The Old Cox Burying Ground, Armonk

The monument in the Old Cox Burying Ground reads: "Original site of North Castle Methodist Church / Erected 1787 / A house of worship until 1872 / One of the earliest Methodist Societies in America / Francis Asbury / Freeborn Garrettson / and other famous itinerants preached here / 1962."

You may recall that the plot of land directly south of St. George's/St. Mark's Cemetery was once the site of a Methodist church. That was the New Castle Methodist Church, established in 1824. One of the founders of the New Castle Church was Caleb Kirby, an officer of the North Castle Church for whom Kirbyville and Kirby Pond were named; he is buried in the Old Cox Burying Ground, along with his wife. James Smith Hall, another founder of the New Castle Methodist Church, is buried in the  Methodist section of the St. George's/St. Mark's Cemetery. The Methodist section was also known as the Hall Cemetery after James Smith Hall's family.

By 1843, the New Castle congregation had outgrown its tiny church, so a new one was built on a plot of land to the south of the old, and the old church converted into a parsonage. The present Methodist church was built in 1868 down the road from the St. George's/St. Mark's Cemetery. The original 1824 church/parsonage was still standing in 1929 when Herbert B. Howe arranged for the erection of the marker in front of the St. George's/St. Mark's Cemetery, but has since been demolished.


Today the Old Cox Burying Ground is like the St. George's/St. Mark's Cemetery - a churchyard without a church. It has its own Find A Grave page. Laurie and I counted four sandstone gravemarkers, including the two below, which belong to Gilbert and Elizabeth Thorn. Their relationship to Stephen Thorn is unknown (by me, anyway).

Laurie pointed this stone out as unusual. I thought it resembled a stone that I had seen in the Old Sturbridge Village Cemetery - but the resemblance is less obvious now that I've actually looked at that stone. What I think I noticed in both stones was the rather bold, graphic design of the decoration around the name. I always think of the design as a "cartouche" in my head although I don't think that term is used for historical American gravestones!

The light on the stone below was really lovely. If I was going to be buried in one of these old cemeteries, I would definitely like to be near the wall. There's nothing like a rambling old stone wall. If you like old stone walls as much as I do you might like the book Sermons in Stone by Susan Allport. It's one of my favorites.

I'll end with a fun fact about Caleb Kirby. On the lawn of his house, just down the road from the St. George's/St. Mark's Cemetery, there was a large boulder where it was said that George Washington once ate his lunch while his troops were marching through North Castle. The house is gone, but the boulder is still there, and known as Washington's Rock.