
 and De Witt Clinton were the leaders. He was a 
 merchant, doing business as an auctioneer in lower 
 Pearl Street at first and afterwards living and con- 
 ducting extensive commercial operations at 49 
 Stone Street. On the July afternoon that wit- 
 nessed the shooting of Hamilton, Matthew L. 
 
no WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 Davis accompanied Burr in the row boat which 
 carried him to Weehawken, and at the time of 
 the exchange of shots he stood in company with 
 Dr. Hosack under the bluff at the river bank, 
 awaiting the outcome of the duel. Afterwards 
 he was imprisoned for some days by order of the 
 coroner for refusing to testify at the inquest. 
 His subsequent career was honorable and suc- 
 cessful and he was honored in his death, as he 
 had been in life, by the men of his generation. 
 Now, under the shadow of the cross and in the 
 quiet of the same churchyard, with their old 
 antagonisms all forgotten, Hamilton and Davis 
 take their rest after the tossings of life's fitful 
 fever. 
 
 Close by the south porch of the church is a 
 stone which bears the simple inscription " Wy- 
 nant Van Zandt " and covers the vault of the 
 family bearing that name. Theirs has been a 
 notable name in the annals of the city and 
 church. There was a Wynant Van Zandt who 
 was Assistant Alderman of the Dock Ward in 
 1788 and Alderman from 1789 to 1794; Wy- 
 nant Van Zandt, Jr., was Alderman of the First 
 Ward from 1802 to 1806, and Peter Pra Van 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. Ill 
 
 Zandt was Alderman of the Third Ward from 
 1 79 1 to 1793, and member of Assembly from 
 1777 to 1784. Johannes Van Zandt, first of the 
 name in New Amsterdam, emigrated from the 
 city of Anheim, Holland, in 1682. His son, 
 Wynant, was born in New York in 1683 and 
 died in 1763. His home in Horse aud Cart 
 Lane, now WiUiam Street, was a model of luxury 
 and refinement in its day. Jacobus, the oldest 
 son of Wynant Van Zandt, was imbued with the 
 old Dutch spirit of resistance to tyranny and 
 became a member of the first Provincial Con- 
 gress of New York and was afterwards surgeon 
 in the army of Washington at Valley Forge and 
 the New Jersey campaign that opened with the 
 victory at Trenton. His beautiful daughter Cath- 
 arine was the belle of the inauguration ball of 
 President Washington in this city and married 
 James Hower Maxwell, the banker. Wynant Van 
 Zandt, second of the name, was born in New York 
 in 1730, and died in 18 14. The third Wynant, 
 son of the second of that name was born here in 
 1767 and died in 1 831, and the name descended 
 to his grandson. All men of worth in their gen- 
 erations, as well as wealth, they needed no other 
 
112 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 eulogy than the carving of their name upon the 
 stone door of their last home upon earth. 
 
 Life has queer changes in store for men who 
 mark out for themselves the line they propose to 
 pursue and who mourn in youth a lost opportunity 
 to pursue the profession of their choice. It is told 
 of George Washington that he earnestly desired, 
 while yet a boy, to obtain a commission as mid- 
 shipman in the navy of King George, and only 
 gave up his wish at the earnest entreaties of his 
 mother. Had he possessed less filial affection he 
 would have missed the high honor he afterwards 
 attained as " first in the hearts of his country- 
 men." 
 
 In the southwest corner of Trinity churchyard 
 is a plain slab inscribed with the name of John J. 
 Morgan. Born in the city of New York, of Welsh 
 parentage, he was commissioned a midshipman in 
 the royal navy, while yet a mere boy, and set out 
 to win his laurels on the sea. A storm disabled 
 the ship of war and she was captured by an 
 American privateer that brought the vessel and 
 her crew into the harbor of Boston. Young Mor- 
 gan was among the captured officers, but after a 
 while was released and sent to New York. Here 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. II3 
 
 he seems to have become sick of the sea and of 
 the cause in which he had embarked. Remaining 
 in the city after the departure of the British troops, 
 he turned his attention to the legal profession and 
 entered the law office of General Morgan Lewis, 
 a soldier of the Revolution and afterwards Gov- 
 ernor of the State. After being admitted to the 
 bar, he married Catharine Warne, a niece of the 
 gallant old patriot, Marinus Willett, and at once 
 took his place among the leading men of the 
 young republic. Honors flowed in upon him. 
 He was elected Member of Assembly, served two 
 terms as Representative in Congress and for a 
 short time was Collector of the Port of New York. 
 Mr. Morgan was also for many years a vestryman 
 of Trinity Church, and during his long and useful 
 life was identified with many of the public enter- 
 prises of the community. In 1859 he fell asleep, 
 at the ripe age of four-score and ten years, with 
 the testimony of a good conscience and in full 
 communion with the church. His niece and 
 adopted daughter married Major- General John A. 
 Dix, U. S. A., father of the present Rector of 
 Trinity Church. 
 
 In my walk I turn my way, as I leave the 
 8 
 
114 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 churchyard, from the names known to history and 
 fame to the records of humbler sleepers and 
 recognize with a thrill of sympathy the love that 
 reared their monumental stones. I stop to read 
 the words that tell of the fate of the daughter of 
 Richard Thorne, and though he has long since 
 gone to the land in which there are no tears and 
 no graves, I feel an infinite pity for the father who 
 was bereaved of his child and who appealed to 
 the sympathy of the world in these lines of limp- 
 ing rhyme : 
 
 " Three days' fever snatched her breath, 
 And bowed her to triumphant death. 
 When scarce twelve years had crowned her head, 
 Behold in dust her peaceful bed." 
 
 A few paces distant is the last, grass- grown, 
 cradle of a babe. An inscription on an old and 
 decaying stone sets forth that this is the grave of 
 " John, son of Arthur and Mary Darley. Died, 
 1797, aged 7 months.** Was the little one the 
 first born of the sorrowing couple ? Was he their 
 only child ? There is nothing to make answer, 
 but the stone reared over the baby's dust is a mute 
 witness to the tenderness with which he must have 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. II5 
 
 been loved. Beneath the name and record of the 
 infant is the inscription : 
 
 *' O happy probationer ! Accepted 
 Without being exercised." 
 
 This is the cry of faith triumphant over the 
 pang of bereavement. Its pecuHar phrasing leads 
 one to believe that the parents were of the early 
 Methodists who kept their allegiance to the 
 Church of England, while admiring the zeal of 
 the pioneer preachers of the new " methods " in 
 religion. It is the language of Wesley and Whit- 
 field and Embury, who buried some of their dead 
 here and who held that the old church of Cranmer 
 and Hooper and Laud was the bulwark of the 
 ancient and apostolic faith. But apart from these 
 questions, the quaint inscription over the baby's 
 dust is simply beautiful. There is no room for 
 doubt. The little one is accepted, and grief can 
 become even joy because the brief probation 
 brought neither sin nor sorrow in its train. So I 
 go on my way with the words " I am the good 
 shepherd " following my steps and looking up 
 through the clear sunlight of faith I see Him ten- 
 derly bearing in His bosom this little lamb of the 
 fold. 
 
IX. 
 
 It has occurred to my mind more than once 
 that the merchants of New York as a rule take 
 too little pride in their profession. Especially 
 does this thought recur when I tread the paths 
 of this ancient churchyard and read on one 
 stone after another the names of men whose 
 genius in business has enriched the city and 
 whose patriotism has been a bulwark of the re- 
 public. Statues in bronze have been erected in 
 our streets to the memory of Washington and 
 Lafayette, who drew their swords in the cause 
 of freedom, and why should not like honor be 
 paid to Francis Lewis and Philip Livingston, the 
 two great New York merchants who hazarded 
 life and all they had when they signed their 
 names to the Declaration of Independence ? Philip 
 Livingston died in harness and is buried in the 
 graveyard of the little city of York, Pennsylvania, 
 when the fugitive Congress was there in session^ 
 Francis Lewis saw his home destroyed and his 
 family scattered by foreign invaders, and after 
 sacrificing his property on his country's altar, was 
 gathered to his fathers in a ripe old age and lies 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. li; 
 
 buried in Trinity churchyard, where also sleeps 
 his illustrious son, Governor Morgan Lewis, sol- 
 dier of the Revolution. 
 
 It was in 1735, when New York was a little city 
 of nine thousand inhabitants, that Francis Lewis, 
 a native of Wales, whose father was then Dean of 
 St. Paul's Cathedral in London, came to this city 
 to engage in trade. Fortune smiled upon him 
 from the start and in twenty years his ships were 
 known in all seas. At the time of the French war 
 of 1755 he was at Oswego when it was surren- 
 dered to General Montcalm and with the rest of 
 the prisoners was turned over to the Indian allies 
 of France. Every prisoner was killed in cold 
 blood except Francis Lewis and tradition relates 
 that his life was spared because he could talk with 
 them, owing to the resemblance of their language 
 to the ancient Welsh dialect, which they could un- 
 derstand ! There is a legend that a Welsh prince 
 once settled in the Western world and the great 
 Southey took it as the text for his **Madoc." 
 Sent as a prisoner to France he was soon ex- 
 changed, returned to his home in New York and 
 shortly afterwards entered with heart and soul 
 into the cause of the colonies. As early as 1 765 
 
Il8 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 he was a member of the Provisional Congress 
 which opposed the Stamp Act and in 1775 was 
 elected to the Continental Congress at Philadel- 
 phia, where in 1776 he signed the Declaration of 
 Independence on behalf of the colony of New 
 York. In that year his house at Whitestone, on 
 Long Island, was plundered by the British, his 
 valuable library destroyed and his wife made pris- 
 oner, kept captive for several months and so rig- 
 orously treated that she soon after died. Gener- 
 ous as well as patriotic, Francis Lewis sacrificed 
 the bulk of a large property to the cause of his 
 country, and after independence was gained lived 
 quietly at his home in Cortlandt Street, resting 
 after his labors. Though he was then seventy 
 years of age, he accepted the position of vestryman 
 of Trinity Church and held it for several years. 
 Twenty years later the end came and on the 30th 
 of December, 1803, he died, at the age of ninety 
 and was buried in Trinity churchyard. 
 
 There was one cross in the life of this " grand 
 old man " which was particularly hard to bear. 
 His daughter Ann, whom he dearly loved, was 
 wooed by a British naval officer. Captain Robinson, 
 who had won her heart. The father would not 
 
WALKS IN OtJR CHURCHYARDS. 1 19 
 
 listen to the lovers and they were married in secret 
 by the Rev. Dr. Inglis, rector of Trinity Church, 
 who left the city with the British forces, and was 
 afterwards Bishop of Nova Scotia. One of the 
 daughters of this couple married Bishop Sumner 
 afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, and another 
 wedded Bishop Wilson of Calcutta. So time 
 made some amends in the direction of the Church 
 if not the State, for this seeming lapse from patrio- 
 tism. The sons of Francis Lewis, on the other 
 hand, went heart and soul with their father in the 
 devotion to the land in which they were born. 
 Francis, the eldest, was a man of influence, grew 
 rapidly rich and married a sister of Daniel Ludlow, 
 one of the most eminent merchants of New York 
 in the last century. He died in 18 14 at the age 
 of seventy-three and is interred with his father. 
 One of the daughters married Samuel G. Ogden, 
 who was a distinguished merchant of this city at 
 the opening of the present century. 
 
 Even more famous than his illustrious father 
 was Morgan Lewis, second son of the old Signer. 
 Taking up arms at the Revolutionary Struggle, 
 he distinguished himself at Stillwater where he 
 was the officer who received the surrender of 
 
!50 WALkS IN OUR CttURCHYARDS. 
 
 Burgoyne's troops, and rose to the command of a 
 regiment In the war of 1812 he was a Major- 
 General, did good service at the Niagara frontier 
 and had charge of the defenses of New York. 
 In looking up his military record I was surprised 
 to find that in November, 1775, Morgan Lewis 
 was appointed first Major of the Second Regiment, 
 of which John Jay was Colonel. I had never 
 heard of the distinguished jurist as a soldier and 
 I find that other important duties intervened and 
 that he did not accept the command. Equally 
 competent in the forum and the field, Morgan 
 Lewis served as Attorney- General and Chief 
 Justice of the Supreme Court of this State, and 
 was elected Governor and afterwards United 
 States Senator. In 1779 he married Gertrude, 
 daughter of Chancellor Livingston. Their only 
 child, a daughter, became the wife of Maturin 
 Livingston. For forty years or more the Gov- 
 ernor occupied a spacious double mansion at the 
 corner of Church and Leonard Streets, where he 
 dispensed a patriarchal hospitality. From this 
 house he was buried on April 11, 1844. I re- 
 call the occasion. As Governor Lewis was Presi- 
 dent-General of the Society of the Cincinnati and 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 121 
 
 Grand Master of Masons, there was to be a great 
 display, and every schoolboy in town — of whom 
 I was one — was anxious to see it, and I think 
 we were all there. The military, the veterans 
 of the Cincinnati, the martial music and the para- 
 phernalia of the Free Masons, made an imposing 
 and stately procession. The streets were thronged 
 with people on the whole line of march, from 
 the house on Leonard Street to St. Paul's Church 
 where the funeral services were held — Trinity 
 Church being then in process of rebuilding. I 
 remember that I had eyes only for one man, 
 the venerable Major Pophani, last survivor of the 
 original members of the Cincinnati, whom George 
 Washington had commissioned, who was hale 
 and hearty at ninety-two and looked as if he 
 might round the century. There had been talk 
 of this veteran at my home and with the old 
 Revolutionary colonel lying in his coffin, the 
 Major who survived him became to my eyes 
 almost coeval with the Pharaohs, and I watched 
 him and wondered what thoughts were throb- 
 bing under his fur-white hairs and what mem- 
 ories of other days were tugging at his heart. 
 In the robing-room of Trinity Church there 
 
122 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 is a mural tablet which bears the following in- 
 scription : 
 
 Sacred 
 
 To the Memory of 
 
 Thomas Ludlow Ogden, 
 
 For 38 Years Vestryman of this Parish 
 
 And at the time of his death 
 
 Senior Warden. 
 
 Bom at Newark, N. J., Dec. 12th, 1773. 
 Died in the City of New York, Dec. 17 th, 1844. 
 
 Of sound judgment and untiring industry, 
 The one improved by diligent cultivation, 
 The other quickened by religious principles ; 
 His long life was one of usefulness and duty. 
 Born and nurtured in the bosom of the Chiurch 
 He gave back to her with filial gratitude 
 His best powers, his most valued time, 
 
 His dearest affections : 
 
 In all her institutions 
 Stood foremost in both counsel and action. 
 Christian obedience mark'd his course. 
 Christian peace crowned his end 
 
 In a Christian hope. 
 
 An English ancestor of the subject of this 
 eulogy came to this country more than two 
 hundred years ago, and made their home on Long 
 Island. The family were Independents or Con- 
 gregationalists in religion, at first, but finding 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 1^3 
 
 that " the little finger of Puritanism is stronger 
 than the loins of prelacy " in the matter of sec- 
 tarian oppression and interference with freedom of 
 conscience, they gave in their allegiance to the 
 Church of England and transferred the glebe lands 
 of the Hempstead meeting-house to the Episco- 
 pal church of that place. Thomas Ludlow Ogden 
 who so faithfully served the church of his fathers* 
 adoption, was the third son of Abraham Ogden 
 and Sarah Francis Ludlow, and was a graduate of 
 Columbia College and a student in the law office 
 of Richard Harison, vestryman and sometime 
 Comptroller of Trinity Parish. Abraham Ogden, 
 his father, was a distinguished lawyer in whose 
 office at Morristown were educated many eminent 
 men, such as Richard Stockton, Josiah Ogden 
 Hoffinan, Attorney- General of the State of New 
 York, and Martin Hoffinan, the great political 
 leader. The last two were nephews of Mr. Ogden 
 whose sister had married Nicholas Hoffinan. Two 
 of the sons of Abraham Ogden emigrated to the 
 regions of the St. Lawrence where they did the 
 work of pioneers and gave their family name to 
 the city of Ogdensburg. Thomas L. Ogden re- 
 mained in New York, devoted himself to his pro- 
 
1^4 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 fession and accumulated a fortune by it. He held 
 many important trusts, and for years was the law 
 officer of the corporation of Trinity Church, as 
 well as clerk and vestryman for thirty- five years 
 and Senior Warden for three years more. It 
 seems a pity that so useful a life could not have 
 been continued a few months longer, for Mr. Og- 
 den was chairman of the Building Committee of 
 the present church edifice which was completed less 
 than seventeen months after his decease. His book 
 of minutes of the meetings of this committee show 
 how deep was his interest in the work of construc- 
 tion. But God had something better in store for him 
 and when we who survive were marching up the 
 aisle of the new Trinity Church on the bright May 
 morning in 1846 that saw the beautiful edifice 
 consecrated, he was walking through the streets of 
 the city whose walls are of jasper and whose 
 foundations are garnished with all manner of 
 precious stones. 
 
 The Rector, Wardens and Vestry of Trinity 
 Church have made and left their mark on the 
 streets of New York, not alone in such titles as 
 Rector, Church and Vestry Streets and St. John's 
 Lane, but in Vesey, Barclay and Beach Streets 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 1 25 
 
 which were named after old-time ministers of the 
 parish and in more than a score of thoroughfares 
 which bear the names of prominent members of 
 the corporation. Among those last are Murray, 
 Warren, Chambers, Reade, Jay, Harison, North 
 Moore, Beach, Laight, Desbrosses, Vandam, Watts, 
 Charlton, King, Hamersley, Clarkson, Le Roy, 
 Morton, Barrow and others. These names, fa- 
 miliar to my ears for half a century, come back 
 to me now as I stand by the family vault that 
 bears the name of Reade inscribed upon it. To 
 modern New York the stone has not much signifi- 
 cance, but there was a time when there was but 
 one official in the colonial province more powerful 
 than " the Honorable Joseph Reade, of this city, 
 one of His Majesty's council for this Province." 
 A century and a half ago, he was a wealthy mer- 
 chant of New York and a recognized leader in 
 social and ecclesiastical matters. He was elevated 
 to the position of member of the Provincial Coun- 
 cil in 1764 and died in 1771, leaving a daughter 
 who had been married in 1748 to James, son of 
 Abraham De Peyster. 
 
 It is in its connection with Trinity parish that 
 the name of Reade is especially interesting. The 
 
126 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 first recorded meeting of the managers and mem- 
 bers of Trinity Church was held on the 28th of 
 June, 1697, ^^^ ^t this meeting Lawrence Reade 
 was present. His official connection with the par- 
 ish lasted from 1697 ^^ 1709. but before he died 
 he saw his son Joseph elected a member of the 
 vestry. While still a comparatively young man, 
 Joseph Reade was elected a warden of the church 
 and he filled the office for almost half a century 
 — from April, 1721, to April, 1770. At a meet- 
 ing of the Rector, Church-Wardens and Vestry- 
 men of Trinity Church, held May 30, 1770, the 
 resignation of Mr. Reade, based on the plea that 
 " his age did not permit him to go through the 
 business with that ease and satisfaction he could 
 wish," was accepted and unanimous resolutions of 
 thanks for his long and faithful services were or- 
 dered sent to him by the hands of the Rector, the 
 Rev. Samuel Auchmuty, D.D. In less than a year 
 the good old man, whose name and deeds had 
 been fragrant as incense in the church, had gone 
 to his reward. The " New York Journal " or 
 " General Advertiser" of March 7, 1771, spoke of 
 him as follows : " On Saturday last died the Hon- 
 orable Joseph Reade, of this city, one of His 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 12/ 
 
 Majesty's Council for the Province, after a very 
 short indisposition, and on the Tuesday following, 
 his corpse being preceded by the children of the 
 Charity School here (near Trinity School) of which 
 he was one of the principal promoters, and at- 
 tended by the principal gentlemen of the city, 
 was deposited in the family vault in Trinity 
 churchyard. Of this gentleman it may be truly 
 said that his life and manners were exemplary. 
 As a merchant he was eminently upright, punc- 
 tual to all his business and transaction ; as a 
 Christian he entertained just sentiments of the 
 truths and grace of the Gospel, and ziealously and 
 industriously endeavored to regulate his life and 
 conduct according to its precepts. In him, added 
 to an unusual amiableness and evenness of tem- 
 per were happily united all the endearing qualifica- 
 tions of a most affectionate, obliging husband, 
 father and kind master. He was affable, friendly 
 and virtuous." Somewhat quaint is the language 
 of this obituary, but what more could you have 
 in the way of ripened manhood. " Man has made 
 him a little lower than the angels," says Holy 
 Writ, and once in a while we see it proven in the 
 pure, sweet life of one of the elect. 
 
128 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 It is not a little remarkable that among the 
 members of the vestry who accepted the resigna- 
 tion of Senior Warden Reade, are six gentlemen 
 who, like Mr. Reade, gave their names to city 
 streets or were sons of those who originally did 
 so. These are John Desbrosses, Junior Warden, 
 and Messrs. Van Dam, Charlton, Laight, Clark- 
 son and Barclay, members of the vestry. No 
 other ecclesiastical corporation has ever made its 
 mark so deep and plain upon a city and commu- 
 nity in this country. 
 
 I close this paper with an epitaph from a tomb 
 in the oldest and most thickly settled part of the 
 churchyard, that lies above the North porch. The 
 stone marks the resting-place of two women, one 
 of whom died at the age of 84 and the other was 
 called away when she had seen but 26 summers. 
 The inscription closes with these remarkable lines 
 of versification : 
 
 *' Bouth old and young, as well as me, 
 Must in due time all Burried be. 
 Under this body of cold clay 
 Just in my prime I'm forced to lay." 
 
 To which of the two were these Hues intended 
 to apply ? Is a woman in her prime at eighty- 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 1 29 
 
 four or at twenty-six ? No man would dare de- 
 cide, and it might even puzzle a jury of women. 
 But it sounds like the lament of the younger of 
 the twain, who mourns the departure of her 
 strength and beauty. " Vanity of vanities, saith 
 the Preacher, all is vanity I " 
 
X. 
 
 It seemed a strange coincidence when I re- 
 ceived from a venerable aunt of mine at the far 
 West, who had never read any of the papers or so 
 much as heard of them, a letter which contained 
 some family documents and one of them the record 
 of a burial in Trinity churchyard. There was a 
 letter from the young mother whom I do not re- 
 member, the only letter of hers that I have ever 
 had, and one from my father announcing her 
 death in France, the only scrap of his handwriting 
 in my possession. With these missives came my 
 grandmother's marriage certificate, dated at New 
 York, October 29, 18 10, signed " Benj. Moore, 
 Rector of Trinity Church," and written out in full 
 in his clerkly hand. Honors had then clustered 
 around the scholarly head of the venerable rector, 
 for he was Bishop of the Diocese and President of 
 Columbia College as well. But to me the most 
 touching relic was a lock of golden hair, as thick 
 as my little finger, cut from the head of a dead 
 baby nearly eighty years ago. It is as sunny and 
 silken as when it flashed like sunshine from the 
 tiny head of its owner and was the pride of a 
 
 130 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. I3I 
 
 mother's heart. The record on the stained and 
 time-worn paper in which it is enclosed, reads : 
 ** A lock of Alexina's hair, cut off after her Death. 
 She died at 7 o'clock A. M., Tuesday, August 11, 
 18 12, aged II months and 13 days; buried same 
 day in Trinity churchyard, Broadway, New York, 
 a Httle north of the church." 
 
 I have quoted this memorandum in full, because 
 it substantiates one of the customs of the day which 
 struck European travelers as strange. Coming 
 from England, where it was the custom to keep 
 the bodies of the dead for a week while preparations 
 were going on for an ostentatious burial, it is not 
 strange that the Reverend John Lambert, who 
 visited this country in 1 807-8 and put his impres- 
 sions in print afterwards in his ** Journal," should 
 call attention to the hasty burials that were then 
 in vogue here. He says : " They bury the dead 
 within twenty-four hours ; a custom probably in- 
 duced by the heat of the climate during the sum- 
 mer months." Then he goes on to speak of a 
 young English gentleman, who dropped dead one 
 evening at the feet of a lady to whom he was 
 paying his addresses, and was kneeling in sport, 
 and who was already buried when he went around 
 
132 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 to his house at four o'clock the next afternoon. 
 Customs vary and change. As far back as I can 
 remember it was not thought decent to hold a 
 funeral sooner than three days after death. 
 
 But I must hasten from Trinity churchyard, 
 where my feet have already delayed too long. I 
 go out of the gate with lingering steps, knowing 
 what treasures of antiquity are left behind. Why, 
 yonder is a baby's tombstone and the little one 
 of two summers is called " Miss " on the grave- 
 stone, and close by is the gravestone of Mrs. Ann 
 Brovort, wife of Elias Brovort, Jr., who is de- 
 scribed on the granite as ** aged 87 years and up- 
 wards." Here, also, is the queer old tomb of the 
 Mount family, with the curious anagram in stone in 
 one corner — the old tombstone being now cased 
 in a setting of polished granite by the descendants 
 in that famous lineage. I do not wonder at hear- 
 ing voices that seem to call me back. Look at 
 these brown sandstone slabs that lie close to the 
 northern gateway. It makes one's cheek flush 
 with patriotic pride to read the inscriptions. They 
 tell us that under those stones rest the remains of 
 John Morin Scott, most ardent of '* Liberty Boys " 
 and one of the men who by word and deed 
 
Walks iK our cttURCUYARDs. 133 
 
 kindled the revolutionary spirit in this city with a 
 flame that never has been extinguished ; that next 
 to his are the ashes of Lewis AUain Scott, once 
 Secretary of the Commonwealth, and close by 
 sleeps the dust of the Rev. Charles McKnight, for 
 many years pastor of the Presbyterian Church at 
 Monmouth, New Jersey, and of his son, Richard 
 McKnight, " captain in the American Army of 
 the Revolution." I know, too, where other un- 
 recorded heroes sleep, and it seems to me that I 
 could not take their hands as comrades in the 
 other world if my pen had not done them justice 
 in the world that is yet mine. 
 
 I pass out of the old into the new cemetery. 
 At least, it was new, still, when one of my ances- 
 tors rode into New York with Washington, on a 
 certain afternoon in 1783, and St. Paul's Church, 
 which stood in its centre, was yet without a 
 steeple. The first stone of St. Paul's was laid on 
 the 14th of May, 1764, and the church was opened 
 for public worship on the 30th of October, 1766. 
 The site was quite in the outskirts of the city. 
 The same year in which the foundation stone was 
 laid, the lot on which it stands had been ploughed 
 up and sowed with wheat. When the building 
 
i34 WALKS In our churchyards. 
 
 was finished, by the completion of the steeple in 
 1794, it was considered the most elegant and im- 
 posing church edifice in the city. The church lot 
 extended in a beautifiil lawn to the river, which at 
 that time came up as far as Greenwich Street, 
 and seen from the water, which it was intended to 
 front, St. Paul's, surrounded by stately trees and a 
 spacious churchyard, must have been very attrac- 
 tive to the eye. In 1866 the centennial of this 
 chapel was observed with a three-days' festival, 
 and in 1889 it was a most conspicuous object 
 in the centennial of President Washington's in- 
 auguration as the handsome memorial tablet on 
 its interior wall will always bear witness. 
 
 There is no other building in New York so his- 
 torically important as old St. Paul's. Here 
 General Washington worshipped when as Com- 
 mander-in-Chief he occupied the city before the 
 disastrous battle of Long Island. Here Lord 
 Howe, the British commander, listened to the 
 preaching of his chaplain, the Rev. Dr. O'Meara, 
 and Sir Guy Carleton, Major Andre, and the 
 English midshipman who was afterwards William 
 the Fourth of England, Lord Cornwallis and other 
 royalist soldiers, were of the congregation. Trinity 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 1 35 
 
 was burned to the ground on the night of the 
 British occupation of New York, but St. Paul's 
 not only escaped the destruction by flames that 
 scorched it, but it was kept open for services 
 without interruption, and patriot and tory 
 preached in its pulpits according as the fortune 
 of war varied. Here the Governor of the State 
 had his pew, and the legislature and common 
 council had seats allotted to them and actually and 
 regularly attended worship. When New York 
 became the capital of the federated common- 
 wealths in 1789, a pew was also set apart for the 
 President of the United States, and until the new 
 Trinity Church was consecrated. President and 
 Mrs. Washington always set a good example by 
 their regular attendance. It should never be for- 
 gotten by American youth that on the day of his 
 inauguration, when he had reached the highest 
 point of human ambition and was the object of 
 the world's wonder and admiration, George Wash- 
 ington turned away from the shouting multitude, 
 the parade and the display, and came to kneel 
 with the humility of a little child at the altar of 
 old St. Paul's, to receive the blessing of the 
 Lord's anointed minister. 
 
136 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 Now that in the course of time's changes the 
 rear of St. Paul's Chapel has virtually become the 
 front of the edifice, the stranger has his attention 
 called to the monument erected against the chan- 
 cel window and the two tall shafts that stand in 
 the graveyard on either side. The central monu- 
 ment, erected by Congress to the memory of 
 General Montgomery, the hero of the hopeless 
 attack on Quebec in the early part of the Revolu- 
 tion, tells its own story. The shafts commemorate 
 Thomas Addis Emmett, an eminent jurist, brother 
 of the Robert Emmett who has passed into his- 
 tory as the Irish patriot and martyr, and Dr. 
 William James McNeven, a distinguished physician 
 who, as his epitaph says " raised chemistry to a 
 science." It is remarkable that the three famous 
 men whose monuments stand sentinel at the gate 
 of old St. Paul's, were born in Ireland, and once 
 devoted adherents of the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church. Theirs are certainly the three most dis- 
 tinguished names among the myriads of natives 
 of Ireland buried in New York and its vicinity, 
 and the mention of this fact carries a political as 
 well as ecclesiastical moral. Married to ladies 
 connected with leading New York families (Gen- 
 
Walks in oUk chUrchVards. 137 
 
 eral Montgomery married Miss Janet Livingston, 
 eldest sister of Chancellor Livingston who admin- 
 istered the oath of office to President Washington,) 
 their descendants wield a wide influence in church 
 and state, and deservedly so. These ancestral 
 monuments are their inspiration. 
 
 There are Celtic inscriptions on both the 
 Emmett and McNeven shafts, that is to say, a 
 transcript of the English epitaphs in the old Irish 
 tongue. On the west side of the Emmett shaft 
 the latitude and longitude are thus recorded : 
 "40^ 42' 40'' N., 74° 03' 21'' 5 W. L. G." The 
 ** G " presumably stands for Greenwich, the point 
 from which the reckoning is made. 
 
 In this same old churchyard a fourth native of 
 Ireland is interred, who, if he has no memorial 
 shaft to perpetuate his name and deeds, did more 
 for the practical benefit of his fellowman and more 
 for the future prosperity of New York, than any 
 other who sleeps in the enclosure. This was 
 Christopher Collis, to whom the city of New York 
 was indebted for her first water-works and the 
 State of New York for the Erie Canal. It was 
 this busy inventor and tireless thinker who first 
 conceived the idea of uniting the waters of the 
 
I3S WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 great lakes to the Hudson, who lectured on the 
 subject here and addressed successive legislatures, 
 and who inspired De Witt Clinton to put his 
 shoulder to the wheel and push the project to its 
 accomplishment. Collis was an originator always. 
 He had a steam engine at work -pumping water 
 from the Collect Pond into his reservoir on Broad- 
 way near Pearl Street, at the rate of 417,600 gal- 
 lons daily, ten years before Fulton had begun to 
 make any practical application of steam to travel, 
 and he had already mooted the notion that the 
 same force might be applied to ferry boats, in the 
 place of horse-power, with safety and economy. 
 His lectures on pneumatics and the steam engine 
 were an unfailing matter of interest and entertain- 
 ment to the New Yorkers of the last century, and 
 though they did not benefit himself to any great 
 extent, they paved the way for others who reduced 
 theory to practice and thus permanently benefited 
 the community. The latest achievement of this 
 pioneer inventor was the rigging of a semaphoric 
 telegraph between New York and Sandy Hook, 
 which furnished employment for the closing years 
 of his life. Christopher Collis died on the first 
 day of October, 18 16, in the seventy-ninth year 
 
Walks in our churchyards. 139 
 
 of his age and is buried in St. Paul's churchyard. 
 His tombstone is an humble ode, for he passed 
 away in poverty, and yet no man possessed more 
 friends when living or did more for the land and 
 city in which he lived. He was fully worthy to 
 be one of the famous quartette whose records 
 .shed lustre on the churchyard. 
 
 As I pass out from under the shadow of the 
 tall shafts and the presence of the great dead, I 
 think of the tiny scraps of dust in the old 
 churchyard, to which the golden lock of hair 
 belongs. I wonder if the little child has grown 
 any older among her Father's mansions. Her 
 mother joined her before many years had passed 
 and I wonder if she knew her child in glory. 
 What a wise little one she must be, that baby 
 aunt of mine. Long ago her tiny feet could 
 find their way through every street in the city 
 which is above and knew the names on the door 
 of every heavenly mansion. Long ago she 
 learned to speak in the tongue of the angel host 
 and the secrets which the wise of this world 
 wrestle over and never penetrate were this child's 
 alphabet. Strange mystery of the future, to 
 which this lock of sunny hair is the key, and 
 
140 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 yet I cannot penetrate it. Some day a little 
 child will lead me perhaps on the voyage of its 
 discovery, and I grey-haired and once deemed 
 wise will acknowledge my ignorance to the babe. 
 And so, as we walk, the smallest of graves 
 becomes the grandest of teachers. 
 
TRINITY MISSION HOUSE. 
 
XL 
 
 I HELD in my hand the other day a Book of 
 the Dead. In appearance it was an unimpressive 
 volume in brown leather, whose records were 
 written in various hands and sometimes with ink 
 that had grown faded and blurred, yet the 
 names in its register had a strange fascination 
 for me. They had once stood for living men 
 and women and tender little children, who had 
 lived out their span, had struggled, hoped, loved 
 and died. Then after they had been laid gently 
 in the bosom of mother earth, a stranger had 
 written without a pang the record of the name 
 to which they answered no more, of the years 
 they had lived and the place of their burial. It 
 had all happened long ago, and the hands that 
 had written the brief histories had become dust 
 and ashes too. Spring after spring had come 
 and gone, bringing flowers and green grasses 
 and the singing birds; the mounds over the 
 dead had become leveled with the surrounding 
 earth, the tombstones had crumbled and the 
 mosses had eaten away their inscriptions, and 
 living eyes looked through the old books of 
 
 141 
 
142 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 names and sadly wondered. Yet not without 
 hope. Ah, not without knowledge that one day 
 these dry bones should live, and clad in the 
 glory of immortal youth stand smiling and serene 
 on the ramparts of the city whose builder and 
 maker they have already seen face to face. This 
 was the message that was whispered to me by 
 the yellow pages and the faded ink. 
 
 There are no records of burials in the parish 
 prior to 1777. The great fire which swept away 
 the larger part of the lower city on the night in 
 which the British troops occupied New York, 
 burned up Trinity Church and the school house 
 in which the books were kept under charge of the 
 clerk of the parish. The church was not rebuilt 
 until 1790, but the churchyard was in use through- 
 out the time of the British occupation. There 
 most of the private soldiers, sailors, prisoners of 
 war, strangers and the poor were interred, it being 
 regarded as a public burial place. The British 
 officers who died during the time, officials and 
 citizens of wealth and standing were buried in the 
 grounds around St. Paul's, the church itself being 
 set apart as the military chapel of the English 
 commander. Many of the tombstones antedate 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 1 43 
 
 the war of the Revolution. Near the west en- 
 trance is a stone to the memory of James Davis, 
 " late Smith in the Royal Artillery, who died in 
 December, 1769, aged 30 years," and near it is a 
 still older and less legible slab which commem- 
 orates John Jones, and perpetuates this poetry 
 that evidently came from his wife's hand : 
 
 O most cruel sudden Death 
 
 Thus did take her husband's breath, 
 
 But the Lord he thought it best. 
 
 Scattered around this part of the cemetery are 
 memorials of the Somerindykes, Ogdens, Nesbitts, 
 Rhinelanders, Thornes, Cornells, Van Amridges, 
 the Gunning, Bogert, Onderdonk, Tredwell, Cut- 
 ler and Waldo families. This acre of the dead 
 had gathered in many occupants during its first 
 peaceful decade. 
 
 In the book of burials of which I have spoken, 
 the first recorded entry is that of Mrs. Wittenhall, 
 of whom no other particulars are given than her 
 name and the fact that she was interred at St. 
 Paul's. The sexton kept the record, as is duly 
 narrated when it came his turn to be entered 
 among the dead. In the six years that follow the 
 
144 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 entries make a strange collection, and one can 
 read in them, better than in any history of the 
 time, the desolation of the city while it was in the 
 hands of the oppressor. War and the selfishness 
 that grows out of the fact that human life is then 
 held at a cheap rate, can be seen pictured on every 
 page. Here are the ravages of fever and small- 
 pox, there the deaths from wounds and again 
 when food is scarce and firing dear, the deaths 
 among the wives and children of the soldiers in 
 garrison run up to a fearful figure. During the 
 month of May in that year are recorded the burial 
 of Mr. Nash's child, who died of small-pox, of a 
 sergeant who perished of his wounds, of an artil- 
 leryman, of a soldier's wife, of a Light Horse- 
 man, and several strangers, but no names are 
 given except in the case of a child of an inhabi- 
 tant. Occasionally the record is varied with 
 burials at St. George's, in Beekman Street, and 
 the French church in Pine Street, and on Septem- 
 ber 17th, Mrs. Stuyvesant, aged 85, is recorded as 
 buried at the Bowery, in the graveyard which now 
 surrounds St. Mark's Church. 
 
 Of the British officers who lie under the turf of 
 old St. Paul's, I find the names of Col. Mungo 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 1 45 
 
 Campbell, who died of his wounds, and was buried 
 October 7 ; Captain Wolfe, who perished of fever 
 in the next July, of Captains Gibbs, Walker, Bond, 
 Talbot, Logan, Norman and Horton, of Lieut, 
 Iredell and Lieut. Inslee, who died of wounds 
 (" at Tom's River, New Jersey," adds the record- 
 ing hand of the sexton), of Captain Wilcox, killed 
 in battle, of a Hessian Major and a dozen Hessian 
 officers, all unknown, who were interred with 
 military honors Mr. Wies, Commissary- General 
 of the English Army, died of the fever and a 
 tombstone was raised to his memory. The Rev. 
 Mr. Barton and the Rev. Mr. Winslow were also 
 numbered with the dead and buried here. Hap- 
 pily such as these received mention, but when 
 pestilence settled down on the city and added its 
 horrors to those of war, the entries in the book of 
 burials read " a refugee woman,'* " two sailors in 
 one grave," " a doctor, aged thirty-two," " a 
 strange woman," " a free mason." The last burials 
 entered before the British flag was hauled down at 
 the Battery were those of "a sailor lad, 15 years 
 old," "a soldier's wife, 46," '* a soldier's child, 8," 
 and the first after the American flag was unfurled 
 over the city, *' a child of Mr. Stringham." 
 
146 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 To me there is something extremely pathetic in 
 these records. What a strange gathering of friend 
 and foe, of aristocrat and outcast, of youth and 
 age it would be if these graves could suddenly 
 and simultaneously give up their occupants. The 
 tombstones give no indications of their numbers. 
 For every slab and monument that stands in the 
 enclosure there are a score of sleepers whose dust 
 is undistinguishable from the ground in which it 
 rests. From the month of December in the year 
 1800, the records are made in the clear, clerkly 
 hand of Bishop Benjamin Moore. I turned a few 
 pages and came to an announcement that in its 
 time had convulsed the whole land. Yet now it 
 is simply a name and date and a careless observer 
 would easily pass it by. It is under the date of 
 the year 1804 and reads, "July 12, Alexander 
 Hamilton, 45, Trinity churchyard." That is all 
 that tells of the death of America's greatest states- 
 man. Just below is another record, "July 12, 
 Mr Harsen's child, St. Paul's churchyard." The 
 little one without a name was laid away in its 
 grave on the same day that a multitude wept at 
 the opened tomb of Hamilton. Yet I doubt not 
 that there were hearts that ached as they turned 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. I47 
 
 away from the mound that covered the babe. 
 My memory goes back to the time when old 
 St. Paul's held as large and as fashionable a con- 
 gregation as any in the city. Lower Broadway, 
 the streets around the City Hall Park, Greenwich, 
 Fulton and Vesey Streets, held a large population 
 and Park Place was a centre of aristocracy. The 
 Rev. Dr. Parks, a graduate of West Point, was 
 then in charge, with Dr. Haight as his colleague. 
 At the doors, on Sunday, were grouped as many 
 carriages as at Trinity and there was a sort of 
 social rivalry between the congregations. The list 
 of the pewholders then was something Hke a mod- 
 ern book of the peerage, but while many names 
 suggest themselves to memory there are others 
 that have been forgotten and there is nothing to 
 keep track of the changes. 
 
 In the list which at any rate would be too long 
 to give in its entirety, are found the names of 
 Ferdinand Suydam, Peter Goelet, one of the most 
 famous of old New York merchants, whose pros- 
 perity kept apace with the growth of the city he 
 loved, Bache McEvers, John H. Talman, whose 
 daughter, Miss CaroHne Talman, built and en- 
 dowed the church of the Beloved Disciple, while 
 
148 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 Still an attendant at Trinity Chapel, and John Q. 
 Jones, President of the Chemical Bank. Henry 
 Cotheal was a vestryman, and he and his son, 
 Alexander I. Cotheal occupied two pews at the 
 side of the pulpit. The son, Alexander I. Cotheal, 
 was in early life a teacher in the Sunday School. 
 He is still living, in his eighty-seventh year, and 
 has seen nearly all the modern growth of this 
 great city. Formerly a merchant, he has devoted 
 his later years to study. Another group of St. 
 Paul's people were Anthony Barclay, George 
 Barclay, Templeton Strong, Benjamin Armitage 
 and David B. Ogden. Mr. Armitage was at one 
 time a teacher in the Sunday School and Benjamin 
 M. Brown was Superintendent. Mr. Thomas 
 Gale has still a living representative at St. Paul's 
 in the person of his niece. Miss Sarah Thorne, 
 who is still an active worker in the church. Of 
 John David Wolfe, all mercantile New York knows 
 and of what he did for the city and its masses. 
 Another pewholder of the olden time was George 
 Jones, whose daughter became the wife of Wm. 
 Alexander Smith. The old Jones mansion at 82d 
 Street and Avenue B, beautifully situated on a 
 blufif at the East River, was torn down last year. 
 
Walks in our churchyards. 149 
 
 but enough of the old family possessions on the 
 line of the river still remains to preserve the tradi- 
 tions of Jones' Wood and keep the name in the 
 mouth of the public. The list might be indefi- 
 nitely extended, and include the names of Good- 
 win, Pray, Spencer, Lee, Gerry, of Revolutionary 
 renown, McVickar, Winthrop, Rhinelander, Har- 
 rison, Edgar and others whose homes were located 
 below St. Paul's Chapel at the time that the 
 Episcopal residence of that giant of the faith, 
 Bishop Hobart, was on Vesey Street, opposite St. 
 Paul's churchyard. 
 
 Those were glorious days of the church when 
 Bishop Hobart, attended by his two favorite as- 
 sistant ministers, Drs. Onderdonk and Berrian, 
 pervaded New York like another St. Paul. He 
 was everywhere at once, fervent, sympathetic, 
 aggressive, and to him more than any other man 
 was due the awakening which sent the church 
 forward into the proper place of leadership. I 
 meant to have stood beneath his monument and 
 spoken of him in that sacred spot, but the place 
 does not matter, for the presence of this great 
 pioneer prelate is felt at every place where his 
 feet passed by. I read some weeks ago the jour- 
 
IJO WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYAR£)S. 
 
 nal of a Unitarian minister who came from Boston 
 in 1820 to hear Edward Everett, then a minister, 
 preach the sermon at the opening of their church 
 on Chambers Street, and who fell in some way 
 under the influence of the bishop. This stranger 
 in our gates wrote : " The power of earnestly and 
 successfully appealing to the consciences of men 
 was possessed by Hobart in an eminent degree. 
 In his ministrations the ardor of Peter was aptly 
 blended with the boldness of Paul, and honesty of 
 purpose breathed through and consecrated all his 
 professional efforts. The Episcopal Church has 
 rarely possessed an ally of greater power." 
 
 It is a matter of rejoicing to the grey-haired 
 men and women who recall the glories of old St. 
 Paul's as it was fifty years ago, when its walls and 
 spire had not been dwarfed by the great structures 
 that how hem it in and its aisles were thronged 
 by people born within hearing of its bell, to learn 
 that its veins are still full of active life. It has 
 become the spiritual home of more than four 
 hundred families, the Sunday School numbers five 
 hundred scholars and the communicants are six 
 hundred and forty-nine. Not a bad showing that 
 for a down-town church, and as I write the figures 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. ijl 
 
 I can well understand the enthusiasm of a young 
 man whom I met in the church one Sunday even- 
 ing, and who told me that he was brakeman on a 
 New Jersey railroad but always attended old St. 
 Paul's. The attendance is drawn largely from the 
 laboring class, but they are worthy successors to 
 the men and women who preceded them and have 
 grandly demonstrated that there is now no danger 
 of a possible failure in the congregation. They 
 have the zeal and the fire of Paul and are endowed 
 with his missionary spirit. In all the city there is 
 no place to which the lukewarm can go with 
 greater certainty of having their old flames re- 
 kindled. 
 
 As it was in the beginning, when " the third 
 English church in the fields " was opened, so may 
 it be to the end ! 
 
XII. 
 
 It will be fifty years ago, in August, since I 
 entered the Sunday School of St John's Chapel as 
 a scholar. At first, being an urchin of tender years 
 I was placed in a class with my two sisters, in the 
 girls' school, with Mrs. Lindley Murray Hoffman 
 as teacher. But I soon overgrew this gentle com- 
 panionship and was transferred to the boys' de- 
 partment in the basement of the same building 
 and placed under the care of the late Rev. Dr. 
 Sullivan H. Weston, who was then a student of 
 theology. The chancel of the church has now 
 usurped the place of the former Sunday School 
 building, which was a stone structure three stories 
 in height, whose upper and lower floors were de- 
 voted to the boys and girls respectively and were 
 furnished with square, white wooden forms for the 
 convenience of the classes. The main floor was 
 fitted up after the fashion of a chapel, with organ 
 and reading desk, and here we all assembled on 
 Sunday morning at ten o'clock, to be catechised 
 by the Rev. Dr. Wainwright, whose dignified pres- 
 ence, set off by a black silk gown and bands, 
 kept the most of the restless boys in order. 
 
 152 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. I53 
 
 Across the golden mists of departed years, now 
 half a century in number, I see the throngs of 
 curly heads and rosy cheeks, and my eyes are 
 young again as I look into their faces. To me 
 they are ever fair and young ; to the world, they 
 are dust and ashes. As memory calls the roll, I 
 can summon up but half a dozen in life, and they 
 are grey-haired and their cheeks have lost the radi- 
 ant rosiness of their childhood. It seems impos- 
 sible that so many seasons have rolled between 
 that day and this. I can recall the new clothes 
 and tight shoes of those Sundays and my uneasi- 
 ness in their clasp ; the broad leghorn hats with 
 pink and blue streamers that half hid the faces of 
 my sisters and their companions on the other side 
 of the aisle ; the sycamores on the outside, in 
 whose branches the orioles built their nests year 
 after year ; the flowers in the adjacent Berrian and 
 Blenkard gardens and the vine that clambered 
 over the back porch of my own home, two doors 
 away. The peace and sweetness of those unfor- 
 gotten Sundays come back to me, now, like the 
 breath of home to an exile. 
 
 In those days I used to think St. John's Chapel 
 the handsomest of ecclesiastical edifices and even 
 
154 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 its pulpit had a stateliness which was most impres- 
 sive to the youthful mind. The backs of the pews 
 were high and the doors were fastened by a but- 
 ton or a spring lock on the inside, so that the 
 householder could fence himself in and defy the 
 entrance of any spiritual tramp. For the latter 
 there were six pews set apart at the foot of 
 each aisle, three on each side, which were slightly 
 raised above the rest and bore conspicuously on 
 their doors the legend "For Strangers." I 
 remember that I used to look at the occupants of 
 these pews with a sort of patronizing pity, as being 
 a sort of shabby-genteel Christians at best. Now 
 nearly every pew is free and the sanctuary is 
 glorious within and resonant with music to which 
 it was then a stranger. In those days, pulpit, 
 reading desk and chancel stood out conspicuously 
 from the bare white wall of the original edifice, 
 and were encircled with a mahogany chancel rail. 
 It was a triple affair and curious in its way. At 
 the base stood the altar or communion table of 
 wood painted white and topped with purple velvet 
 and two large purple cushions to hold the prayer 
 books. Above this rose the reading desk, which 
 was a pew in which at afternoon service the minis- 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. t^$ 
 
 ters entered, clad in surplice and black silk gown 
 respectively and gravely shut the door and but- 
 toned themselves in. The third story was the 
 pulpit, which was on a level with the galleries 
 and was entered by a door in the rear. I can 
 recall vividly the delight with which I waited for 
 the reappearance of the preacher through this door 
 during the singing of the last verse of the hymn 
 and my still greater delight when it was announced 
 by Major Jonathan Lawrence, a revolutionary sol- 
 dier and member of the vestry that in consequence 
 of sudden indisposition there would be no sermon 
 that afternoon. 
 
 It was an age of upholstery decoration in 
 churches, and while the huge square windows 
 were in plain glass, and the Corinthian columns of 
 the interior were as dazzling white as the walls, 
 there was a profusion of velvet and woolen fur- 
 nishings visible on all sides. Owners of pews 
 upholstered them in such colors and materials as 
 they pleased, cushioning the backs and making 
 them otherwise as comfortable as was possible. 
 The result was as large a variety of hues as in the 
 woods in October. Some of the old-fashioned 
 square pews which still remained in the side aisles 
 
156 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 and galleries were set out with cushions, footstools 
 and little tables to hold books, in such a manner 
 as to make children in other pews envious of their 
 superior adaptedness to purposes of repose. The 
 organ stood in the rear gallery and the singing 
 was " performed " by a mixed choir of men and 
 women who were hidden from view by curtains of 
 purple velvet 
 
 Bold and sagacious minds planned the building 
 of St. John's Chapel. When the corner-stone 
 was laid in 1803 the locality was a swamp, over- 
 grown with brush and still inhabited by frogs 
 and snakes. In front of it a sandy beach 
 stretched down to the river whose waters then 
 came up to Greenwich Street. The church was 
 completed and consecrated in 1807 ^"^ by that 
 time the neighborhood had undergone a trans- 
 formation. St. John's Park, which fifty years ago 
 was the loveliest of the city's pleasure grounds, 
 had been laid out and houses were springing up 
 around it and 'attracting wealthy landowners and 
 merchants from the neighborhood of old St. Paul's 
 and Trinity Church. When the century had 
 reached its first quarter the locality was the most 
 fashionable in the city, at the second quarter its 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 1 57 
 
 decay had begun and when the park had vanished 
 the neighborhood had been given over to the 
 stranger, and he came forward and occupied the 
 front pews. 
 
 Now I know not a soul in the congregation. 
 But looking back to my boyhood, I can recall 
 the faces that rose up around our pew Sunday 
 after Sunday, and they seem now to have grown 
 old. Our pew was on the north aisle, well up 
 towards the front. In front was the pew of Dr. 
 Hunter, our family physician, who lived on Hud- 
 son Street, and died of cholera during the visita- 
 tion of that epidemic in 1849. The Randolphs 
 and Clifts sat still further in front. At our right, 
 in the middle aisle, were Gen. Dix and his family, 
 the widow and children of old General Jacob Mor- 
 ton and the Schuylers. The Lydigs sat in a large, 
 square pew on the other side of the north aisle and 
 nearly opposite us. Everybody knew the honored 
 widow of Alexander Hamilton and the family of 
 John C. Hamilton, whose residence was on Beach 
 Street. Bowie Dash, then my schoolmate, now a 
 vestryman of Trinity Parish, lived at the corner 
 of Laight and Varick Streets, and came duly to 
 church, like myself and all other boys of the 
 
158 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 period, twice a day. But the catalogue of names 
 is growing out of proportion to my present space. 
 Other attendants at old St. John's were the Clark- 
 sons, Hyslops, Cammanns, Swords, Van Der Heu- 
 villes, Hoffmans, Crugers, the famihes of John J. 
 Morgan and Dr. Hosick, the Drakes, Kembles, 
 Manys, Lorillards, Ostranders, Wilkes, Cotheals, 
 Bibbys, Harveys and Lawrences. A single paper 
 would not suffice for reminiscences of those 
 famous old New Yorkers who worshipped here. 
 Not long ago I came across a description of St. 
 John's written by a traveler who made the ac- 
 quaintance of the city in 1839. He says: "St 
 John's is one of the most magnificent churches in 
 the country. It is ornamented in front with a 
 portico and four columns in the Corinthian style, 
 which are based on a flight of steps above the 
 street ; and from the roof of the portico and the 
 church is built the lofty and splendid spire, to the 
 height of 240 feet." 
 
 Even as these words are set down, there is a 
 whisper that the old chapel which was the admira- 
 tion of three successive generations, will vanish 
 before the hand of improvement and that a new 
 and more magnificent edifice will replace it on the 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 1 59 
 
 site that Trinity Parish has been holding for forty 
 years at Hudson and Clarkson Streets for that 
 purpose. The only element of uncertainty is the 
 determination of certain parties, unfriendly to the 
 church, to have the spot seized for a public park. 
 It is the old story of Naboth's Vineyard. An 
 adjoining block, larger and better adapted to the 
 purpose, has been offered at a reasonable figure, 
 but the political children of Naboth are determined 
 to have that particular spot, by force of law if 
 necessary, even though its occupation by them 
 shall tear the dead from their graves and compel 
 the destruction of the trees that have twined their 
 roots around the coffins and boxes of the buried 
 thousands who sleep there. 
 
 There have been no interments in the grounds 
 of St. John's Chapel, but at the time the church 
 was projected, a plot bounded by Hudson, Leroy 
 and Clarkson Streets was set apart by the vestry 
 as a place of burial and has always since been 
 known by the name of ** St. John's Burying 
 Ground." It is a rural appellation, suggestive of 
 the day when Greenwich Village was a distinct 
 settlement, and its villas and farm houses clustered 
 in sight of the little cemetery. The people who 
 
l60 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 attended St. John's Chapel never took kindly to 
 the little rustic cemetery. Many of them owned 
 vaults in the churchyards of Trinity and St. Paul's, 
 or elsewhere, and not one of the families that I 
 have named is represented in the quaint old 
 Clarkson Street plot. Yet there have been more 
 than ten thousand interments there and eight 
 hundred monuments stand over the dead. The 
 first entry on the parish register is " John Erving, 
 aged 35 years, who was buried October 2, 1814," 
 but some of the graves are older than that and 
 one of the tombstones bears date of 1803. From 
 1830, when burials were forbidden in all ceme- 
 teries below Canal Street, interments were frequent 
 here, but they ceased by law some twenty years 
 later, and since that time have only occurred in 
 the case of owners of vaults. The monuments 
 are seldom elaborate, but sometimes the tombs 
 bear the masonic device, or the old-time figures 
 of a weeping woman, an urn and a willow. 
 
 The most striking of the monuments was 
 erected by Engine Company 1 3 of the old Volun- 
 teer Fire Department, to the memory of Eugene 
 Underbill and Frederick A. Ward, who lost their 
 lives by the falling of a wall while engaged in 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. l6l 
 
 their duties as firemen in 1834. A sarcophagus, 
 surmounted by a stone coffin, bears on its apex a 
 fireman's cap, torch and trumpet. One of the 
 best preserved stones bears the inscription: 
 " Captain Peter Taylor, who departed this life 
 April 16, 1846, in the 73d year of his age. Long 
 has he braved the stormy sea. He was known 
 for skill as a man of his profession. At last he 
 has cast anchor in a safe harbor, the broad bay of 
 sweet repose." There is a cut of a fouled anchor 
 at the head of the stone. An old cracked and 
 broken brown stone slab, with the masonic em- 
 blem of the square and compass at the top, bears 
 the record " Artemus B. Brookins, April 9, 1824, 
 aged 6 months and 5 days." Early initiated and 
 passed ; one day to be raised. 
 
 There are not many people of renown or whose 
 memory has outlived their day and generation, 
 buried here. In one of the vaults rest the ashes 
 of William E. Burton, the comedian, whose 
 theatre was in Chambers Street, and whose acting 
 was the delight of the fashionable folk who lived 
 around St. John's Park. He died in 1858 and 
 the last years of his life were passed in his luxurious 
 home on Hudson Street, near Laight. Here too 
 
1 62 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 sleeps Naomi, wife of Thomas Hamblin, a dis- 
 tinguished actor and a contemporary of Burton. 
 The inscriptions on the tombstones are often rustic 
 and quaint, breathing an air of simph'city such as 
 suggests the village life that takes the world into 
 its confidence. Some of the records are those : 
 ** George Shepley, who fell a victim to intermittent 
 fever, 1 803 ; Frederick Gordon, calico engraver, 
 1 81 2; John Black, bookseller, 1830, beloved by 
 all who knew him." And how pleasant it is to 
 meet here in shadow land a man who is not 
 ashamed to let other people know that he loved 
 his wife and that her price was above rubies, and 
 who has made the stone to tell her praises thus : 
 *' Mrs. Elizabeth Lawrence, wife of Mr. John Law- 
 rence, merchant of New York, a pattern of exalted 
 goodness." 
 
 Among other interments are : ** John Nichols, 
 1822; Elizabeth Moore, 1824; Nicholas Halsted, 
 1824; Thomas W. Ustic, 1845; Maria Speed, 
 1823 ; James E. Crane, 1829; Alexander Dugan, 
 1824; John Bensar, 1837; Leonard Patus, 1836; 
 James Berrian, 1828 ; Mary Legget, 181 2 ; J. N. 
 Whitehead, 1835 ; Gabriel Grenolier, 181 3 ; John 
 Summeslays, 1820, and Cornelius Mour, 1808." 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 163 
 
 One stone is erected by sorrowing shipmates to 
 the memory of a lad of twenty-one, who was 
 '* drowned from the Sir E. Hamilton, July, 1833." 
 Apparently from those records in stone the 
 sleepers in St. John's Burying Ground were not 
 classed when hving with the " Upper Ten Thous- 
 and," but none the less is their tomb sacred and 
 the dust they laid down in death deserving of 
 rescue from profanation. The old parish that gave 
 the ground for graves for her children, has thrown 
 her loving arms around their dust to protect it, 
 and if the monuments are uprooted the shame 
 of it will not lie at her doors. 
 
 I had hoped to finish my walks in the new 
 Trinity Cemetery at Manhattanville and to speak 
 of those who sleep in that beautiful city of the 
 dead. But the season has passed and my feet 
 have delayed in older haunts. There sleep the 
 pioneer John Jacob Astor, founder of the family, 
 the gallant soldier Gen. John A. Dix, hero of the 
 wars, who lived to see his son the honored rector 
 of old Trinity, and there were gathered under 
 the sod later representations of nearly every 
 eminent family in the parish. There, too, amid a 
 group of descendants, sleeps my grandmother, the 
 
l64 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 grandmother of whom I have written much, and 
 close by is another friend of my boyhood, who 
 was more than four-score years my senior, and 
 with whom I dehghted to talk. He sleeps on the 
 spot where he had once fought for his king in the 
 fierce skirmishes that preluded the capture of Fort 
 Washington. Old John Battin, cornet in the 
 British horse, married and settled in this city after 
 the war was ended, gave three of his descendants 
 to the ministry of the church, and died about the 
 time I entered college, at an age that had passed 
 the century limit. He was one hundred years old 
 when he fell asleep. 
 
 The soldier of the king and the soldier of the 
 republic slumber peacefully side by side in sight 
 of the Hudson. There are no enmities in the 
 grave and no remembrance of the strife that is 
 past. The tiniest babe beneath the sod becomes 
 the equal of the mightiest of warriors and the 
 wisest of sages. 
 
TRINITY HOSPITAL 
 
XIII. 
 
 In reading the " Reminiscences of Grant Thor- 
 burn," not long ago, I came across an unconscious 
 tribute to the faithfulness of the clergy and peo- 
 ple of Trinity Parish which was the more striking 
 because it had been penned by a sturdy and un- 
 compromising Scotch Covenanter. Mr. Thorburn 
 was clerk in the Scotch Presbyterian Church in 
 Cedar Street, of which the famous Dr. Mason was 
 pastor at the beginning of the century, and so 
 strict was their orthodoxy that he was once ** sus- 
 pended from psalm-singing," as he phrases it, for 
 having shaken hands with Thomas Paine. When 
 the yellow fever desolated the city in 1798, he 
 remained after nearly everybody had fled and 
 ministered to the sick and dying. Under date of 
 "Sabbath, September 16," he says: "All the 
 churches down-town, known by the name of 
 Orthodox and Reformed, being shut up, the poor, 
 who could not fly, were glad to pick up what 
 little crumbs of Gospel comfort they could find in 
 the good old church of the Trinity, which was 
 open every Sabbath. As the bell was tolling for 
 afternoon service, Mr. T. and his wife, and myself 
 
 165 
 
l66 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 and wife (we had all been married within the 
 year,) were walking among the tombs; as we 
 turned the east corner Mrs. T., who was a lively 
 girl, turned her husband around and exclaimed in 
 a sort of playful manner, ' If I die of the fever 
 you must bury me there,' pointing to the spot 
 opposite Pine Street. Next she was reported and 
 on Friday, the 2ist, he buried her there, and 
 where you may see her gravestone until this day." 
 Again, in writing of the terrible Asiatic cholera 
 in 1832, he says that the clergy of Trinity came 
 down as the bell tolled, on horseback or in a 
 carriage, ** tied the horse to one of the trees, said 
 their prayers, read their sermons and so went 
 home again — thus they kept their churches open 
 all the fever of 1798." The sturdy old Cov- 
 enanter liked neither prayer book nor written ser- 
 mon, but he was too honest to withhold his meed 
 of praise from the men who did their duty in the 
 face of death. Reading their record I honor 
 the fearless preachers of the cross who thus stood 
 between the living and the dead, and I bless God 
 out of a thankful heart for this grand old parish 
 which has stood for two centuries as a strong de- 
 fence of the faith, a refuge for the sick and sor- 
 
Walks in our church yards. 167 
 
 rowing, a witness to divine law and order, and a 
 daily preacher of that charity which thinketh no 
 evil of the man God made. 
 
 I have dwelt long in the quiet paths of the 
 parish churchyards and lingered over the mossy 
 epitaphs which are part of the story of the land 
 we live in as well as the metropolis that has 
 grown up around them. It is pleasant to pause 
 under t*he trees and think to what peaceful end 
 their unquiet lives have come. But even as I 
 pause, there comes to me the echo of the city's 
 roar and tumult and the thought of the living and 
 as it swells in my ear I remember not only what has 
 been done by Trinity Parish, since its first rector, 
 the Rev. William Vesey first held divine service on 
 the sixth of February, 1697, '^^ the small, square 
 stone edifice just erected on the edge of the little 
 city, in the upper part of the Broad Way, but 
 what is doing now. The story of the dead would 
 be incomplete without the record of the living, 
 
 " One army of the living God 
 At His command we bow : 
 Part of the host have crossed the flood 
 And part are crossing now." 
 
 It is to be repeated that the outside world 
 
l6S WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 should not take much notice of Trinity Parish or 
 measure the wide field of its work, but I wonder 
 how many of those who take part in its service 
 or are numbered with its congregation understand 
 what is its real relation to the community at its 
 doors and how extensive is its influence, direct or 
 indirect, on men and morals. Trinity Parish is a 
 diocese in itself — an imperium in imperio — and no 
 man can measure the extent of its silent influence 
 for good, even when all the figures are marshalled 
 before his eyes. The grain of the mustard seed, 
 dropped in a little Dutch city of the New World, 
 has become a great tree, whose branches reach up 
 to the heaven or in whose shade the weary ones 
 of earth rest and refresh themselves. The one 
 church of 1697 has become eight churches in 
 1892, six chapels in the city, in addition to the 
 parent church, and an additional chapel on Gov- 
 ernor's Island in New York Harbor. The first 
 chapel built by the parish, St. George's in Beek- 
 man Street, which was opened by the Rev. Mr. 
 Barclay, Rector of Trinity Church, July 2, 1756 
 — the mayor, recorder, aldermen, common council 
 and other distinguished citizens being present — 
 became long ago an independent church, and is 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 1 69 
 
 now one of the strongest and most useful in the 
 city. Gathered about old Trinity to-day are the 
 chapels of St. Paul, St. John, Trinity, St. Chrysos- 
 tom, St. Augustine and St. Agnes. In three of 
 these chapels the sittings are entirely free and in 
 two others very nearly so, while the doors and 
 pews of old Trinity are never closed to those who 
 wish to enter and worship. Nor are any of these 
 mission chapels for the poor, but all, rich and 
 poor, share alike in the best service which the 
 rector and vestry can provide to make the Lord's 
 sanctuary glorious within. 
 
 Nor is Trinity Parish in any degree selfish, or 
 bent on seeking her own, but is mindful to an 
 extreme of her obligations to the city in which 
 she is as a light set up on a hill. St. Luke's 
 Church on Hudson Street, one of the last existing 
 monuments of quaint old Greenwich Village, still 
 receives an allowance of $10,000 a year and All 
 Saint's Church, on the lower east side is kept alive 
 and at work by an annual payment amounting to 
 $7,300. Other churches which receive annual aid 
 from the corporation of Trinity Parish are St. 
 Clement's, West Third Street; Holy Martyrs, 
 Forsyth Street ; the Church of the Epiphany, 
 
170 Walks in our churchyards. 
 
 East 50th Street ; St. Peter's, in old Chelsea Vil- 
 lage ; Holy Apostles, in Ninth Avenue ; St. John 
 the Evangelist, West nth Street; St. Ann's 
 Church for deaf mutes ; St. Ambrose, St. Philip's 
 Church with its colored congregation ; All Angels 
 and St. Timothy's. Donations and allowances are 
 also made generously to other churches, missions 
 and objects of benevolence, which swell the ap- 
 propriations made by the Vestry, in the last year 
 reported, for objects outside the Parish, to almost 
 forty thousand dollars. 
 
 Turning to the parochial statistics, which to 
 thoughtful persons are an unanswerable proof of 
 the good work accomplished, they tell a remark- 
 able story. The communicants of the parish 
 numbered at the last report six thousand. Com- 
 parisons are invidious, but if one cares to take up 
 a church almanac and make a comparison, it will 
 be a matter of surprise to find how many dioceses 
 fail to come up to the statistical standard of this 
 quiet but sleepless old parish. The total number 
 of baptisms for the year are 1,114; confirmed, 
 504; marriages, 318; burials, 617; Sunday 
 school teachers, 290; scholars, 3,457; teachers of 
 daily parish schools, 21, scholars, 692; teachers 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. I7I 
 
 of parish night schools, 10, scholars, 352; and 
 the industrial school report in addition 1 1 1 teachers 
 and 1,118 scholars. The figures are eloquent of 
 what is being accomplished for the community 
 as well as for the church and tell for themselves 
 with what sincere conscientiousness the corpo- 
 ration acts as the almoners of the stewardship 
 committed to their care. The collections and 
 contributions throughout the Parish, amounted to 
 $61,213.25 ; the appropriations by the Vestry for 
 Parish purposes, to $44,479.21, and the appro- 
 priations for outside purposes, to $39,278.89, 
 making a grand total for the year of $144,971.35. 
 And this answers, better than a column of ex- 
 planation, the question often asked by many, as to 
 what Trinity Parish does with its income. 
 
 The services and work of the Parish are suffi- 
 cient to give ample employment to the seventeen 
 clergymen on the staff of the rector, the Rev. Dr. 
 Dix. The work is so varied and far-reaching that 
 it is next to impossible to classify it. There are 
 connected with Trinity Church, for instance, daily 
 parish and night schools, guilds for boys and 
 young men, with a membership of 2 1 7 ; for girls 
 and women, with a membership of 302 ; a mission 
 
172 Walks in our churchyards. 
 
 to Germans under charge of a German minister; 
 a Ladies' Employment Society and the Trinity 
 Church Association which supports independently 
 of the corporation, a Mission House in Fulton 
 Street under charge of the Sisters of St. Mary, a 
 dispensary, kindergarten and training school for 
 household service, a seaside home for children at 
 Great River, L. I., a relief bureau and a kitchen 
 garden. All this is done in addition to the reg- 
 ular religious and charitable work of the parent 
 church and it aims to reach every soul within call 
 and to enlist it not only in work on its own be- 
 half, but in becoming a ministering messenger to 
 others. 
 
 The same spirit of activity pervades all the 
 chapels and their congregation. Something is 
 found to do by every willing worker. Especially 
 does the hand that is twice blessed aim to gather 
 in the little ones. There are guilds and schools 
 and work and prayers for every babe in Christ ; 
 if one wants to hear the praise of old Trinity in 
 strange places he will hear it to best advantage in 
 some of the down-town rookeries from which the 
 children have been gathered into the church and 
 made to love its ways and services. For the work 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 1 73 
 
 of each care is done systematically. Districts are 
 divided up and apportioned so as to be thoroughly 
 canvassed, and all cases where the ministrations 
 of the church are needed and all opportunities of 
 aggressive work are reported immediately and 
 acted upon, and in the parish chapels, the services 
 are arranged and conducted so as to attract those 
 for whose spiritual welfare they are intended. Nor 
 must it be forgotten that besides maintaining five 
 beds at St. Luke's Hospital, for the sick poor of 
 the Parish, the old rectory next door to St. John's 
 Chapel, which is fragrant to me with the memory 
 of Dr. Berrian and his family, is the enlarged and 
 beautified home of Trinity Hospital, maintained 
 by the corporation. The Vestry also provide for 
 the free interment of the destitute poor in St. 
 Michael's cemetery, Newton, L. I. Thus in death 
 as in life the old Parish looks after her children, 
 parts with them only at the grave, where she 
 leaves them under the smile of God's benediction. 
 In closing this paper, I cannot do better than 
 quote the following beautiful lines which appeared 
 in the New York American^ some fifty years ago, 
 when the old Trinity Church whose consecration 
 was witnessed be President Washington in 1 790, 
 
174 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 was in the process of demolition and the new and 
 grander church of to-day was rising from its dust. 
 The newspaper from which this touching tribute 
 is taken was edited by Charles King, LL.D., who 
 was afterwards President of Columbia College. 
 
 TRINITY CHURCH. 
 
 Farewell ! Farewell ! They're falling fast, 
 
 Pillar and arch and architrave ; 
 Yon aged pile, to me the last 
 Sole record of the by-gone past, 
 
 Is speeding to its grave : 
 And thoughts from memory's foimtain flow, 
 (As one by one, like wedded hearts, 
 Each rude and mouldering stone departs,) 
 Of boyhood's happiness and woe, — 
 
 Its sunshine and its shade : 
 And though each ray of early gladness 
 Comes mingled with the hues of sadness, 
 
 I would not bid them fade. 
 They come, as come the stars at night, — 
 Likti fountains gushing into light — 
 And close around my heart they twine. 
 Like ivy round the mountain pine ! 
 Yes, they are gone — the sunlight smiles 
 All day upon its footworn aisles; 
 Those foot-worn aisles, where oft have trod 
 The humble worshippers of God, 
 In times long past, when Freedom first 
 From all the land in glory burst 1 
 
WALKS IN OUR CHORCHYARDS. 1 75 
 
 The heroic few ! From him whose sword 
 
 Was wielded in his country's cause, 
 To him who battled with his word, 
 
 The bold expounder of her laws ! 
 And they are gone — gone Hke the lone 
 
 Forgotten echoes of their tread ; 
 And from their niches now are gone 
 
 The sculptured records of the dead ! 
 As now I gaze, my heart is stirred 
 
 With music of another sphere ! 
 A low, sweet chime, which once was heard, 
 Comes like the note of some wild bird 
 
 Upon my listening ear ; — 
 Recalling many a happy hour, 
 Reviving many a withered flower. 
 Whose bloom and beauty long have laid 
 Within my sad heart's silent shade : 
 Life's morning flowers ! that bud and blow 
 
 And wither ere the sun hath kissed 
 The dew drops from their breasts of snow. 
 
 Or dried the landscape's veil of mist ! 
 
 Yes ! When that sweetly mingled chime 
 Stole on my ear in boyhood's time, 
 My glad heart drank the thrilling joy. 
 
 Undreaming of its future pains ; — 
 As spell-bound as the Theban boy 
 
 Listening to Memnon's fabled strains I 
 
 Farewell, old fane ! And though unsung 
 
 By bards thy many glorious fell, 
 Though babbling fame had never rung 
 
 Thy praises on his echoing bell — 
 Who that hath seen, can e'er forget 
 
 Thy grey old spire ? — Who that hath knelt 
 
 Within thy sacred aisles, nor felt 
 Rehgion's self grow sweeter yet ? 
 
176 WALKS IN OUR CHURCHYARDS. 
 
 Yes! Though the decking hand of Time 
 
 Glory to Greece's fanes hath given, 
 That, from her old heroic clime, 
 
 Point proudly to their native heaven ; 
 Though Rome hath many a ruined pile 
 
 To speak the glory of her land, 
 And fair, by Egypt's sacred Nile, 
 
 Her mouldering monuments may stand, 
 The joy that swells the gazer's heart. 
 
 The pride that sparkles in his eye. 
 When pondering on these piles, where art 
 
 In crumbling majesty doth lie. 
 Ne'er blended with them keener joy 
 Than mine, when but a thoughtless boy 
 I gazed with awe- struck, wondering eye, 
 On thy old spire, my Trinity ! 
 And thou shalt live like words of truth, — 
 Like golden monuments of youth — 
 As on the lake's unrippled breast 
 The mirrored mountain lies at rest, 
 So shalt thou lie, till life depart. 
 Mirrored for ages on my heart ! 
 
 In the same spirit of reverend love, I stand 
 under the spire of the grand temple of worship at 
 whose consecration I was present nearly half a 
 century ago, and looking around upon the six 
 stalwart children that own her for a nursing 
 mother, and remembering her record of faith and 
 good deeds, I say, GOD BLESS Old Trinity I 
 
NDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 Alexander, James, 70. 
 Andros, .Sir E^dmund, 37. 
 Apthorpe, 71. 
 
 " Ann, 108. 
 
 Charles Ward, 106, 
 107. 
 Armitage, Benjamin, 148. 
 Astor, John Jacob, 163. 
 Auchmuty, Rev. Samuel, 126. 
 
 Bache, Theophylact, 35. 
 Barclay, Anthony, 148, 
 
 *' George, 148. 
 Rev. Mr., 168. 
 Barton, Rev,, 145. 
 Battin, John, 164. 
 Bayard, 84. 
 Belmont, 83. 
 Bend, G., 56. 
 Bensar, 162. 
 Berrian, Dr., 149, 173. 
 
 James, 162. 
 Bibby, 158. 
 Black, John, 162. 
 Bleecker, 36. 
 
 Anthony J., 34, 35- 
 
 " Anthony Lispenard, 
 
 33, 44- 
 " Jacobus, 33. 
 
 " Jan Jansen, 33. 
 
 Bogert, 143. 
 Bond, Capt., 145. 
 Bondinot, 84. 
 
 Bradford, William, 7, 25, 91. 
 Col. William, 26. 
 
 Breese, Sidney, 24. 
 Brookins, Artemus B. , 161. 
 Brovort, Elias, Jr., 132. 
 
 " Mrs. Ann, 132. 
 Brown, Benjamin M., 148. 
 
 " Sexton, 46. 
 Buchanan, Thos., 70. 
 Burton, William E., 161. 
 
 C. 
 
 Camman, Charles L., 70. 
 Cammann, 158. 
 Campbell, Col. Mungo, 145. 
 Churcher, Ann, 49. 
 
 " 48. 
 Clarke, Mrs., 11. 
 
 " Capt. Thomas, 57. 
 Clarkson, 65, 66, 158. 
 
 " David, 66, 67. 
 
 David M., 66. 
 
 " Matthew, 66. 
 
 " Gen. Matthew, 62, 
 
 65, 67. 
 Thos. S., 67. 
 Clift, 157. 
 
 Clinton, De Witt, 109, 138. 
 Cole, 69. 
 
 Coles, John B., 67, 70. 
 CoUis, Christopher, 137, 138. 
 Constant, D., 84. 
 Cooper, Thomas Apthorpe, 9. 
 Cornbury, Lady, 11, 90. 
 Cornell, 143. 
 Cotheal, 158. 
 
 " Alexander I., 148. 
 
 " Henry, 148. 
 Crane, James E., 162. 
 Cresap, Michael, 81 . 
 
178 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Cresap, Col. Thos., 8i. 
 Croes, Bishop, 19. 
 Cruger, 158. 
 
 " John, 12. 
 Cutler, 143. 
 
 D. ' 
 
 Darley, Arthur and Mary, 114. 
 Davis, 71. 
 
 " James, T43. 
 " Matthew L., 109. 
 De Lancey, James, 24. 
 De Peyster, 66. 
 
 " Abraham, 125. 
 
 " Frederic, 42. 
 
 " Gen. J. Watts, 43. 
 
 Desbrosses, 71. 
 
 " John, 128. 
 
 Dix, John A., Major General, 
 
 113, 157, 163. 
 Dix, Rev. Dr., 171. 
 Drakes, 158. 
 Duer, Lady Kitty, 71 . 
 Dugan, Alexander, 162. 
 
 Backer, George L., 9. 
 Edgar, 149. 
 
 Emmett, Thomas Addis, 7, 136. 
 Erving, John, 160. 
 Everett, Edward, 150. 
 
 Faneuil, Benj., 59,60. 
 
 " Peter, 59. 
 Farnham, Col., 18. 
 Franklin, Benj., 92, 96. 
 Freneau, Philip, 105. 
 Fulton, Robert, 7, 36,60. 
 
 G. 
 
 Gaines, Hugh, 94. 
 Gale, Thomas, 1,8. 
 Gallatin, Albert, 36. 
 Gates, Gen. Horatio, 70. 
 Gerry, 149. 
 Gibbs, Capt., 149. 
 Goelet, Peter, 147. 
 Goodwin, 149. 
 Gordon, Frederic, 162. 
 Gracie, 44. 
 
 " Archibald, 70. 
 Grenolier, Gabriel, 162. 
 Gunning, 143. 
 
 H. 
 
 Haight, Dr., 147. 
 
 Hallem, Dr., 53. 
 
 Halsted, 162. 
 
 Hamblin, Thomas, 162. 
 
 Hamersley, 71. 
 
 Hamilton, Alexander, 7, 9, 17, 
 
 22, 44, 60, 109, 146, 157. 
 Hamilton, Sir E., 163. 
 
 " Philip, 9. 
 Harison, Richard, 123. 
 Harrison, 80, 149. 
 Harvey, 158. 
 Hobart, Bishop, 149. 
 Hoffman, 71, 158. 
 
 Josiah Ogden, 123. 
 Mrs. Linley Murray, 
 152. 
 " Martin, 123. 
 " Nicholas, 123. 
 Horseman, Daniel, 25. 
 Horsmanden, Chief Justice, 60. 
 Horton, Capt., 145. 
 Hosack, Dr., no. 
 Hosick, Dr., 158. 
 Hunter, Dr., 157. 
 Hyslop, 158. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 179 
 
 Inslee, Lieut, 145. 
 Iredell, Lieut., 145. 
 
 J- 
 Jamison, David, 25. 
 Jay, 66, 71, 84. 
 " Governor, 9. 
 " John, 120. 
 Jefferson, 36. 
 Jones, David S., 9. 
 " George, 148. 
 " John, 143. 
 " John Q., 148. 
 Johnson, Sir John, 42. 
 
 K. 
 Kearney, Gen. Philip Watts, 39. 
 
 " Philip, 7, 17, 42. 
 Keimer, Printer, 92. 
 Kemble, 158. 
 Kennedy, Archibald, 42. 
 Kling, Charles, LL.D., 174. 
 
 Lafayette, 116. 
 
 Lamb, Gen. John, 17, 60. 
 
 Lambert, John, i. 
 
 " Rev. John, 131. 
 
 Laurens, 84. 
 Lawrence, 158. 
 
 " Augustine H., 55. 
 
 Elizabeth, 162. 
 " John, 162. 
 
 Capt. John, 7, 20, 21, 
 26. 
 " Widow of Capt. John 
 
 27. 
 " MajorJonathan,i55. 
 Leake, Major Robert, 42. 
 Leake & Watts Orphan Asy- 
 lum, 42. 
 Lee, 149. 
 
 Legget, Mary, 162. 
 Le Roy, 36. 
 
 " Herman, 70. 
 Lewis, Francis, 17, 60, 116, 
 
 117, 118. 
 Lewis, Governor, 120, 
 " Morgan, 119, 120. 
 " Gen. Morgan, 113, 117. 
 Lispenard, 36. 
 
 " Anthony, 33. 
 
 " Leonard, 35. 
 
 Livingston, 36, 39, 71, 80. 
 " Gertrude, 120. 
 
 " Jacob, 37, 50. 
 
 Janet, 137. 
 " Maturin, 120. 
 
 Philip, 26. 
 " Robert, 36, 37, 38, 
 
 116. 
 " Robert C, 36. 
 
 Robert R., 38. 
 Judge Robert R., 
 
 38,41. 
 " Walter, 36. 
 
 Logan, Capt., 145. 
 Lorillard, 158. 
 Ludlow, Carey, 80. 
 " Catharine, 80. 
 " Charles, 79, 
 " Daniel, 119. 
 " Gabriel, 79. 
 " Gabriel H., 79. 
 Gabriel W. , 79 . 
 " Henry, 79. 
 " Lieut., 21, 79. 
 Thos. W., 79. 
 Sarah Frances, 123. 
 Lydig, 157. 
 Lynch, Dominick, 69. 
 Lyon, David, 6. 
 
 M 
 
 Many, 158. 
 Marion, 84. 
 
i8o 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Marisco, Withamus, 84. 
 Mason, Dr. , 165. 
 Maxwell, James Hower, iii. 
 McEvers, Bache, 147. 
 McKnight, Rev. Charles, 133. 
 
 " Richard, 133. 
 
 McNeven, Dr. William James, 
 
 136. 
 McNevin, Dr., 71. 
 McVickar, 149. 
 Mesier, 71. 
 
 " Abraham, 99. 
 Peter, 55, 99. 
 " Peter, A., 100. 
 Milborne, 37. 
 Minuit, Governor, 33. 
 Montgomery, Gen. Richard M., 
 
 7, 22, 54, 136. 
 Moore, Elizabeth, 162. 
 " Sir Henry, 12. 
 Moore, Bishop Benj., 56, 60, 
 
 130. 
 Moore, Charity, 56. 
 
 " Clement C, 58. 
 Morgan, John J., 112, 158. 
 Morse, Samuel F. B., 24. 
 Morton, 80. 
 
 " Gen. Jacob, 80, 157. 
 Mour, Cornelius, 162. 
 Muhlenberg, Rev. Peter, 19. 
 Murray, John, Jr., 69. 
 
 N. 
 
 Nean, Elias, 83. 
 
 " Susannah, 83. 
 Nesbitt, 143. 
 Nichols, John, 162. 
 Norman, Capt., 145. 
 
 O. 
 
 Ogden, 80, 143. 
 
 " Abraham, 123. 
 David B., 148. 
 
 Ogden, Samuel G., 119. 
 " Thomas L., 123. 
 " Thomas Ludlow, 122, 
 123. 
 Onderdonk, 143. 
 
 Dr., 149. 
 Oram, James, 95 . 
 Ostrander, 158. 
 
 Parks, Rev. Dr., 147. 
 Patus, Leonard, 162. 
 Perry, Elizabeth Champlin, 83. 
 " Commodore O. H., 83. 
 Popham, Major, 121. 
 Pray, 149. 
 Provost, Rev. Samuel, 19. 
 
 Randolph, 157. 
 Ravenscroft, Bishop, 19. 
 Reade, Joseph, 125, 126. 
 
 " Lawrence, 126. 
 Reid, John, 71 . 
 Rhinelander, 143, 149. 
 Robinson, Capt., 118. 
 Rutherford, 66, 71 . 
 
 Walter, 71. 
 
 S. 
 
 Schuyler, 35, 157. 
 Scott, John Morin, 132. 
 ** Lewis AUain, 133. 
 Seymour, 71. 
 Shepley, George, 162. 
 Slidell, John, 55. 
 Smith, Wm. Alexander, 148. 
 Somerindykes, 143. 
 Speed, Maria, 162. 
 Spencer, 149. 
 Stewart, 36. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 i8i 
 
 Stirling, Earl of, 26, 42, 60, 70. 
 Stockton, Richard, 123. 
 Stringham, 145 . 
 Strong, Templeton, 148. 
 Sturns, John, 71 . 
 Stuyvesant, 71 . 
 
 " George Petrus, 33. 
 
 " Mrs., 144. 
 
 Summeslays, John, 162. 
 Sumner, Bishop, 119. 
 Suydam, Ferdinand, 147. 
 Swords, 158. 
 
 Jas. R., 97. 
 Mary, 98. 
 " Thomas, 96. 
 " Lieut. Thomas, 98. 
 
 Talbot, 145. 
 
 Talman, Carolina, 147. 
 
 " John H., 147. 
 Taylor, Capt. Peter, 161. 
 Thody, Elizabeth, 78. 
 
 Michael, 78. 
 Thorburn, Grant, 109, 165. 
 Thome, 143. 
 
 " Richard, 114. 
 
 " Sarah, 148. 
 Tillon, 84. 
 Tredwell, 143. 
 
 U. 
 
 Underhill, Eugene, 160. 
 Ustic, Thomas, 162. 
 
 V. 
 
 Van Amridges, 143 . 
 
 Van Brugh, 71 . 
 
 Van Dam, 128. 
 
 Van Der Heuvilles, 158. 
 
 Van Cortland, 66. 
 
 Van Zandt, Catharina, iii. 
 
 Van Zandt, Jacobus, 1 1 1 . 
 
 " Johannes, iii. 
 
 " Peter Vra, no. 
 
 " Wyman, no. 
 
 " Wynant, Jr., 55, 
 
 no. 
 Verplank, 66, 80. 
 Vesey, Rev. William, 25. 
 Vinton, 83. 
 
 W. 
 
 Waddington, 80, 
 Wainwright, Rev. Dr., 152. 
 Waldo, 143. 
 Walker, Capt., 145. 
 Ward, Frederick A., 160. 
 Warne, Catharina, 113. 
 Washington, Geo., 19, 20, 112, 
 
 121,134, 135, 173. 
 Watts, 39, 43, 44, 45. 
 
 " John, 40, 41, 69. 
 
 " Lady Mary, 42, 71. 
 
 *' Robert, 40,42. 
 Webb, 36. 
 Weston, Rev, Dr. Samuel H., 
 
 152. 
 Whitfield, George, 26. 
 Whitehead, J., 162. 
 Wies, Mr., 145. 
 Wilcox, Capt., 145. 
 Wilkes, 158. 
 Willett, Marinus, 17, 54, 60, 
 
 113. 
 Williams, Bishop, 53. 
 Williamson, Dr. Hugh, 107. 
 Winthrop, 36, 149. 
 Wilson, Bishop, 119. 
 Winslow, Rev., 145. 
 Wittenhall, 143. 
 Wolfe, Capt., 145. 
 
 " John David, 148. 
 Wragg, Mary, 52. 
 
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