Humphrey Atherton’s Tomb
Dorchester Illustration 2619
Humphrey Atherton was a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, and he organized the first militia in Dorchester. As Major-General in the Suffolk Regiment, he was the senior military officer in New England, which included the responsibilities of subduing and controlling Native Americansand apprehending criminals, such as those accused of heresy.Atherton was also known for his harsh treatment of Native Americans and his opposition to Quakers.
Atherton died after he fell off his horse which stumbled over a cow. His Quaker critics believed his horrible death to be God’s visitation of wrath. A century later a Quaker imaginatively described Atherton’s death:
“Humfray Adderton … having been, on a certain day, exercising his men with much pomp and ostentation, he was returning home in the evening, near the place where they usually loosed the Quakers from the cart, after they had whipped them, his horse, suddenly affrighted, threw him with such violence, that he instantly died; his eyes being dashed out of his head, and his brains coming out of his nose, his tongue hanging out at his mouth, and the blood running out at his ears: Being taken up and brought into the Courthouse, the place where he had been active in sentencing the innocent to death, his blood ran through the floor, exhibiting to the spectators a shocking instance of the Divine vengeance against a daring and hardened persecutor; that made a fearful example of that divine judgment, which, when forewarned of, he had openly despised, and treated with disdain.”
The following inscription can be found on Atherton’s tomb in Dorchester Old North Burying Ground:
Hear lyes our Captaine, & MAJOR of Suffolk was withall,
A godley Magistrate was he, and MAJOR GENERALL
Two Troops of Hors with him here Came, Such worth his love did Crave;
Ten Companyes of Foot also Mourning Marcht to his grave.
Let all that read be sure to keep the faith as he has don,
With Christ he lives now crownd, His name was HUMPHREY ATHERTON
He dyed the 16 of September 1661.