Ye Antientist Burial Ground, New London
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Thorn (letter)
Thorn or þorn , is a letter in the Old English, Old Norse, and Icelandic alphabets, as well as some dialects of Middle English. It was also used in medieval Scandinavia, but was later replaced with the digraph th. The letter originated from the rune in the Elder Fuþark, called thorn in the...
Antientist Burial Ground in New London, Connecticut
New London, Connecticut
New London is a seaport city and a port of entry on the northeast coast of the United States.It is located at the mouth of the Thames River in New London County, southeastern Connecticut....
is one of the earliest graveyards in New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
, and the oldest colonial cemetery in New London County. The hillside lot of 1.5 acres (6,000 m²) adjoins the original site of the settlement's first meeting-house. From here the visitor has a broad view to the east of the Thames River
Thames River (Connecticut)
The Thames River is a short river and tidal estuary in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It flows south for through eastern Connecticut from the junction of the Yantic and Shetucket rivers at Norwich, to New London and Groton, which flank its mouth at the Long Island Sound.Differing from its...
, and on the far shore, the heights of Groton
Groton, Connecticut
Groton is a town located on the Thames River in New London County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 39,907 at the 2000 census....
.
Reservation of the lot for its purpose had been recorded in the summer of 1645. The first decedent "of mature age" was duly interred there in 1652. But it is the ordinance of June 6, 1653 that legally sets the place apart and declares, "It shall ever bee for a Common Buriall place, and never be impropriated by any."
A later record notes the appointment of the sexton
Sexton (office)
A sexton is a church, congregation or synagogue officer charged with the maintenance of its buildings and/or the surrounding graveyard. In smaller places of worship, this office is often combined with that of verger...
—
Whose work is to order youth in the meeting-house, sweep the meeting-house, and beat out dogs, for which he is to have 40s.ShillingThe shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...
a year : he is also to make all graves ; for a man or woman he is to have 4s., for children, 2s. a grave, to be paid by survivors .
17th century New London was yet a rough and isolated corner of early colonial Connecticut
Connecticut Colony
The Connecticut Colony or Colony of Connecticut was an English colony located in British America that became the U.S. state of Connecticut. Originally known as the River Colony, it was organized on March 3, 1636 as a haven for Puritan noblemen. After early struggles with the Dutch, the English...
. Private interments were not customary, and this was the only common burial place.
The dead were brought in from a distance of six or seven miles (11 km), either carried in hurdlesHurdles (agricultural)Hurdles are a form of rural crafts. They are lightweight portable fencing structures that are used to enclose animals such as sheep . In England & Wales they have often been woven from ash tree, willow or hazel withies, and made windproof with wattle, and so called 'wattle hurdles'. There are...
, or borne on a bierBierA bier is a stand on which a corpse, coffin or casket containing a corpse, is placed to lie in state or to be carried to the grave.In Christian burial, the bier is often placed in the centre of the nave with candles surrounding it, and remains in place during the funeral.The bier is a flat frame,...
upon men's shoulders; large companies assembling, and relieving each other at convenient distances .
Few of the early graves ever had inscribed markers. The New London of that time possessed no skilled stonecutters, and those early planters simply had not the means. A few surviving families did, however, seek to address the deficiency in later years. At least four stones dated in the 17th century have been found that could not have been placed before 1720 .
Otherwise —
If the best man in the community was struck down, his companions could do no more to testify their regret, than to lay him reverently in the grave, and seal it with a rude granite ... broken with ponderous mallets from some neighboring ledge and wearily dragged with ropes to the place and laid over the remains to secure them from disturbance, and mark the spot where a brother was buried .
As time wore away the unadorned burial hillocks, the older were, "covered over with fresh deposits of the dead, so that the numbers here cannot be estimated by the evidences that now remain ... Yet here undoubtably [sic] were deposited nearly the whole generation of our first settlers" .
Notable persons buried here
- Thomas Short (1682–1712): Printer (1710) of The Saybrook PlatformSaybrook PlatformSaybrook Platform refers to conservative religious proposals adopted at Saybrook, Connecticut in September 1708. The document attempted to stem the tide of disunity among the established Congregational churches and restore discipline among both the clergy and their congregations...
. - Gurdon SaltonstallGurdon SaltonstallGurdon Saltonstall was governor of the Colony of Connecticut from 1708 to 1724...
(1666–1724): Governor of the Colony of Connecticut, 1708-1724. - Sarah Kemble KnightSarah Kemble KnightSarah Kemble Knight was a teacher and businesswoman, who is remembered for her diary of a journey from Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony, to New York City, Province of New York, in 1704–1705, a courageous adventure for a woman to undertake.She was born in Boston, to Thomas Kemble and Elizabeth...
(1666–1727): Author (1704) of The Journal of Madame Knight. (ISBN 1-55709-115-3). - Joshua Hempstead (1678–1758): Farmer, surveyor, carpenter, gravestone carver, trader, petty attorney, public official, and diarist. Author of Diary of Joshua Hempstead of New London, Connecticut, 1711-1758. (ISBN 0-9607744-1-6).
- Lucretia Harris Shaw (1737–1781): Wife of Captain Nathaniel Shaw, Jr. She turned her home into a hospital and nursed wounded and sick soldiers returning from the infamous British prison ships at Wallabout BayWallabout BayWallabout Bay is small body of water in Upper New York Bay along the northwest shore of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, between the present Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges, opposite Corlear's Hook on Manhattan to the west, across the East River...
. Resultantly, she contracted the Gaol Fever herself and succumbed. The New London chapter of the Daughters of the American RevolutionDaughters of the American RevolutionThe Daughters of the American Revolution is a lineage-based membership organization for women who are descended from a person involved in United States' independence....
is named in her honor; and her house, the Shaw-Perkins Mansion, has since 1907 been preserved as the headquarters of the New London County Historical Society .