HA, SYDNEY, SYDNEY!
LYEST THOU HERE?
I HERE LYE,
'TIL TIME IS FLOWN
TO ITS EXTREMITY.
It is the grave of a merchant—once an officer of the British army—Sydney Breese, who wrote his epitaph and directed that it be placed on his tombstone. He died in 1767.
Grave of Charlotte Temple
On the opposite side of the path, nearer to Broadway, is a marble slab lying flat on the ground and each year sinking deeper into the earth. It was placed there by one of the sextons of Trinity more than a century ago, in memory of Charlotte Temple.
Close by the porch of the north entrance to the church is the stone that marks the grave of William Bradford, who set up the first printing-press in the colony and was printer to the Colonial Government for fifty years. He was ninety-two years old when he died in 1752. The original stone was crumbling to decay when, in 1863, the Vestry of Trinity Church replaced it by the present stone, renewing the original inscription (see page [14]).
Martyr's Monument
The tall freestone Gothic shaft, the only monumental pile in the northern section of the churchyard, serves to commemorate the unknown dead of the Revolution. Trinity Church with all its records, together with a large section of the western part of the city, was burned in 1776 when the British army occupied the city. During the next seven years the only burials in the graveyard were the American prisoners from the Provost Jail in The Commons and the other crowded prisons of the city, who were interred at night and without ceremony. No record was kept of who the dead were.
A Churchyard Cryptograph