winter, in the Spring it was put on its foundation and to-day you can see what remains of it, on the ground opposite the Berlin Town Farm, the west side was cut off and the propor

tions of the old parsonage ruined forever. Not far from Mr. Burnham are the graves of many of his parishioners, the Lees, the Nortons, the Harts, the Galpins, the Roots, the Demings, Hookers, Gilberts and Norths. Thomas North and Thomas

Hart were the committee to whom the deed of the cemetery was entrusted. On one of the stones we read Mrs. Mary Beckley, wife of Lieutenant Joseph Beckley. Joseph Beckley, it is said, built and lived in the old red inn in Beckley Quarter. It was a very fine house in its day, with wainscotted walls and pretty corner cupboards, there were seventeen children and I think it must have been difficult for the traveller to find room in the inn. We find the grave of only one Revolutionary soldier, Hooker Gilbert, and two doctors, Dr. Nathan Winchel who died in 1768, his epitaph is:

"No longer ye physician art avails,
By every remedy its master fails."

Dr. Abel Peck lived to be twenty-four and died in 1742, perhaps of an epidemic because a number of young people died about that time. It is said that now-a-days we have no old people, life is so full of interest there is no time to grow old. But in looking over the records it seems as if people must have felt young in 1764 for we read that Thomas Hart aged eightyfour married Elizabeth, widow of Isaac Norton, aged seventynine. Tradition says the Indians were buried in front of this ground. Great Swamp was part of the hunting ground of the Mattabesett tribe. The trail from their settlement in Beckley Quarter over half-way hill to the Tunxis Indians in Farmington passed near the old Seymour fort and the early settlers probably used the same path, when they walked with their guns on their shoulders to church in Farmington. We do not know that any chief was buried here, but in Beckley Quarter there is a stone, which was moved when the Middletown track was laid, that is thought to have been erected to Terramuggus the son of chief Sequin. In naming the Berlin streets, the committee proposed Terramuggus as an appropriate name for the sewer beds. In a house just north of the old fort lived John Goodrich, Mrs. Edwards, his great-granddaughter remembered hearing that the Indians had a wigwam at one time in his cow pasture and made baskets on a great white stone, this stone was so large she thought it would have taken fifty men to move it. The Indians sold the baskets in Hartford for rum and when they returned the squaws used to go and

stay with Mrs. Goodrich until the braves were peaceful again. Uncle John Goodrich a descendant of the first John was very musical and was the first player on the wonderful new organ which Jedediah Norton gave to the church in 1791, he painted a keyboard for himself on which he used to practice during the week and it was said he made his own music. It seems a long time since the Indians were here and we have only an arrowhead or some other implement of war to remind us that they once roamed our meadows but Miss Abbie Patterson who died in 1897 remembered them coming to her house and that her mother used to let them sleep in the barn. When Joseph Gilbert died there was no money left after paying his debts but his wife Mary had a brave heart and she worked hard to make a home for herself and her daughter Lydia. After a while she had a comfortable house, a cow and some chickens and she was very happy, but in 1802 her daughter was taken from her and on one of the stones we read:

"Sacred to the memory of Miss Lydia Gilbert who died October 4th A. D. 1802, aged 19 years and ten months. The only offspring of Mr. Joseph Gilbert and Mrs. Mary Gilbert."

Tho' all these rare endowments of the mind,
Were in a narrow space of life confined.
Yet unemployed no minute slip'd away
Moments were precious in so short a stay.

The haste of Heaven to have her was so great
That some were single acts tho, each complete
And every act stood ready to repeat.

Our forefathers may not be renowned in history, there is no Napoleon or Lord Nelson buried here. But many of them were men of sterling character, who fought well the battle of life and George Eliot has said:

"For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is partly owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs."

After the singing of "For All the Saints Who From Their Labors Rest" the historical part of the program was finished, and Mrs. John Laidlaw Buel, regent of Connecticut Daughters

of the American Revolution, told of "The Advance Work of the Connecticut Chapters." She laid particular stress on the value of the educational feature of the organization and advocated it earnestly. In patriotic work she said the organization had expended $17,000 in Connecticut the past two years. She also made mention of the manual now being written for the Connecticut Daughters of the American Revolution which will be in Italian, and will contain information needful to immigrants. Another feature which the Daughters of the American Revolution are going to bring out shortly will be the Connecticut History clubs, which will have for its object the education of children in local history. Mrs. Buel took pride in the fact that the Daughters of the American Revolution of Connecticut have been leading in the work in general. She carnestly urged members of Emma Hart Willard Chapter to set about erecting a suitable memorial to Emma Hart Willard, and declared that a college for young women would be the most desirable since Connecticut is without an institution of the kind.

"O God Beneath Thy Guiding Hand" was then sung and the Rev. C. Hazen, pastor of the First Congregational Church pronounced the blessing.

The program closed with the planting of ivy at the base of the cobblestone pillars by Prof. D. N. Camp, the Hon. C. E. Mitchell, Mrs. F. H. Churchill, the Rev. C. Hazen and Mrs. John Laidlaw Buel.

All praised the work accomplished by the committee and every one felt that proper respect had been shown the ancient burying-ground.

E. BRANDEGEE,

Historian

HISTORIC HANNASTOWN

"When the battles of Lexington and Concord were fought, the people all over the country and particularly the ScotchIrish here in Westmoreland, became greatly aroused. On May 16, 1775, a meeting was held here which was one of the most

important ever held in the county. True they met as pioneers, met in a log cabin and were clad in home-spun garments, or perhaps in hunting suit of buckskin, yet they adopted a series of resolutions known as the Hannastown Declaration of Independence, that was the first adopted in the American colonies, and that will compare favorably with any state paper ever penned on either side of the Atlantic ocean. If you will, you may substitute many of its clauses for clauses in the great Declaration adopted more than a year afterwards, and you will find it difficult to detect the substitution save on the closest scrutiny. I say without fear of contradition that the language of this paper compares favorably with the best writings of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.

"Who wrote these resolutions adopted at Hannastown has always been a matter of conjecture and will probably always remain so.

JOHN N. BOUCHER.

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Hannastown, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania,
May 16, 1775

Resolved unanimously, That the Parliament of Great Britain, by several late acts, have declared the inhabitants of Massachusetts Bay to be in rebellion; and the ministry, by endeavoring to enforce these acts, have attempted to reduce the said inhabitants to a more wretched state of slavery than ever before existed in any state or country. Not content with violating their constitutional and chartered privileges, they would strip them of the rights of humanity, exposing lives to the wanton and unpunishable sport of a licentious soldiery and depriving them of the very means of subsistence.

Resolved unanimously, That there is no reason to doubt but the same system of tyranny and oppression will, should it meet with success in Massachusetts Bay, be extended to every other part of America; it is, therefore, become the indispensible duty of every American, of every man who has any public virtue or love of his country, or any bowels for posterity, by