Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/574

 466 THE HISTORY OF BAREINGTON. Acre cove, is the place of the first interments of the whites on Barrington soil. The oldest graves are marked, if at all, by rude field stones, without inscriptions, so that it is impos- sible to tell when or by whom the ground was first used for burial purposes. We may believe that some of the slain of Philip's war were among the first to be laid at rest at Burial Hill. The tombstone of earliest date in this yard is that of Renew Carpenter, wife of Benjamin Carpenter, who died July 29th, 1703, aged forty-three years. Her husband died in 1727, aged sixty-nine years. As the land of this burial place is private ground, the graves are neglected, and unless some action be taken to care for the grounds and protect the monuments, all evidence of a burial place will soon be ef- faced. After the Indian war of 1675, the meeting-house of the New Meadow Neck colony was established at the lower end of the neck and a lot of land was chosen south of the meet- ing-house on what is now known as Tyler's Point. After this time interments began to be made at Tyler's Point, on land which may have been a part of the training field or a part of the pastor's and teacher's lots, and near to the new house to which Mr. Myles returned as pastor after the trouble with Philip was over. Mr. Myles died in 1683, and it is probable that his remains were the first deposited in the new burial ground at Tyler's Point. If so, his grave is among the unmarked mounds in this old cemetery, but his name and memory should be reverenced by the generations present and future. Gray's inspired Elegy applies to the mounds at Burial Hill and Tyler's Point. " Perhaps, in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands that the rod of empire might have swajed, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre. Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast, The little tyrant of his field withstood, Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest; Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood."