Gravestone in Side yard

The gravestone in the side yard of the Hitchcock-Phillips House is thought to be the original Hillside Cemetery stone for the grave of Abigail Foot (1748-1788). She was the first wife of the Rev. John Foot, second minister of the Congregational Church, and the mother of Connecticut Governor Samuel A. Foot. The Hillside Cemetery grave is now marked by a monument that overs the graves of both Abigail and John (who died in 1813). In the 1970s, this stone was discovered face-down in the backyard of the Foot Home at the corner of Cornwall Avenue and South Main Street, where it may have had a second life as a paving stone.

If you click on the “Abigail Hall Foot’s Memorial” box below, you will see that she and John had 9 children. Their daughter Matilda, who was buried with Abigail, was their youngest child. Matilda, her next oldest sibling, Roderick, and the two oldest children, Abigail Sarah and Mary Ann, died in childhood.

The design of this gravestone seems to blend traditional Puritan designs that featured straightforward images of mortality and death - such as the inscription warning “Friends y survivor” to “Consider death as always near / Come see the state of dearest Friend / For this will be your Solemn End” - with the image of an angel, hinting at a hopeful afterlife. The stone that replaced this one at the actual gravesite simply states the facts and dates of birth and death, with no editorial commentary in word or illustration.

Samuel Augustus Foot, one of Abigail Foot’s sons, was born November 8, 1780, in Cheshire, and died September 15, 1846, in Cheshire. At the age of thirteen, he entered the Yale Class of 1797. He was a member of Connecticut's House of Representatives. As well as being elected to the Sixteenth Congress 1819 to 1821, and Eighteenth Congress 1823 to 1825.

Samuel Augustus Foot is buried at the Hillside Cemetery in Cheshire with his wife Eudocia Hull Foot.