RICHARD ALSOP, Poet, Writer.
Richard Alsop, (surname spelled "Alsope" on his gravestone), a noted literary figure from Middletown, Connecticut, "died suddenly" at the age of 54 while visiting Brooklyn, New York. Born into a distinguished Connecticut family, he was reknowned in his lifetime as a member of the "Hartford Wits", a literary group which originated at Yale University in the 1790's. Unfortunately, this man of letters also suffered from attacks of gout, and his lifeless body was found seated in a chair by the window in his room, leading to speculation that he had arisen from bed during the hot August night in quest of fresh air. A New York newspaper article which reported Alsop's death praised his poetry, stating that it "bore the stamp of genius and a cultivated taste". He was buried in a grave marked by an unusual, coffin-shaped ledgerstone, which did not appeal to the taste of a Brooklyn newsman writing about the Flatbush Dutch Reformed Churchyard nearly a century later, in 1906. Describing Alsop's gravestone as "ghastly", the reporter was evidently partial to the sweet, sentimental esthetics of Victorian mourning, and expressed a dim view of Early American funeral art in his article. Noting that a few of the gravestones found in the churchyard had "ugly" winged death's heads, he also failed to appreciate the abundance of portrait-style soul effigies found here as well. Mistaking these colonial era images for "cherubs", he wrote that "more crude and grotesque representations would be hard to find". However, the rise of Gravestone Studies and increasing awareness of the need for historic preservation has given successive generations a more enlightened view of the imagery found in old burial grounds.Mr. Alsop's survivors included three children and his long-lived widow, the former Maria W. Pomeroy, who later married Samuel Whittlesley Dana, US Senator from Connecticut. -Bio by Nikita Barlow