Existing comment:
(5) Seventeenth Century Copp's Hill
The Kennebec Raid
Captain Thomas Lake (1615-1676) (C-143) was born in Tetney, County Lincoln, England in 1615 and settled in Boston in the 1650s. He and his partner, Thomas Clarke, set up trading posts in Maine, including one at Arrowsic Island near the mouth of the Kennebec River. Capt. Lake's business prospered until the Native American uprisings of the 1670s. On Sabbath Day, August 20, 1676, Samuel Sewall wrote in his diary: "we heard amazing news of sixty persons killed at Quinebeck, by barbarous Indians, of which were Capt. Lake, Mr. Collicot, Mr. Padeshell." During the attack Lake fled the trading post, but was later captured and killed. Capt. Lake's body was found several months later, still frozen. In 1677 the remainder of his corpse was "honorably buried" at Copp's Hill. Some say that the lead shot from his body was melted and poured into the gravestone.
"The Old Citizen"
Nicholas Upshall (d. 1666) (A-409) was an early settler of Boston and the proprietor of the Red Lion Inn in the North End. In the 1650s, Upshall became a Quaker and was banished from Boston for helping imprisoned Quakers Anne Austin and Mary Fisher. On his return only the intervention of his wife, Dorothy (Capen) Upshall (d. 1675) (C-38), kept him from long-term detention at Castle Island. Upshall was immortalized as the "Old Citizen" in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Christus: A Mystery and in the poetry of Quaker John Greenleaf Whittier.
"The Greatest American Puritan"
Near the Charter Street entrance is the Mather Tomb (I-23), wherein lie the remains of the most celebrated family of Puritan ministers: Increase Mather (1639-1723), Cotton Mather (1663-1728), and Samuel Mather (1706-1785.) Increase Mather has been called "the greatest American puritan." A graduate of Harvard in 1656, he was actively involved in the political and religious life of Massachusetts Bay in Boston and in the British Isles. His son Cotton followed him to Harvard and to the ministry of the Second Church in Boston. Cotton Mather was a prolific writer and commentator and is considered the "most famous of the puritan divines." Samuel Mather, son of Cotton Mather, also graduated from Harvard and served at the Second Church, but left in 1742 to found and independent congregation.
The Oldest Gravestone
The earliest surviving gravestone is the double stone (C-264) of William Copp's grandsons: David Copp, who was born and died in 1661, and Thomas Copp, who died in 1678 at age 3. The hill and the burying ground are named after their family.
Other early stones include Nathanial Saxton, who died in 1677 (C-270) at the age of 19; the double stone of John and Susannah Sweet (H-44); and the beautifully carved stone (C-30) of Grace Berry (d. 1695.) |