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Elizabeth (Murray) Inman's Gravesite After an illness of several weeks, Elizabeth Murray Campbell Smith Inman died on May 25, 1785. The press carried news of her death and an invitation to mourners to attend her funeral. Married three times, she was buried in the tomb belonging to her second husband, James Smith, in the King's Chapel Burying Ground. The grave marker bore an inscription, no longer legible, that read in part: “To the Revered Memory of ELIZABETH the relict of James Smith Esq. Who died the wife of Ralph Inman Esq.” In addition to her remains, as well as those of James Smith, the tomb later held the remains of her nieces, Dorothy (Dolly Murray) Forbes and Elizabeth (Betsy Murray) Robbins. King's Chapel Burying Ground is the oldest cemetery in Boston. The Anglican King's Church stands on this plot of public land because Boston residents refused to sell land for the construction of a non-Puritan church. The stone church on the site, completed in 1754, replaced a wooden church constructed in 1688. For Murray's final illness and controversies over the settlement of her estate, see Patricia Cleary, Elizabeth Murray: A Woman's Pursuit of Independence in Eighteenth-Century America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000). |
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Elizabeth (Murray) Inman gravesite, King’s Chapel Burying Ground, Boston [Photo, Sean Smith, Aug. 2010]
On Murray's death, see the 1785 