The company of relatives and friends, who gathered for the funeral occasion, remained for several days and were, of course, fed and housed at the expense of the deceased's estate. The law required that servants be buried in public cemeteries established for the purpose. This decree issued in the seventeenth century followed several scandals, occasioned by private funerals of deceased servants. In order to remove all possibility of suspicion, prior to burial, several neighbors were summoned to view the corpse, if death occurred under extraordinary circumstances, and to accompany the body to the grave. That such precautions were taken as early as 1629, so that possible murder would not go undetected, is shown in testimony before the General Court at Jamestown after the newly-born bastard child of a servant girl was found dead. Several persons were called as witnesses, and when evidence was produced that the child might have been born alive, the serving maid's master was required to give bond for her appearance at a higher court. TOMBSTONES The well-to-do planters or their families invariably saw that appropriate tombstones with proper inscriptions--lengthy ones, characteristic of the day--were duly placed. Some of these stones remain with barely legible inscriptions; others, the inscriptions on which, fortunately, were copied in a past era, have disappeared altogether. The oldest tombstone in Virginia with a legible inscription is that of Mrs. Alice Jordan at "Four Mile Tree" in Surry County. The inscription, reciting that she was the wife of George Jordan, gives praise in verse to her virtues. [Illustration: Photo by Flournoy, Virginia State Chamber of Commerce Four Mile Tree--Surry County A seventeenth-century home was the basis for this present structure located on a portion of a 2250 acre grant to Henry Browne in 1637. The estate remained in the family for two hundred years. In the adjacent graveyard may be seen the oldest tomb in Virginia with a legible inscription, that of Alice (Miles) Jordan, who died in 1650.] Tombstones in the seventeenth century were real memorials, often giving parentage of the deceased, the name of wife or husband and the number of children. Furthermore, there was, as aforesaid, a eulogy of the deceased and, for men, an account of public service rendered.