The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-11-26
EYE OLD STRATFIELDr BURNING
 GROUND

GROUND
 The following paper was read recent ly by Mrs. George A. Jamieson, before Q meeting of the Bridgeport chapter of the D. A. R.:
 It has been we'll said by modern writer, that with the Puritans, religion and education went hand in hand, that side by side, and simultaneously were planted the church and the schoolhouse. In the nature of things another com mon meeting place was almost as soon selected, wherein at last, death, the great leveller, realized their stern dreams of absolute equality. Hence, as early as 1888, barely ten years after the establishment of the school house and in the same year as the founding of the church, we find the settlers of Pequon- mock, or Stratfield, the Park City's colo- nial ancestor, setting aside piece of ground for the burial of their dead. Stratfeld, as I need hardly remind you, was an offshoot of the still earlier set clement of Stratford. It centered about at the junction of Park and North ave- nues, and in 1878 consisted of ten fami- lies. In the little triangular piece of ground then chosen, a bit of antiquity now shut in by busy, bustling, modern streets, these ten families and their de- scendants unto the third and fourth generation lie peacefully in serried ranks on the sunny hillside.
 Pause in this neglected graveyard For while to muse and ponder On the half-effaced inscriptions, Written with little skill of song-craft, I1omely phrases, but each letter Full of hope and yet of heart-break, Full of all the tender pathos Of the Here and the Hereafter; Stay and read the rude inscriptions'-
 As one wanders about, through long grass that, in the hollows, is positiely up to ones neck, the persistent recur- renee of names still borne by our con- temporaries, first strikes the attention. Sometimes little evolution is percepti- ble, as of Startling into Sterling, or See- I've to Seeley, but mostly the names that we trace on these rude headstones are identical with those we read on the name plates of many of our homes, and on the doors of our leading business houses. The oldest stones bristle with the awful warning of skull and cross bones, realistically carved upon their summits, and in somewhat vindictive epithets that admonish the passer-by to prepare for death, for the shall shortly be as they At a later date, the skulls have expanded into ghastly, grinning cherubs and stern-visaged angels all wings and ears.
 Near the southeast entrance. (if an aperture between two posts can be called an entrance) is stone bearing +N Reverend MT. Charles Chauncey, Min ister of ye Gospel at Stratfield." MT. Chauncey was Harvard graduate, and held tse first religious service in Stratfield in 1888. There is no record of his being paid regular salary until 1893, when he was voted "sixty pounds for his encouragement in the ministry" The date of MT Chauncey's death is 1714; many of his flock preceded him to their long home, but time has oblitera- ted nearly everything from the earlier stones; there is an occasional initial or date, the earliest being 16S8
 Some of the epitaphs are plainly orig inal; witness the one on Thomas Will son, who, we are informed, was seized of the illness of which he died, at Trinity, Newfoundland, October F, 1779."
 sSwift as the sun Revolves the Day,
 We hasten to the dead,
 Slaves of the Wind we Puff away
 And to the ground we tread. We stear our course up through the
 skies,
 Farewell, this barren land. Here our dear Wealth of Spirits lies,
 And Reckoning angels stand"
 Or this on Sarah Wilson:
 rSome courteous friend come drop a
 tear,
 Over these Dry Bones and Say, These once was Strong as mine Appear.
 And mine shall be as they. Thus should these mouldering members
 teach
 What now our senses learn, For Dust and Ashes loudest preach,
 Mans infinite Concern"
 Many Revolutionary soldiers are bur- ;ed here: noticeabIy. Major Aaron flaw lev. Lieutenant Edward Burroughs and