62 THE ISLAND OF NANTUCKET. 



" Some few of the first to die among the whites were, 

 so tradition says, buried on their own grounds near 

 their, dwellings; but at an early date the ' Ancient,' or 

 Forefathers' burial ground on the hill near Maxcy's 

 Pond was appropriated as a cemetery, and continued 

 as such a great many years. John Gardner, Esq. , who 

 died May 6, 1706 was buried there, and for years his 

 has been the only stone * in the cemetery at all legible. 



u Jonathan Coffin, Esq., and his wife Hepzibah, — 

 both died in 1773, — were buried there; they being 

 probably the last who were interred at that place. 



"About the beginning, or rather during the first 

 decade of the last century, some of the Gardner family 

 set apart for burial purposes the present Gardner's 

 burial ground on ]S"ew Lane, corner of Grove Lane, 

 and the first interment therein was the body of Abigail 

 Gardner, wife of Nathaniel, who died March 15, 

 1709. Richard Gardner, Jr., Esq., who died in 1728, 

 was buried there, and probably many thousands since, 



*John Gardner settled at Nantucket about 1GGG, and was one 

 of its chief magistrates for a number of years. The old stone 

 of which Mr. Folger speaks has been replaced by a granite 

 headstone, upon which is inscribed the following: — 



11 Here lyes buried ye body 



of 



John Gardner, Esq., aged 82, 



Who died May, 1706. 



This stone, erected in 1881, replaces one removed for preservation 



which marked this spot for 175 years." 



Those vandals, politely termed "relic-hunters," to whom 

 nothing is sacred, — not even the abode of the dead, — had 

 chipped away the old stone until it was nearly half gone. 



