Rev. Dr. Daniel Worcester Faunce, son of Peleg and Olive (Finney) Faunce, was born in Plymouth, January 3, 1829, and graduated at Amherst in 1850. He studied for the ministry at the Newton Theological Institute, and was ordained in 1853. He married, August 15, 1853, Mary P. Perry, and in 1871 Mary E. Tucker. He was settled in Washington, D. C., and Pawtucket, R. I., and was the author of a number of religious works. His home is now in Providence, near that of his son, Rev. Wm. Herbert Perry Faunce, President of Brown University.
CHAPTER XXXII.
Mention of Plymouth grave yards has been confined thus far to a slight allusion to Cole’s Hill. Of the many within the limits of the town two are burial places of the aborigines, Watson’s Hill and High Cliff, and the numerous skeletons exhumed at those places from time to time, make it conclusive that they were places set apart for the burial of the dead. The grounds in and about the central town have been thoroughly explored in laying out streets, in excavating cellars and digging trenches for water, gas and sewer pipes, and not enough Indian bones have been found to warrant the conclusion that any other burial places were used by the Indians than those above mentioned. The discovery of the burial ground at High Cliff was brought to my knowledge by an incident in my own experience. I met one day in the autumn of 1844 on Court street a little girl about six years of age, crying and bleeding at the mouth. An older girl leading her told me that she had a pin in her throat. I led her to her home on South Russell street, stopping on the way at Mr. Standish’s blacksmith shop to borrow a pair of pincers, and soon relieved her from her suffering. The next day Mr. Orin Bosworth, learning that I was his little daughter’s friend, gave me as a reward for my service a stone pipe, which he said a gang of laborers, of whom he was foreman, had found in the railroad cut at High Cliff. I visited the spot at once, and found that seven or eight skeletons had been found, indicating an extensive burial ground, undoubtedly antedating the days of the Pilgrims. Some years afterwards, after the establishment of the Agassiz Museum in Cambridge, the pipe was examined by the experts of the Museum and pronounced of European workmanship, probably brought over and given to the Indians, either by European fishermen, or by one of the early adventurers like Champlain, John Smith or Thomas Dermer. It is made of stone about eight inches long, with a bowl about an inch square, and is in perfect order. I have quite recently seen a drawing of a fragment of a similar pipe which was found between the floor timbers of the Sparrow-hawk, wrecked on Cape Cod in 1626, the timbers of which have been put together, and are now in Pilgrim Hall. The burial ground in question owes its escape from forgetfulness to the pin in the throat of little Hannah Elizabeth Bosworth.
Passing by Burial Hill and Cole’s Hill to be mentioned later, there are Oak Grove and Vine Hills cemeteries; the Catholic cemetery; two burial grounds in Chiltonville, one at Bramhall’s corner, and one at the Russell Mills meeting house; three at Manomet, one where the first meeting house stood not far from the residence of the late Horace B. Taylor, one at the present meeting house, a modern Indian burial ground, on an Indian reservation on the westerly side of Fresh Pond; one at South Ponds, near the Chapel; one at the head of Half Way Ponds; one at the head of Long Pond; one near Bloody Pond, and one at Cedarville. There are also burial places in the South part of the town, which have been devoted to family uses and single graves may be found near Hospital landing at Billington Sea, and on the South Pond road, where the old pest house stood. At the last place there is a headstone at the grave of Mary, wife of Thomas Mayhew, who died September 3, 1776, aged 54 years. She was a daughter of Thomas Witherell, and as her husband was one of the most prominent men in the town, it is probable that she died of small pox, and that the removal of her body to a grave among her deceased relatives was thought dangerous.
I take the liberty to suggest that the selectmen set up a bronze tablet in the Indian burial ground at Fresh Pond with the following inscription, including an extract from a poem by the Rev. Theodore Dwight;
“Indian Burial Ground.”
“This tablet is erected in memory of the Indian tribes whose extinction, beginning in the Plymouth Colony, is now almost complete.”
“Indulge my native land, indulge a tear,
That steals impassioned o’er a nation’s doom;
To me each twig from Adam’s stock is dear,