Ancient Burying Ground of Hartford

During our walking tour of Hartford, we stumbled upon the Acient Burying Ground. The Association was thoughtful and provided pamphlets that described different headstones, their styles and some of the poeple that were buried beneath them. We spent a lot of time ther looking at old headstones and monuments. What we found especially interesting was that there seemed to be a lot of people that made it into their 80's, in the 17th and 18th centuries.

  Early style of tombstone
  This person was 86 years old. There wer plenty of others that made it to be octagenarians.
  This guy died by "bloing up"
 
  This poor woman died in her 40's and is buried with 10 of her 12 children. Those 10 children all died shortly after being born.

  The oldest tombstone - from 1648

We could have spent a lot more time there, a small, ancient cementary surrounded by downtown Hartford, but we had to get back and check out of the hotel.

We saw plenty of other interesting htings, the different architectural styles were what drew us in the directions we walked. We had a great time on our self-guided tour and will have to make it back some time to see more of what Hartford has to offer.

Comments

[Cop Car]

Yes, some people have always made it into old old age. The progress that was made in the 20th century was at the other end of the line, with more children making it through childhood. Taking a bunch of 0's, 1's, and 2's out of the averaging equation makes a big impact on the final average.

Thank goodness for the woman who was buried with her 10 kids - not that she or they died, but that she and Abigail Talcott proved there have been women in the area. According to the statues in your previous posting, only males lived there! (The ratio of statues of/honoring women to statues of/honoring men is minute, in my experience.)

[bogie]

The fountain shows Indian women above the men and underneath the stag. Otherwise, everything else I showed pictures of was about the soldiers & sailors of the Civil War Memorial (not that women didn't serve, but they normally did so under disguise of being male - at least so I've been led to believe).

[bogie]

I knew that people would occasionally make it into the 80's, but that was not the rule. There just seemed to be an inordinate amount of people who made it to see 4-5 generations in the graveyard.