Walks in our Churchyards by John Flavel Mines

Author:John Flavel Mines [Mines, John Flavel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Geschichte
Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
Published: 2017-07-06T22:00:00+00:00

"Though quite past his age and old as my grannum,

The government pays him pounds sixty per annum."

Every pilgrim to Trinity churchyard can read the inscription on Bradford's tomb, but it is not so easy to find the queer, old-fashioned obituary notice written by one of his own apprentices who sleeps in an honored grave on the other side of the sacred enclosure. The " New York Gazette, Revived in the Weekly Post Boy," for Monday, May 25, 1752, says: " Last Saturday Evening departed this Life, Mr. Wm. Bradford, Printer, of this City, in the 94th Year of his Age: as the Printer of this Paper liv'd upwards of eight Years Apprentice to him, he may be presumed to know something of Him. He came to America upwards of 70 years ago, and landed at the Place where Philadelphia now stand, before that City was laid out, or a House built there: He was Printer to this Government upwards of 50 years; and was a man of great Sobriety and Industry; a real Friend to the Poor and Needy; and kind and affable to all; but acquiring of an Estate happened not to be his Faculty, notwithstanding his being here at a Time when others, of not half his good Qualifications, amassed considerable Ones: He was a True Englishman and his Complaisance and Affection to his Wives, of which he had two, was peculiarly great; and without the least Exaggeration it may be said that what he had acquired with the first, by the same Carriage was lost with the second: He had left off Business for several years past, and being quite worn out with old Age and Labor, his Lamp of Life went out for want of Oil." As a picture of a good man's life, appreciative but never seeking to flatter, this memorial will take rank with the old masters of literature. The inscription on the tombstone gives the age of Wm. Bradford as ninety-two and is probably correct, though his obituary notice adds a year. In fact it has become illegible through fracture of the stone, but where it drops into poetry it can readily be read:

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