Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/576

 468 THE HISTORY OF BARRINGTON. usual, when Lieut. James Adams, Samuel Kent, and Samuel Allen were chosen a committee " to act on behalf of the town concerning the land lying on New Meadow Neck which has been a training field and a burying place, on which a meeting-house has been formerly built, about obtaining and maintaining the town's rights with respect to said land and to make report to the town as soon as they have a conven- ient opportunity." It does not appear by the records that the convenient season to report ever came and the claim of the town against that of individual owners was held in the balance for one hundred and twenty-seven years. Mean- while four generations had been born and buried and seem to have had an unobstructed passage to the tomb. The New Meadow Neck burial ground continued to be used for many families of the eastern part of the town. Still the town possessed no deed of the land, until March i8, 1854, when, as the result of considerable agitation and town meet- ing discussion, Mr. Jesse Davis and wife deeded to the town "A certain lot of land in Barrington, and now used for a burial place, situate near the river and southerly from my mansion house containing 106 square rods with the right of way over land of grantee from the road to the burial place, the said premises and way to be used for burial purposes." The burial ground at the head of Bullock's Cove, in an- cient Wannamoisett, was located on the farm of John Brown, Senior. The first burial in this ground was probably that of Mr. Brown's son, John Brown, Jun., who died in 1662. His death was followed by that of his father, the same year. Mary (Brown) Willett, daughter of John Brown, Sen., and wife of Capt. Willett, died in 1669, and was followed by the death of her husband, five years later, in 1674. " Dorothy Brown, widow of John Brown, Sen., died Jan. 27, 1673, being the 90th. year of her life or thereabouts, and was buried on the 29th of January," say the records of John Myles, Jun., Town Clerk. Chiselled deep in the heavy stones, over the grave of Captain Willett, is the following inscription :