A more severe view of the Deity appears upon a gravestone six rows east of this, commemorating James and Tamson Eaton, who died in 1846. Tamson was fifteen years old, and, as the verse reveals, was a girl: This youth cut down in all her bloom, Sent by her God to an early doom Tamson's brother James was killed by lightning a few months later, and the event is thus versified: What voice is that? 'Tis God, He speaketh from the clouds; In thunder is concealed the rod That smites him to the ground. Near the driveway and toward the church is the tombstone of Mary Olendorf, which bears these feeling lines: Tread softly o'er this sacred mound For Mary lies beneath this ground May garlands deck and myrtles rise To guard the Tomb where Mary lies. A short distance eastward from the centre of the churchyard, and nearly abreast of the obelisk commemorating Father Nash, stands somewhat apart the rugged tombstone of Scipio, an old slave. Aside from the graves of Fenimore Cooper and his father, the founder of the village, not forgetting the grave of Jenny York,[117] which is the joy of the churchyard, no tomb in the enclosure receives more attention from strangers than that of Scipio, with its quaint verses descriptive of the aged slave. North of this stone, after passing three intervening tombs, one comes upon an odd inscription that marks the grave of a fourteen-year-old boy, who was drowned December 3, 1810: Thus were Parents bereavd of a dutiful son and community of a promising youth, while pursuing with assiduity the act of industry. What this act of industry was that cost the life of young Garrett Bissell is not related. A number of those buried in Christ churchyard died violent deaths; one was murdered, and another was hanged, but that story has been already told. "Joe Tom," a negro whose tomb fronts the east end of the churchyard, where the members of his race were buried apart from the whites, was for more than a score of years sexton of Christ Church, and when he died, in 1881, had been for a half a century a unique figure in the life of the village. "Joe Tom" was always the general factotum at public entertainments, and had won a title as "the politest negro in the world." Music of a lively sort he scraped from the fiddle or beat upon the triangle. He was head usher at meetings, chief cook at picnics, a stentorian prompter at dances, and chief oar at lake excursions.