Town's Heritage on View in Byram's Gamecock Cemetery (Old Burying Ground at Byram)

by Jeffrey Bingham Mead
Greenwich Time: July 4, 1989

An old burying ground can be a delightful and fascinating place to ponder the secrets of the past.

One such site is not far from the Byram waterfront, where large homes on shoreline estates overlook the calm waters of Long Island Sound. This burying ground is Gamecock Cemetery*, according to Town Historian William Finch, Jr.,  and is on the corner of Byram Shore Road and Byram Dock Street. 

It is one of the oldest historically significant cemetery sites in all of Greenwich. (*Author's note and correction: After the publishing of this piece Bill corrected himself and said that the name 'Gamecock Cemetery' was not correct. A monument stone near the entrance now accurately states this as the Old Burying Ground at Byram). 

Gamecock Cemetery, a community burial site for the early settlers, occupies about a half-acre of land on the south side of Byram Shore Road. Under the shade of some large sassafras trees are numerous gravestones. Most are quite simple in style and small in size. The majority of these are mere fieldstone markers anonymously concealing the identities of those buried below.

There are a number of sandstone, granite and marble markers, the most elaborate of these are located in the Lyon plot located next to the main part of the cemetery. Many of the marble markers have been worn away due to the exposure to natural and man-made elements, the most well-known being acid rain and air pollution. Some grave markers are broken or lying flat, and, regrettably, some stones appear to be missing.

Jeffrey Bingham Mead (r) with Greenwich Preservation Trust Chairman Jo Conboy in front of the Thomas Lyon House. 

It is said that Thomas Lyon, Sr, the original settler of Byram, was buried somewhere in the cemetery in 1690, perhaps marked by one of the many fieldstone markers found here. His homestead still stands today on the south side of the Boston Post Road, where it was moved to in 1927. Built around 1670, this central chimney saltbox is possibly one of the oldest, if not the oldest, house in Greenwich and sits as a landmark at this gateway to New England. Other Lyon family members are buried here as well as members of the Banks, Sherwood, Mead, Peck and Merritt families, among others.

It is said that in the extreme eastern corner of the cemetery, where the elevation declines, slaves of the old farming families of Byram are interred.

According to an article published in a 1931 addition of the Greenwich Graphic, the oldest dated gravestone in Gamecock Cemetery is supposedly on a stone that reads "M.B. 1717 Sept. 18." 

My survey of Gamecock Cemetery, as part of the townwide project recording gravestone information for the Historical Society Archives, has turned up a small fieldstone boulder that upon first glance appears insignificant. A closer inspection indicates a crude inscription barely legible. If this marker is the one belonging to "M.B.," who I assume is of the Banks family, this would be the oldest inscribed grave marker in the town, aside from the intricately designed gravestone of Gershom Lockwood at Tomac Cemetery, who died on March 12, 1718, aged 77 years. A fieldstone marker at the opposite end of the cemetery reads B.A.L. 1761, who is probably of the Lyon family.

A few grave markers are inscribed with epitaph poems of loss and lament. One found at some cemeteries is on the gravestone of Martha, wife of Michael Clear, who died Oct. 26, 1850, age 64 years, 6 months, and 18 days. She apparently had been ill at the time of her death, for as her epitaph indicates:

Afflictions sore long time she bore 

Physicians skill was vain 

Till God did please to give her ease 

And free her from her pain.

On the gravestone of Daniel Banks, died Sept. 13, 1832, not long after his 30th birthday, is an epitaph that conveys both goodness and didactic wisdom when he informs the reader that:

Once I was a blooming youth 

And always gave each man the truth 

But mouth and virtue cannot save 

But fit us for a peaceful grave.

The epitaph of Mary Ann Merritt, who died in 1831 at the age of 22 years, 3 months and 29 days, keenly expresses the sense of pain and loss felt by her parents upon her death:

She has lost! The rose that was with us 

Tis but transplanted to her native sky 

When thou shalt mingle with departed clay 

And thy freed spirit seek the realms of day.

Two Revolutionary War veterans are buried in Gamecock Cemetery. Daniel Lyon was a sergeant and Captain Abraham Mead's Company, 9th regiment. He and his fellow patriots were stationed at the Westchester border and placed under the command of Gen. Wooster from October 1776 to January 1777 after the Battle of White Plains on Oct. 28, 1776. He died August 29, 1817, at age 60. 

Daniel Sherwood of the 4th Company, 7th Continental Regiment, is buried here as well. He died on June 1, 1826, at age 70. The 4th Company was under the command of Captain Abraham Mead, and it is possible that this group saw combat in the Battle of Long Island Sound as well as the Battle of White Plains, according to Historian Spencer P. Mead's history of Greenwich.

Some of the older noteworthies at Gamecock Cemetery include Michael Clear, U.S. Navy, died March 28, 1858. Nancy, wife of Daniel Coley, died August 13, 1833, and whose stone features a carved willow tree motif, signifying morning. Benjamin Fairchild, died Aug. 31, 1866, is said to have been a blockade runner during the Civil War and may have lost his citizenship as a result.

This is one of the best maintained burying grounds of historic nature in the town of Greenwich. Preservation of the site began in 1931, when four men were put to work under the Great Depression-era Town Employment Emergency Fund. A number of trees were removed, rubbish was cleared, the grass was cut and gravestones were straightened. The grass is now cut by the town at taxpayer expense.

As recently as last autumn, students and faculty from Western Junior High School adopted the cemetery as an ongoing project. Spearheaded by the Student Council Government and their dedicated advisor, Patricia Ryan, and working in liaison with the Historical Society, the students and adults supervisors accomplished a successful cleanup of the site, with plans for planting flowers and straightening stones in the future. 

The active participation of people of all ages and walks of life preserving such places is valuable to say the least. One of my hopes is to see this site and others like it around town preserved by interested citizens of the community through "friends" associations, or a burying ground preservation association for the site, to protect and conserve the gravestones and the grounds as well, which would save money for taxpayers.

Gamecock Cemetery is a valuable historical treasure in Byram, an artifact of the past heritage of Greenwich and its early families. Further restoration and enhanced efforts by diligent citizens to preserve this and other sites are worthwhile and important to maintaining the continuity of our heritage.

Jeffrey Mead, who lives in Greenwich, is a direct descendent of one of the founding families of the town. He is a freelance writer and a member of the Greenwich Historical Society.

The Founding of the Female Foreign Mission Society of Greenwich in 1815

by Jeffrey Bingham Mead
Greenwich Time. Looking Back: 1996

A watercolor by Mary E. Mason of the Second Congregational Church, Greenwich, in the early 19th century. 

On Wednesday, April 5, 1815, a circle of Greenwich's Congregationalist women gathered to organize one of the town's earliest voluntary associations. They met at the home of the Rev. Dr. Isaac Lewis, pastor of the Second Congregational Church, and they called their group "The Female Foreign Mission Society of Greenwich."

The Second Congregational Church, Greenwich, Connecticut. This edifice was built in 1858. 

This was at the dawning of that period that swept America known as the Second Great Awakening. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) had been created to send forth missionaries to "heathen" lands. 

As Sarah Lewis of Greenwich wrote in 1815:

"It is the duty of those who enjoy the precious privileges of that Gospel to make vigorous and untried efforts for its propagation among the benighted heathen. That this glorious and happy event maybe hastened when you can no longer admit of the doubt."

The gravestone of Miss Sarah Lewis in the Lewis Family Cemetery off Lafayette Place. 

Of course, funds were needed for these missionary efforts. The ladies of Greenwich, like numerous others elsewhere, solicited funds from the community – and from their own pocketbooks.

Lewis served for 20 years as secretary of this group, and her recorded reports are eloquent and detailed, sprinkled with observations about individuals and missionary activities throughout North America, Asia, the Middle East and the North Pacific. The Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Litchfield County, Connecticut was also the subject of their varied interests.

The Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Litchfield County, Connecticut. 

It was here that young men of Cherokee, Hawaiian and other ancestries were trained to return to their homelands and preach Christianity.

Miss Lewis said in 1822 of the efforts of women: 

"In every country unenlightened by divine truth, the female sex are considered as an inferior race of beings, kept in a state of slavish subjugation and often treated with the utmost cruelty. Ignorant and miserable, degraded to the lower scale of intelligent beings, they are left a prey to vice without one ray of light to guide them through the dark labyrinths of error and superstition, without one beam of hope to cheer them… and such, but for divine revelation, would have been our condition.

"It is this which has elevated us to that rank in society which we now sustain and given us a title to all the blessings of civilized life, that has opened us to the sources of knowledge, called into exercise the dormant faculties of the mind and rendered us capable of intellectual enjoyment." 

These ladies, with clear minds and heads held up high, dedicated their duty to serve God and their fellow men and women.

One of the later members of the society, Charlotte Close, left Greenwich in 1838 as Mrs. Horton O. Knapp to serve as a missionary teacher in Hawaii. Her mother, Sally Close, had been a member of the society, as well.

There are moving tributes to deceased members of the society, such as Elizabeth Stillson. Sarah Lewis wrote of her: 

"Long will be the name of Elizabeth Stillson be had and grateful remembrance! Long shall we delight to cherish the recollection of her virtues."

These ladies were just one part of a much larger movement to spread Protestant Christianity to the outermost reaches of the world. They celebrated progress and lamented the trials faced by missionaries and faraway lands. The women of the Female Foreign Mission Society were organized and vigorous in their efforts to support their cause. 

The same tradition of volunteerism continues today, making the Town of Greenwich a better place to live and work.

Jeffrey Bingham Mead is a free-lave writer and direct descendent of one of the town's  founding families. He grew up in backcountry Greenwich.  

Burying Grounds a Gateway into Local History (Mead Burying Ground, Cos Cob)

by Jeffrey Bingham Mead
Greenwich Time. June 12, 1987

Nestled on the east side of the Cos Cob Mill Pond is a small  but historic burying ground. The site is elevated by a stone wall that surrounds the cemetery itself and is shaded with oaks, cedars and pine trees against the sun.

This, the Mead Cemetery in Cos Cob, is like many of the historic sites in town in that those interred here are an integral part of the history of both family and community. (*Author's note and update: In 1989 I and other descendants founded The Historic Mead Family Burying Grounds Association and the cemetery land was transferred to that corporation).  I have recently restored the cemetery, as its owner and conservator. In researching the history of the Mead Cemetery, I also came across a new and interesting dimension of local history.

The land the cemetery is on has been in the hands of my ancestors since before the time of the American Revolution, although the cemetery itself was laid out and created by William made about 130 years ago. (*Authors note and correction: subsequent research has yielded information that a number of graves from the mid-1700s were removed and transferred to Putnam Cemetery) 

William Mead, one of the four residents buried here, died in 1872. He was a direct descendent of the John Mead line – Benjamin Mead branch of my family. William Mead resided in a roomy old house on top of the hill in Cos Cob, which is now the site of Cos Cob Elementary School. 

Buried with him is his first wife Abigail Mead; his second wife, Caroline Smith Mead; and her father, Ebenezer Smith.

William Mead's first wife, Abigail Reynolds Mead, died in 1860. She was one of the daughters of Horton and Abigail Reynolds of Greenwich. They were married in the winter of 1831 by the Rev. Joel Mann of the Second Congregational Church, who was pastor there from 1830 1836. Incidentally, the Rev. Mann's house sits next door to the church and is one of the oldest parsonages in Greenwich.

The second wife of William Mead, Caroline Mills Smith Mead, married him six years after the death of Abigail Mead, in November 1866. She died in 1910.

Her father, Ebenezer Smith, is buried at the burying ground as well, and died in the year 1873. Caroline's brother, George Jackson Smith, while not buried here, was for many years town clerk and owner of what is now the Bush-Holley House, headquarters of the Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich.

Though not entombed here, gravestone of Zetta Mead, who died in 1807, was found and placed here recently. My great grandfather, Herbert William Mead, former postmaster of Cos Cob, placed it as a stepping stone and back of his house on Relay Place – this according to my great-aunt, Mildred Mead.

Zetta was the daughter of Jared Mead, and she married Col. Ebenezer Mead, son of the Major General Ebenezer Mead, Revolutionary War soldier and founder of the first Greenwich Library, whose homestead some may recall was moved 11 years ago from the high school campus to new foundations on Salem Street in Cos Cob.

The last to be buried here, in 1910, was Caroline Mead, who was born originally in the Roxbury section of Stamford in 1825 and moved to Greenwich when she married William Mead. When her husband died almost 40 years before her, Caroline inherited vast amounts of land on both sides of the Boston Post Road, and thus assumed the responsibility of overseeing these land holdings in Cos Cob.

For a woman of her time, Caroline Mead distinguished herself in the community as a woman of high intelligence, foresight, and ambition. At a time when women did not or could not be involved in such enterprises, she undertook the planned development of her land holdings around the turn-of-the-century. Advancing age apparently did not inhibit her from laying out several roads, including the Suburban Avenue, Glendale Street, and Randolph Place, and the area that includes the fire house. 

In opening this area to development more often seen on a modern scale today, she said to have shown great interest and desire that only structures of solid, excellent quality be constructed on her land. Many of you who live on these streets may trace their creation to this time.

In 1910, well into her 80s, Caroline Mead died at the home of her niece, Mary Frances Peck, on Relay Place, behind the Mill Pond Shopping Center and now the home of my grand-aunt, Mildred Mead. I am told that her funeral was held at the house itself, with the Rev. M George Thompson of Christ Episcopal Church presiding over the ceremonies. Hymns were sung by personal friends.

Many old graveyards dot the town, serving as repositories of local history. These sites are historic in that they serve for the historian as a bridge to the past, enabling us to trace our personal, family, and community history and recall the contributions of generations before us.

Jeffrey Mead, who lives in Greenwich, is a direct descendent of one of the founding families of the town. He is a freelance writer and a member of the Greenwich Historical Society.

A Divorce Decree in 19th Century Greenwich

by Jeffrey Bingham Mead
Greenwich Time. Looking Back: 1994

Many people living in these latter years the 20th century presuppose that divorces did not occur in earlier times. Marriages back then far more often than not grew and persisted longer than they do today.

But there were those rare episodes when matrimonial bliss went sour under arduous circumstances. These include abandonment, adultery and failure to provide.

A divorce settlement unparalleled and recorded local history is registered in the Greenwich land records. Dated from 1867, it involved a couple named John H. Munroe and Emma Green; they had married the previous year. The recorded court judgment touches on an interesting account of a marriage that should never have happened in the first place.

As the decree states, "immediately before said marriage took place, said Emma made oath before a Justice of the Peace that she was pregnant with the child by the petitioner (Munroe) and caused him to be arrested... and that to be then and there held in confinement."

Munroe denied he was the father. He also requested time to hire a lawyer to defend himself, which was refused. Faced with jail and imprisonment, "...he married said Emma."

But there is an interesting twist in the said saga. The record declares that "since said marriage, he has learned that said Emma before said marriage repeatedly had carnal connection with other men, and that she was not a fit and proper person for him to marry, showing further that said Emma concealed all such misconduct from him before said marriage and he has not sent said marriage cohabited with her for the reason aforesaid..."

Munroe's problems were exacerbated by several suits brought against him by Emma's father "... for her board and clothes and has tried in every way to annoy and injure the petitioner and has had him arrested on a false criminal charge."

The petition for divorce was filed on November 26, 1866. Munroe appeared at the hearing, and Emma was represented by Ferris Child, Esq.

The court found the allegations made by Munroe to be true, and he was granted a divorce discharging him "...from all duties and covenants which he is under by reason of the marriage aforesaid, and said John H Munroe is declared to be a single and unmarried."

Jeffrey Bingham Mead is a free-lance writer and direct descendant of one of the town's founding families. He grew up in backcountry Greenwich. 

Honorary Members of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions (ABCFM)

by Jeffrey Bingham Mead
Greenwich Time, Greenwich, Connecticut: June 29, 1997

For generations, it has been a tradition in town for citizens to be honored in a variety of ways. Such gestures are made even today by local organizations to individuals out of a sense of appreciation.

While perusing the 19th-century editions of The Missionary Herald, published monthly by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), I noticed that a number of town citizens were made honorary members of the ABCFM.

The 19th century was dominated by a series of religious revivals known as the Second Great Awakening. The people of Greenwich were enthusiastic supporters of foreign missions and similar agencies that took up temperance, abolition and other causes – all spearheaded by Connecticut by "awakened" Congregationalists and other religious denominations.

Men and women were eligible for honorary membership in the foreign missions commission when a donation of at least $50 was pledged in their name. The names of these distinguish individuals were published in The Missionary Herald. Honorary members were also invited to attend the annual meetings of the commission's board.

The first honorary member of the commission from Greenwich was the Rev. Dr. Isaac Lewis  (and here) of the Second Congregational Church in 1827. In subsequent years 19 other ministers were also named honorary members. These include the Rev. Chauncey Wilcox, the Rev. Joel Mann, the Rev. Platt Buffett, the Rev. S.B.S. Bissell, the Rev. Ebenezer Mead, the Rev. W. H.H. Murray and others.

Five missionaries were made honorary members of the commission by Greenwich parishes. All were associated with the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) Mission. Those from local families were Horton Knapp, his wife, Charlotte Close, and Dr. James William Smith. 

In addition, the people of the North Greenwich Congregational Church named Amos Starr Cooke and his wife, Juliet Montague (Cooke was the brother-in-law of the Rev. Chauncey Wilcox). Cooke and his wife were both teachers to the chief's and the alii (royal families) of the Hawaiian Kingdom. He co-founded Castle and Cooke, which remains as one of Hawaii's "Big Five" conglomerates today.

Twenty-one local women were instituted honorary members of the foreign missions commission. The first was Charlotte Close Knapp in 1838, followed by her mother, Sally Close, in 1841. 

Others included Letitia Ferris, Clarissa Munson, Anna S. Schofield, Amy Close, Adelia Knouse, Obadiah Mead and Martha L. Roberts.

The Rev. Joel Lindsley of the Second Congregational Church was designated a corporate member of the commission, and he represented his parish at numerous annual meetings of the American Board until his death.

Moses Christy was the superintendent of the Second Church's Sunday school. His sister, Helen, married Dr. Dauphin Osgood, and they embarked in 1869 as missionaries on board the "MorningStar" to work in China.

Honorary membership in the foreign missions commission was just one of the many ways that Greenwich residents have been honored for their work on behalf of others. For generations, the scope of their vision went far beyond the town's borders.

Jeffrey Bingham Mead is a free-lance writer and direct descendant of one of the towns founding families. He grew up the backcountry Greenwich.