Page:Bruton parish church restored and its historic environments (1907 V2).djvu/80

 of its trees in after years, Commissary Blair presided over the conference of the Virginia Colonial Clergy. Here the statesmen and warriors of the Revolutionary period, gathered in eager groups to debate questions of vital importance, pending before the Virginia House of Burgesses. And here, in long years after, the soldiers, wounded in the battles around Williamsburg, sat talking of other issues while convalescing from wounds received in battle, the church having been used for a while as a Confederate Hospital.

In the churchyard many ancient tombs remain, some of which are of peculiar interest. Here are buried the two children of Mrs Martha Washington, by her first husband; the tombstones of her grandfather, grandmother, great-grandfather being in the chancel of the church. The sculptured marble over the grave of Gov. Edward Nott is worthy of close inspection, speaking through symbols of the flight of time, of mortality and of an eternal beyond.

The entire surface of the yard has been used for the burial of the dead, and in many places the shallow graves of later date were dug where the ground had been used for burial years before. No stone marks many of these graves where the fathers of the hamlet and some of the fathers of the nation sleep.

The Churchyard Wall

The wall around the churchyard was built in 1752.