I Was Told That The Remains Of The
Early Inhabitants Lie In The Brick Tombs, Of Which There Are Many Without
Any Inscription Whatever.
At a little distance, near a forest, lies the burial-place of the black
population.
A few trees, trailing with long moss, rise above hundreds of
nameless graves, overgrown with weeds; but here and there are scattered
memorials of the dead, some of a very humble kind, with a few of marble,
and half a dozen spacious brick tombs like those in the cemetery of the
whites. Some of them are erected by masters and mistresses to the memory
of favorite slaves. One of them commemorates the death of a young woman
who perished in the catastrophe of the steamer Pulaski, of whom it is
recorded, that during the whole time that she was in the service of her
mistress, which was many years, she never committed a theft, nor uttered a
falsehood. A brick monument, in the shape of a little tomb, with a marble
slab inserted in front, has this inscription:
"In memory of Henrietta Gatlin, the infant stranger, born in East
Florida, aged 1 year 3 months."
A graveyard is hardly the place to be merry in, but I could not help
smiling at some of the inscriptions. A fair upright marble slab
commemorates the death of York Fleming, a cooper, who was killed by the
explosion of a powder-magazine, while tightening the hoops of a keg of
powder. It closes with this curious sentence:
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