Memento Mori Walking Tours
About this Event
Join Stanley-Whitman House guides for a 90-minute walking tour of Memento Mori, Farmington's ancient burying ground on Main Street. Meet the town's early residents through their gravestones: ministers and midwives, weavers and silversmiths, soldiers and schoolteachers, and hear a few of the stranger tales the stones have collected over three centuries.
Tours are offered weekly, on Wednesday afternoons at 4:00 PM and Saturday mornings at 9:00 AM. Choose the date and time that suits you when you register.
Please note: There is no on-site parking. The tour meets at the Barney Library, 71 Main Street, Farmington, where parking is available.
TICKETS
Member: $15
Non-Member: $20
Members save $5 on every tour. Not yet a member? Ask your guide how to join, visit Stanley-Whitman House, or visit www.s-wh.org.
ABOUT MEMENTO MORI WALKING TOURS
Reading Stones, Hearing Voices
Founded in 1661 and expanded several times as the town grew, Memento Mori now holds roughly 855 marked graves. Brownstone markers, porous and weather-softened, and later marble tablets, once gleaming white, together form an open-air archive. Early winged skulls, soul effigies, and stern Puritan death's heads yield over time to marble urns and weeping willows, signaling a cultural shift from admonition toward remembrance and sentiment.
Lives in Stone
Within these rows rest the people who built early Farmington: its ministers and physicians, its farmers and artisans, its mothers and children. Among them are residents of the Stanley-Whitman House itself, veterans of the town's wars, a woman struck by lightning who lingered four long years, and an unmarried woman of property whose own account books preserved her name. Their epitaphs echo faith, labor, and endurance.
Memory and Absence
Yet the ground also testifies to those absent from the record. Graves once unmarked, stones long vanished, enslaved people whose lives went scarcely recorded, and the Indigenous Tunxis, erased from the landscape, leave their presence as a heavy mark. Their silence, too, is part of the story the cemetery compels us to face.
A Living Landscape of Reflection
What began as open pastureland has become a shaded grove where stone and nature converse. Maples and spruces now rise over markers, symbols of continuity set against monuments of mortality. To walk here is to encounter not just epitaphs, but the sweep of community memory.
"Memento Mori is more than a cemetery. It is a classroom in the open air," said Verzosa. "As America 250 unfolds, these tours ask us to listen carefully: to the carver's line, the epitaph's voice, the materials under our hands. In them, we find not only the fragility of life but the endurance of memory."
GOOD TO KNOW
- Tours run approximately 90 minutes, entirely outdoors on uneven ground. Comfortable, sturdy shoes are strongly recommended.
- Tours are weather dependent. Registered guests will be notified by email if a tour must be canceled or rescheduled.
- A minimum of 4 registered guests is required for the tour to run. Capacity is limited to keep the experience intimate.
- S-WH Museum members pay $15 rather than $20. If you enjoy the tour, membership more than pays for itself over the course of a season of walks.
- Please be respectful of the grounds. We ask that visitors not touch, lean on, or make rubbings of the gravestones.
- Copies of the museum's Memento Mori book and the Journal of Farmington History, featuring the residents met on the tour, are available at Stanley-Whitman House.
ABOUT STANLEY-WHITMAN HOUSE
In 1935, Stanley-Whitman House was established as Farmington's first museum. It is a nationally recognized historic house museum and living history center that teaches through the collection, preservation, research, and dynamic interpretation of the history and culture of early Farmington, Connecticut. Programs, events, classes, and exhibits encourage visitors of all ages to immerse themselves in history by doing, acting, questioning, and engaging in colonial life and the ideas that formed the foundation of that culture.
Located in the historic village of Farmington, the museum facility centers on a circa 1720 National Historic Landmark house furnished with period antiques to reflect the everyday activities of Colonial life in Connecticut. Surrounding the house are period-raised bed gardens, an apple orchard, and heritage stone walls.
The public service areas of the museum, constructed in 2004, include a modern classroom, a period tavern room, a post-and-beam Welcome Center, a research library, an exhibit gallery, the Nancy Conklin History Gallery, and a collection storage area.
In addition to managing Memento Mori, Farmington's ancient cemetery on Main Street, and the Village Green, located at the intersection of Routes 4 and 10, the museum also oversees the Scott Swamp Cemetery on Route 6. The Stanley-Whitman House is supported in part by the Farmington Village Green and Library Association.
SUPPORT STANLEY-WHITMAN HOUSE
At Stanley-Whitman House, our commitment to accessibility is paramount. While not all of our programs are free, we strive to offer as many as possible at no cost, thanks to the generous support of our underwriters. If you wish to assist us in this mission, we welcome donations, which help us to expand further and diversify our range of activities. Your contributions play a crucial role in maintaining and increasing the accessibility of our programs.
Where is it happening?
USD 0.00 to USD 23.18
