The 6-year-old son of Swain and Mary (nee Ackerman) Ogden, little John was baptized at the Dutch Reformed Church in Belleville, NJ, in January 1729. He shares his grave and gravestone with his sisters Mary (age 9) and Sarah (age 11) here in the churchyard of the First Presbyterian Churchyard of Orange. The three siblings died within days of each other in April 1735, victims of "a fearful pestilence", thought to be diptheria, which caused the deaths of many children in the New England and Mid-Atlantic colonies during that particularly wet and chilly spring. In keeping with the grim custom of the era, the children's gravestone bears a soul effigy of the "winged death's head type" and advises viewers to remember death: "Memento Mori".
The 6-year-old son of Swain and Mary (nee Ackerman) Ogden, little John was baptized at the Dutch Reformed Church in Belleville, NJ, in January 1729. He shares his grave and gravestone with his sisters Mary (age 9) and Sarah (age 11) here in the churchyard of the First Presbyterian Churchyard of Orange. The three siblings died within days of each other in April 1735, victims of "a fearful pestilence", thought to be diptheria, which caused the deaths of many children in the New England and Mid-Atlantic colonies during that particularly wet and chilly spring. In keeping with the grim custom of the era, the children's gravestone bears a soul effigy of the "winged death's head type" and advises viewers to remember death: "Memento Mori".
Inscription
"Mary Dec'd April ye 7, Aged 9 years
Sarah Dec'd April ye 9, Aged 11 years
John Dec'd April ye 13, Aged 6 years
1735 ye Children of
Swain and Mary Ogden
Memento mori"
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