Special families in New England seem to have appropriated special verses as epitaphs, evidently because of the rhyme with the surname. Thus the Jones family were properly proud of this family rhyme:
"Beneath this Ston's
Int'r'd the Bon's
Ah Frail Remains
Of Lieut Noah Jones"—
or Mary Jones or William Jones, as the case might be.
The Noyes family delighted in these lines:
"You children of the name of Noyes
Make Jesus Christ yo'r only choyse."
The Tutes and Shutes and Roots began their epitaphs thus:
"Here lies cut down like unripe fruit
The wife of Deacon Amos Shute."
Gershom Root was "cut down like unripe fruit" at the fully mellowed age of seventy-three.
A curiously incomprehensible epitaph is this, which always strikes me afresh, upon each perusal, as a sort of mortuary conundrum:
"O! Happy Probationer!
Accepted without being Exercised."