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TRINITY CHURCHYARD.—There was a graveyard here (the site was then beyond the city limits) before the first Trinity Church was built in 1697. The oldest grave that can be identified is in the northern section on the left of the first path; it is that of a little child, Richard Churcher, "who died . the 5 of . April 1681 . of . age . 5 years and . 5 . months"; and whose name, engraved on the sandstone slab, has endured through the centuries with an immortality singularly in contrast with the brief span of his child life.
Near the porch on the north side of the church is the grave of William
Bradford, Printer, who printed the first newspaper in New York—the New York Gazette in 1725. He died in 1752, aged ninety-two years. The stone bears the injunction:
Reader, reflect how soon you'll quit this stage; You'll find but few attain to such an Age. Life's full of Pain. Lo! Here's a place of Rest, Prepare to meet your GOD, then you are blest.
Following the path to the right, we come to a slab, lying flat in the turf, inscribed with the name of CHARLOTTE TEMPLE. But Charlotte Temple was a creation of fiction, the heroine of Mrs. Rowson's "Charlotte Temple : A Tale of Truth," written in 1790. The story was of an English school girl, who eloped with her lover, a British officer; came to New York; was betrayed and deserted, and died of a broken heart. The pathetic tale took strong hold upon the tender sympathies of the maids and matrons of that day, and has had vogue among readers of "Tales of Truth" ever since. By many Mrs. Rawson's heroine has been accepted as a real person. It was no wonder, then, that when, in the '40s, one of the stonecutters employed in the erection of the Trinity Church carved on this slab the name of Charlotte Temple, the imitation tomb-stone laid here above the imaginary grave of a fictitious character in due time became a shrine of sentimental pilgrimage. Countless flowers have been laid upon "the grave of Charlotte Temple;" we may find such tributes here to-day.
The Richard Churcher headstone is directly across the path from here; utt the back of the stone is carved the emblem of a winged hour-glass with skull and cross-bones. A few steps beyond, on the left, is the curious tombstone of Sidney Breese, merchant and officer in the British army, who died in 1767. The epitaph runs:
Sidney Breese June 9 1767 Made by himself
Ha Sidney Sidney Lyest thou here
I here Lye
Till time is flown
To its Eternity
In the northern part of the ground near Broadway stands the hand-some Gothic memorial commonly called the MARTYRS' MONUMENT:
Sacred to the Memory of those brave and good men, who died whilst imprisoned in this City, for their devotion to the cause of America's Independence."
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