Today’s stone is that of Captain Edward Hutchinson, a casualty of King Philip’s War and the first Grave-tober subject to have his own Wikipedia entry.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

CAPTIN

EDWARD HVTCHINSON

AGED 62 YEARES

WAS SHOT BY

(TR)EACHEROVS INDIANS

AVGVST 2 1675

DYED 12 AVGVST

1675

Captain Hutchinson, the son of Anne Hutchinson (yes, that Ann Hutchinson), was dispatched to attempt to negotiate with Nipmuc people in what is now southern central Massachusetts.  The party was ambushed near the small settlement of Quabaug (today West Brookfield) in a battle that was later dubbed “Wheeler’s Surprise” (after the expedition’s co-commander).  The survivors of the battle (and the subsequent siege of a garrison house in Quabaug) retreated back towards Boston.  Captain Hutchinson never recovered from his injuries however, and died of them in the village of Marlborough, where he was buried.  (Hutchinson, who had fathered 11 children, between his two wives, was an ancestor of three US Presidents – Franklin Roosvelt, George W. Bush and (obviously) George H.W. Bush.

The stone was removed from the ground and inserted into a granite block by the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1921 who added an inscription below the original to that effect.

The stone was photographed in 1908, albeit from the side so the inscription cannot be seen.  Here’s what it looked like before its removal and installation in the monument.