Epitaphs from Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts, from 1657 to 1892

EPITAPHS

HILL,

FROM

BURIAL

PLYMOUTH.

A neat monument was erected on the site where, it has long since been ascertained, the remains of Governor Bradford were deposited. The monument consists of a solid block of granite, thirty inches square and eighteen inches thick, on a stone foundation. On the granite is a block of white marble twenty inches square and ten inches thick, on which is a white marble shaft, six feet high, in the form of a pyramid, fifteen inches square at the base, and eight inches square at the top, making the total height eight and one-half feet, erected in 1835 under the direction of Alden Bradford of Boston, late Secretary of State, a descendant of the Governor.

The following persons contributed to the same: Mrs. James De Wolf, of Bristol, R. I., Mrs. Collins, of Newport, wife of the late Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island, Hon John Davis, of Boston, LeBaron Bradford, of Plymouth, Capt. Gershom Bradford, of Duxbury, William J. A. Bradford, Duncan Bradford, George P. Bradford and Ezra Weston, Jr., Esq., of Boston.

† Qua patres difficillime

adepti sunt nolite turpiter
relinquere.

(SOUTH SIDE.)

Governor WILLIAM BRADFORD was born in Austerfield, a small and rather obscure village in the southerly border of Yorkshire, England, in March, 1588. His father * Jehovah is the help of my life.

↑ What our fathers with so much difficulty secured, do not basely relinquish.

William Bradford

died in 1591, leaving him to the care of his grandfather, who died in 1596. He was then placed in care of his uncle Robert of Scrooby, a small village five miles only from Austerfield in Nottinghamshire, and near to the manor house of Brewster. His father was an husbandman, and William was brought up as an agriculturalist. He inherited considerable property from his father. At an early age he became an attendant upon the preaching of Richard Clifton, and became a member of his church, over which he and Robinson presided. Brought up to labor he received only a scanty education, although he was much inclined to literary pursuits. He became quite proficient in Dutch, Latin, French and Greek, and was a very devoted student of Hebrew, as "he wished to see with his own eyes the ancient oracles of God in their native beauty." He was fond of history and philosophy but theology was his favorite study. He early adopted the views of the separatist divines, with an enthusiasm peculiar to his nature, and having become at an early age a leading man in the community where he resided, at the age of eighteen he joined with those who emigrated to Holland, where the commercial spirit had tol erated free religious opinions. In this attempt the company was betrayed by the captain of the vessel in which they had embarked and they were thrown into prison in Boston, Lincolnshire, but he was soon liberated on account of his youth. In the spring of the following year he made another unsuccessful attempt, but finally succeeded and joined his brethren at Amsterdam. Here he learned the art of silk-dyeing. Upon arriving at the age of twenty-one years he came into possession of his estate in England, and engaged in commercial pursuits in which he was not successful.

After a residence of about ten years in Leyden, the church which had been formed by Mr. Robinson prepared to remove to America. In this movement Bradford engaged with that zeal with which he entered into everything. He embarked for England July 22, 1620, and on the sixth of September set sail from Plymouth with the first company of about 100 persons, in the Mayflower, arriving in sight of Cape Cod on the ninth day of November. While the vessel lay in Cape Cod Harbor, he became one of the foremost in the selection of a site for a settlement; and while he was on an exploring expedition, his wife fell overboard from the ship, December 7, 1620, and was drowned.

Soon after the death of Governor Carver, April 5, 1621, Bradford was elected to fill the vacancy as Governor of the Colony. He was annually elected to that office till 1657, excepting the years, 1633, '34, '36, '38, '44. He had then become conspicuous among the people for wisdom, piety, fortitude and benevolence.

He lived almost through the whole period of the English Commonwealth, and saw other flourishing colonies, the offspring of that at Plymouth, rising around him and forming the germ of an immense nation, by all of whom he was regarded with the love and veneration due to a patriarch, and in the words of an ancient writer he "was the very prop and glory of Plymouth Colony during the whole series of changes that passed over it." In the office of chief magistrate he was prudent, temperate and firm, and would suffer no person to trample on the laws, or to disturb the peace of the colony.

He wrote a history of "Plymouth plantation," beginning with the first formation of the church (in 1602, and ending with 1647) which was published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1856. After an infirm and declining state of health for a number of months, he was suddenly seized by an acute disease in May, 1657. In the night his mind was so enraptured by contemplating upon religious truth and the hopes of futurity, that he said to his friends in the morning, "The good Spirit of God has given me a pledge of my happiness in another world and the first fruits of eternal glory."

The next day, May 9, 1657, he was removed from the present state of existence, greatly lamented by the people not only of Plymouth, but in the neighboring colonies. "The ninth of May, about nine of the clock,

A precious one God out of Plymouth took:

Governor Bradford then expired his breath."-Morton.

Governor Bradford's first wife was Dorothy May; his second wife was Alice Southworth, widow of Edward Southworth, 1623. He had one son by his first wife, William; Mercy and Joseph, by his second wife, from whom has sprung a large and honorable list of descendants, many of whom have lived and died in the Old Colony, and led active, useful lives, and have been highly respectable, as well as prominent in public life in New England and without her limits.

Alice, the wife of Governor Bradford, was no doubt buried near this monument.

The Old Colony records have the following:

"On the 26th day of March, 1670, Mistress Alice Bradford, Seni'r, changed this life for a better, having attained to four score years of age or thereabouts. Shee was a godly matron, and much loued while shee lived, and lamented tho' aged when she died, and was honorably interred on the 29th day of the month aforesaid: at New Plimouth."

A few years since Hon. John Howland, who died November 5th, 1854, at the age of ninety-seven years and five days, President of the Rhode Island Historical Society, Providence, R. 1., and a descendant in the fifth generation from John Howland, the Pilgrim, caused a grave-stone to be erected over the remains of his ancestor, consisting of a large slate-stone, upon which is the following inscription :

Here ended the Pilgrimage of | JOHN HOWLAND and ELIZABETH his wife. She was the dau'tr of Gov. Carver | They arrived in the Mayflower Dec. 1620; | they had 4 Sons & 6 dau'trs from whom | are descended a numerous posterity |

"1672 Feb'y 23d JOHN HOWLAND of Plymouth deceased, he lived to the age of 80 | yr's. He was the last man that was left of those that came over in the Ship called the Mayflo- | wer that lived in Plymouth."— [Plymouth Records.]

There is a painted sign board at the side of this gravestone containing the following inscription :

The grave of | JOHN HOWLAND | died | Feb. 25, 1672.

It has been frequently published that Mr. Howland married a daughter of Gover nor Carver. This we think is a mistake. In Bradford's History we find that John Howland married Elizabeth, the daughter of John Tillie. Mr. Howland was a distinguished man, and devoted to the interests of the Colony, both in relation to its civil and religious institutions. He was Deputy and Assistant for several years. His early residence was on Summer street, but afterwards removed to Rocky Nook, where he died. The remains of his cellar are visible a short distance north of the residence of the late Hezekiah Ripley.

The colonial records say, "He was a godly man and an ancient professor in the ways of Christ, and proved a useful instrument of good in his place." His descendants are quite numerous. The late Reverend John Howland of Carver, Mass., was grandson of Mr. Howland. He was the last man of them that came over in the Mayflower, who settled in Plymouth. On the passage to this country in the Mayflower the weather was tempestuous, and in a severe storm Mr. Howland fell overboard and came near losing his life. The following is a record of the accident in Bradford's own words. :

"And in one of them as they thus lay at hull, in a mighty storme, a lustie yonge man (called John Howland) coming upon some occasion above ye grattings, was, with a seele of ye shipe throwne into [ye] sea; but it pleased God yt he caught hould of ye tope-saile halliards, which hunge over board, & rane out at length; yet he held his hould (though he was sundrie fadomes under water) till he was hald up by ye same rope to ye brine of ye water, and then with a boat hooke & other means got into ye shipe againe, & his life saved; and though he was something ill with it, yet he lived many years after, and became a profitable member both in church and comone wealthe."

Mr. GRAY came to this conntry with his brother Thomas about 1643. Thomas removed to Tiverton, R. I., and Edward settled in Plymouth. His name frequently

8:33

appears in the records of that town, and he became a large owner of real estate. By his habits of industry and good management, he acquired a large property, his estate having been estimated the highest in the colony, at one time amounting to 1252 sterling. He was a large owner of land at Rocky Nook, Kingston, where the od family mansion still stands on the old road leading from Plymouth to Kingston, and is now owned and occupied by his descendants.

Beside his gravestone is a painted sign erected by the town of Plymouth, as follows:

The grave of | EDWARD GRAY, | Died | June 1681.

He married Hannah, daughter of Josiah and Margaret (Bourne) Winslow, a brother of Governor Edward Winslow, in 1665. She afterward became the wife of John Sturtevant, and died March, 1708-9.

Beside this gravestone is the following inscription on a painted signboard:

The grave of WILLIAM CROWE | Died | Jan. 1683.

6. Here Lyes ye Body of | Mr THOMAS CLARK Aged | 98 Years departed this life March ye 24th 1697.

"It is a well received tradition that this ancient man was the mate of the Mayflower, and the one who first landed on the island in Plymouth Harbor which bears his name. Little is known of the life and circumstances of the mate of the Mayflower; his name is not among the signers of the original compact, nor mentioned among the first settlers. It may therefore be conjectured, that he was considered merely as an officer of the ship, and that he returued to England in her with Captain Jones, and subsequently came over and settled in this town. We find his name among those who received allotments of land in 1624; and he also shared in the division of cattle in 1627. He resided at Eel River, and it is supposed that his family were among the sufferers in the house of William Clark, when attacked by a party of savages, March 12, 1676. He being himself absent at meeting escaped, while eleven others were massacred and his son tomahawked, who ever after wore a silver plate on his head from which he was called Silver-Head Tom. Numerous lineal descendants from Thomas Clark now reside at Eel river in this town, and in other parts of the Old Colony. There is a handsome China mug whose pedigree is traced through the Clark family back to Thomas Clark, which had been presented to the cabinet of the Pilgrim Society by Betsey B. Morton, a descendant, and also a leathern pocket-book with the initials T. C. impressed on its cover, presented by Amasa Clark. These relics afford additional evidence that the mate of the Mayflower died in this town, and that his ashes rest in the grave in our burial place designated by a stone with the above inscription."

There is a sign board at the side of this gravestone on which is the following inscription:

The grave of THOMAS CLARK | Died | March 24, 1697.

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Epitaphs from Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts, from 1657 to 1892: With ...