Gravestones in Phipps Street Burial Ground - Charleston, Boston Mass.

Gravestones in Phipps Street Burial Ground. Phineas Pratt, age above 90 years, died April ye 19, 1680, and was the son of ye first English inhabitant of ye Massachusetts Colony. Fugit Hora. [Bottom stone] Sarah Long, died 1674. In Hunnewell's Century of Town Life, pages 74-79, "Probably within fifteen years of the settlement, one of the most retired and picturesque spots on the peninsula was chosen and used as the last resting place of the townspeople. It was a green little knoll around two sides of which flowed the then clear waters of a bay in the west bank of the Charles River. Few burial grounds in New England can still show older stones. At least six here are before 1670, and several are of the first settlers of their children . . . In April 1877, the writer copied the dates of deaths, and the names as there spelled on all or nearly all of the stones dated before 1700." There follow a list of some 113 stones, not counting references to several tombs, antedating the year 1700.
Courtesy of Boston Public Library