THE TOWN OF NEW ROCHELLE. 693 



The Rev. J. D. Wickham, D.D., replies to this statement as follows: 



"The writer of this communication was more than fifty years ago a resident 

 of New Rochelle, N. Y., where the body of Paine was buried. His grave was 

 in one corner of a farm, which, having being confiscated as the property of a 

 Tory during the Revolutionary War, had been presented to Paine by the State 

 of New York for his patriotic service in aid of the Revolution. A monument, 

 erected by friendly hands, marked the place of burial. His bones had not then 

 been removed, as they afterwards were, to England, for no good object on the 

 part of those who under cover of the night disinterred, boxed, and carried them 

 away. On this farm he spent his latter days with a solitary female attendant. I 

 have heard the physician who visited him describe the condition in which he was 

 accustomed to find his patient, and to which his vicious habits, and especially 

 his habitual drunkenness, had reduced him. This he represented as revolting to 

 his sensibilities, making even his necessary calls to prescribe for his relief ex- 

 ceedingly unwelcome and repulsive. This physician was an esteemed elder in 

 the church of which I was at that time pastor, highly regarded not only for skill 

 in his profession, but as a man of sound judgment and unimpeachable veracity. 

 He has been dead many years. But the name of Matson Smith, M.D., is still 

 held in honored rememberance by all who knew him. His grandson, Rev. Mat- 

 son .Meier Smith, D.D., it is stated, is about to remove from Hartford, Ct., to 

 Philadelphia, to be a professor in the Episcopal Divinity School. The animus 

 of the article, which the above statement is intended to contradict, appears 

 plainly in the article itself. While the audacity of its aspersions forbids the hope 

 that the eulogist himself will acknowledge his error, it is proper that others, who 

 might else be misled by it, should understand that the real motive to this per- 

 version of the facts of history must have been hatred of Christianity, and espec- 

 ially of its ministers, the clergy of all denominations."" 



The subsequent career of this unfortunate man is well known. On 

 the 8th of June, 1809, Thomas Paine breathed his last, aged seventy-two 

 years and five months. Shortly after his decease his body was brought 

 up from New York, in a hearse used for carrying the dead to Potter's 

 Field, a white man drove the vehicle, accompained by a negro to dig 

 the grave. The body was interred on the farm near the site of the pres- 

 ent monument. The following lines are said to have been uttered im- 

 promptu by an old colored man named Jack Hull over the remains of 

 the notorious Thomas Paine, author of " The Rights of Man" and "Com- 

 mon Sense," at the open grave : 



' ' Poor Tom Paine ! here he lies, 

 Nobody laughs and nobody cries, 

 Where he's gone and how he fares, 

 Nobody knows and nobody cares." 



In 1819 the remains of Paine were disinterred by William Cobbett, 



a New York Observer. 



