Yarrow's grave

       Yarrow's obituary in the Gettysburg Compiler was surely written by Charles Willson Peale because the facts match his diary entries about Yarrow.  

    The obituary says Yarrow "was interred in the corner of his garden, the spot where he usually resorted to pray." How Peale would have known this is a mystery. There is no evidence that he was in Georgetown at the time. Someone in Georgetown, such as his in-laws Joseph Brewer and William Marbury who had originally told him about Yarrow, must have written him.

     The archaeological work in 2015 assumed the "garden" was on his property, and so a great deal of the archaeology focused on trying to find the grave and his remains. However, the obituary doesn't say the garden was on Yarrow's lot. A friend who had lived in England pointed out that the English don't necessarily use the word garden the way we do today.  But of course the question is, what did Peale mean by garden. He had lived in England.  At the time of Yarrow's death in 1823, Peale was living on his farm at Belfield outside Philadelphia.  He had a 24-acre "garden" there.  It had vegetables and ornamentals.  It was a place of repose and retreat for him.  It even had a gazebo where he could sit and think.  He painted this landscape of it.

     This raises the obvious possibility that the garden where Yarrow resorted to pray had reminded Peale of his own garden at Belfield.  But where would that garden be in Georgetown?  Yarrow's lot was just 35' X 150'.  It couldn't be on his property.  One answer is that Yarrow's garden was right next to his lot. Yarrow's lot was in the Beatty and Hawkins Addition to Georgetown. The plat for the addition reserved a double lot directly southeast of Yarrow's for the Church of England.  The two lots shared a corner, but the Church of England lot was four times the size of Yarrow's. What is more, human remains have been found on the Church of England lot in recent times.  Was it a cemetery?  

    Once the American colonies declared independence from England in 1776, their legislatures, including that of Maryland, in which Georgetown then lay, separated themselves from the Church of England, and the Episcopal Church took its place.  In theory then, the Church of England double lot belonged to the Episcopal congregation in Georgetown, which was formed in 1794.  

    William Deakins, Jr., a member of the church's vestry, proposed building the congregation's church on the double lot, but this was rejected.  The vestry voted to build its church, St. John's, on O Street instead, probably because it was closer to the main part of Georgetown.  The fact Deakins owned a number of lots in the then-new Beatty and Hawkins Addition may have contributed to his desire to locate St. John's there.  At his death in 1798, his son Francis must have inherited at least some of his father's lots, for Francis is the one who deeded Yarrow his lot in 1800.

      The point of this is that in 1819, when Peale painted Yarrow, Yarrow must have excused himself from the sitting to go outside and pray. Peale saw Yarrow go to the Church of England lot to pray.  It was vacant then and perhaps landscaped.  Given the fact that bodies have been found on that property in recent years (in fact human remains have been turning up all along Q Street for almost 160 years), it seems likely that Yarrow was not buried on his property but rather on the Church of England lot.  It appears to have been a de facto burying ground. It is still a mystery though since houses were built on the church's lot beginning in 1876. That said, I have asked Muslim friends what Islam says about praying in graveyards.  They say that it is clear that one should not pray around a grave unless there is something between you and the grave, but they point out that Yarrow might not have learned this before being taken out of Africa at age sixteen. Yarrow's lot is marked in red on the excerpt from the Beatty and Hawkins plat below and the Church of England lot is highlighted in yellow.