"In his home Judge Nelson was a great man. The almost extreme modesty which characterized his public life had its counterpart in thoroughly developed domestic virtues, which not only made him beloved to devotion by all the members of his family, but endeared him to all with whom he was brought into contact. There was in his disposition a placidness of temper which made him always easy of approach, and rendered intercourse with him a permanent spring of pure enjoyment."
FOOTNOTES:
[115] From the beginning justices of the Supreme Court of the United States sat, from time to time, as circuit judges. (Stuart v. Laird, 1 Cranch, p. 308.) Justice Nelson was assigned to the Second Circuit, which includes New York.
[116] Perry P. Rogers.
CHAPTER XVI
CHRIST CHURCHYARD
When in 1856 Frederick A. Lee and Dorr Russell formed the Lakewood Cemetery Association, and purchased the beautiful tract that lies along the hill on the east side of the lake, a half-mile from the village, the older burying-grounds within the town began gradually to be disused. Christ churchyard, which contains the oldest graves of the original settlement, has long since ceased to be used for burials, beyond those occasionally permitted, for special reasons, by act of the Vestry of the parish. This disuse has secured to the churchyard the right to grow old gracefully, without the too frequent intrusion of recent death, and to acquire the picturesque charm of antiquity which in cemeteries seems to dispel all the terrors of mortality.