Norton and his young children in
garrison at Fort Shirley, and that just about the time of his return
from captivity to Boston, which was August 16, 1747, his little girl,
Anna, died at the fort and was buried in the field a little to the west
of it. Probably some soldier in the fort chiselled upon the rude stone
the inscription as follows:
Hear lys ye body of An'na
D: of ye Rev:
Mr. John Norton. She died
Aug; ye ---- aged ---- 1747.
This stone stood there in the bleak field exposed to the suns of summer
and the storms of winter for more than one hundred and thirty years. The
day of August on which she died and the number of years she had lived
have become illegible by exposure,--impossible to be deciphered. The
stone has lately been removed to Williams College, and with its
companion relic, a stick of one of the timbers of Fort Shirley, and a
few other memorials of the well and fort, are safe in a fire-proof
building.
The tradition is still lively in Heath, and it may well be an historical
fact for it has been handed down by an aged citizen there whose life
began with the century, that there used to come up from Connecticut on
an occasional pilgrimage to the site of Fort Shirley and particularly to
the grave of Anna Norton some of her relatives.
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