TRIPP FAMILY BURYING GROUND

6 Fallon Drive, Westport MA

Research by Todd Baptista

Saving the cemetery

The Tripp Family Burying Ground was established by Ebenezer Tripp (1710-1791), the grandson of master carpenter John Tripp (1611-1678), who landed at Newport, Rhode Island in 1630 after leaving his home in Northumberland County, England.  When Ebenezer died at the age of 81 in 1791, he was buried on a grassy, wooded knoll overlooking what is now Drift Road.  Over the next 80 years, more than 50 members of his family and extended family would be laid to rest in the burial ground.

By the 1970s, the cemetery had fallen into disrepair and a new road, Fallon Drive, and a subdivision for a housing development was planned for the area. Permission was ultimately granted to the landowners to relocate the remains of those buried at the site through an act passed by the state legislature in May of 1975. 

   Subsequently, discussions at Town Meeting and publicity about the cemetery move alerted several generations of Tripp descendants who were unaware of the plan.  Among the most vocal of the 30 descendants who opposed the action were Arnold Tripp, Ebenezer’s 5x-great grandson, and his wife, Patricia.  Another family member, Norris Tripp, filed a bill calling for a repeal of the original legislative bill and reportedly planned to seek an injunction to prevent work from starting.  The landowners acknowledged their mistake in not attempting to locate possible heirs and descendants and soon, both sides, eager to avoid a lengthy and costly legal battle, began working toward a compromise.

After several months of negotiation, both sides came to an agreement in February of 1977.  According to news reports, the LaFrance family paid an estimated $7,000 to excavate the cemetery (about $35,000 in today’s money), remove the eroding hill, and return the remains and the gravestones to their original locations.

Fall River funeral director Mark Bearse oversaw the entire process.  “By the end of the first day of digging, skulls, thigh bones, and teeth had been uncovered” one reporter noted.  “The remains in the graves, whether actual body and coffin remains or just dirt, will be placed in infant receiving vaults while the hill is being reduced from its height of about 20 feet to three or four feet high.” 

Before digging began, the location of all the markers was measured and documented and subsequently returned to their original sites after the work was completed.  The property was landscaped and a large boulder with the notation “Tripp Family Burial Ground Reinterred 1977” was placed at the site. 

This spring, the Westport Gravestone Cleaning and Restoration Group began restoration work at the site. 

Who is buried here?

As was the custom among Quaker families into the early 1800’s nearly all the graves were marked with simple fieldstones.  A number of them, however, were hand-chiseled with the initials of the deceased, year of death, and, in some cases, their age.  The oldest surviving marker is that of Ebenezer himself, inscribed E x T 1791.  The practice of marking graves with fieldstones gradually fell out of favor and, by 1850, had all but been abandoned in favor of marble tablets.

Six members of the family were interred under professionally-carved marble markers.  They were Susannah Tripp (1791-1804), Potter Tripp (1802-1816), Otis Tripp (1792-1861) and his wife, Cynthia (Hart) Tripp (1788-1838), and Nathaniel Tripp (1773-1837) and his wife, Sophia (Davenport) Tripp (1770-1842).

Nathaniel Tripp and Lot R. Tripp were the two oldest children of Ebenezer (II)’s son, Ebenezer Tripp (III) (1749-1838), and the former Susanna Potter.  Nathaniel and Lot had four younger siblings, Durfee, Restcome, Hannah and Alice, born between 1781 and 1792. Interestingly, when Ebenezer (III) died in 1838, he left each of his living children one dollar, except for his daughter, Hannah, who inherited his entire estate. 

On December 18, 1791, Lot Tripp married Rachael Davenport, the 25-year-old daughter of Ephraim and Keziah Davenport, originally from Tiverton, Rhode Island.  Two-and-a-half years later, Nathaniel married Rachael’s younger sister, Sophia Davenport.  Nathaniel and Sophia had 10 children born between the years 1794 and 1814: Permilia (Gifford), Susannah, David, Alvin, Nathaniel, Melintha (Brown), Frederick, Julia Ann (Lawton), Eliphalet, and Sophia.  Susannah Tripp (1796-1804) died at the age of 8 years.  Hers is the oldest of the marble gravestones in the cemetery.

Nathaniel’s older brother, Lot, and his wife, Rachael, had 10 children of their own. Their fourth child- and fourth son- was named Potter Tripp.  He died in 1816 at the age of 14 and he became the second member of the family to have an inscribed marble gravestone and was interred near his cousin, Susannah. 

Nathaniel Tripp died at the age of 64 in 1837 and was interred in the family burying ground.  His wife, Sophia, succumbed to congestive heart failure in 1843, a month before her 73^rd birthday.  Both were given marble gravestones. 

Restoring the headstone for Otis Tripp, 2023.

Their eldest son, Otis Tripp, a farmer who was born on March 5, 1792, also rests here. Otis married Cynthia Hart, the daughter of John and Ruth (Rounds) Hart. This union produced five children.  Cynthia died at age 50 in 1838 and was laid to rest in the family graveyard.  Otis Tripp died suddenly on April 9, 1861 at age 69.  A marble gravestone was purchased for Otis for $15.  Noted and recorded by historian Eleanor Tripp in 1979, Otis’ gravestone has since gone missing.  The last recorded burials at the site are on fieldstones, one carved B T 1871 AG 198, and J B T 1881 age 98.

Records indicate that some of those buried under the many fieldstone markers include John A. Tripp, the son of Captain Tillinghast Tripp, who died at the age of 4 months in 1808, and the captain’s grandson, Tillinghast Weston Tripp, who was 2 years old when he died in 1844.  Captain Tripp’s brother, Luthan, also a master mariner, buried his wife, Lydia, here in September of 1843 at age 68.