The Wichita daily eagle (Wichita, Kan.), June 3, 1900
Tom Paine’s Body
Mystery as to Whereabouts of Remains.
It has become necessary to move the monument erected to Thomas Paine, politician, philosopher and maker of republics, from the roadside in front of the farm that was his near New Rochelle, N. Y. The monument was placed there by public contributions from the admirers of his philosophy in 1839. It was a simple granite shaft until it was surmounted by a fine bronze bust of Paine last year.
Not many feet distant is Paine’s grave, from which his bones were removed and taken to England by William Cobbett in 1819 and forever lost, although it is said that the little finger of one of Paine’s hands remained buried in American soil.
The Paine monument is one of the sights of New Rochelle, and the Paine farm one of its historical places. The monument stands on North street at the corner of the lane that runs up to the house once occupied by Paine on the farm. His grave was once marked by a plain stone slab, on which was the inscription, “Thomas Paine, Author of Common Sense.” This, however, has long since been broken up and carried away by memento seekers. Nothing is left to mark his grave save two posts. The mound has long since fallen to the level of the earth, and the stones of the wall that encompassed it have gone to make a drain by the roadside.
The village of New Rochelle, having determined to widen North street into a boulevard, for which the last legislature appropriated $100,000, a discussion arose as to the disposition of the monument, which would be left in the middle of the road, an obstruction to traffic. The appropriation for the boulevard did not contemplate an expenditure for the monument, so the cost of moving it will devolve upon those faithful to Paine’s memory. For this purpose subscriptions are being taken up. Captain George V. Lloyd, the Westchester Populist, who attended the middle-of-the-road convention in Cincinnati, brought back with him promises of financial aid for this purpose from Ignatius Donnelly, former Governor David H. Waite of Colorado, Wharton Barker, the middle-of-the-road Populistic presidential nominee, and others. John H. Starin, the owner of Glen Island, offered to take the monument to his resort, but this the people of New Rochelle would not consent to, and it will be moved only a short distance from where it now stands.
Two sites for the monument are being discussed. When the street is widened the lane in which the monument now stands will be opened into a thoroughfare up to Paine’s house and the entrance widened by sweeping curves. In the center of this entrance, leaving plenty of room for carriages on either side, it is proposed to put the monument and to surround it with a handsome iron fence. In its present position it is very imposing in its frame of foliage of several large walnut trees that have grown up since the monument was placed there. These trees will have to come down to make room for the boulevard. Another site, and this will probably be chosen, is across the street from the present location on a high piece of ground, triangular in shape, the apex of which will form the junction of the boulevard and a road coming from the east. This plot is about an acre in extent and on the same level as the height called Mount Paine, on which stands the Paine house across a pretty valley. On this height is an enormous block of granite which has been there for ages.
The Paine farm is as pretty a bit of countryside as there is in the state of New York. It originally consisted of 275 acres, and was given to Thomas Paine by the state of New York in 1784, at the time Pennsylvania presented him with 500 acres in recognition of his services to the country during the war of the revolution and afterward. The farm had been the estate of Frederick Devoe, a Tory who fled to Canada. Not returning to take the oath of allegiance to the United States, the government confiscated the farm.
In his will Paine left one-half of the farm to his friend, Clio Rickman, of Paris, the husband of his friend, Margaret Bonneville, and the other half to the sons of M. and Mme. Bonneville. The farm has since passed through many hands, and is now owned by C. N. Lester and J. See. Mr. See occupies the house in which the great free-thinker sat and wrote. In his last testament Paine willed himself twenty square feet of land for his own grave, but he failed to locate it. Otherwise the monument would not now stand in the lane, and his grave would not have been obliterated.
Paine’s house is a quaint, old building of two stories, with an added modern wing. In the rear is a buttery with a barred window. The porch is small and has not a hospitable look. The visitor will be shown a window through which a fanatical country lad fired a load of shot at Paine, narrowly missing him. In his excitement the would-be assassin dropped his gun, which made a perfect mould in the mud. The following morning Paine went to the house of a neighbor and asked for his gun. The muzzle was plugged with mud. Paine took the gun to his house, and it fitted perfectly the indentation made in the ground. Then he discovered that the gun had been borrowed by the lad who had intended to kill him with it the previous night.
The farm is now in a high state of cultivation. It is divided into fields by stone walls. In one portion of it is a large reservoir, fed by a brook and springs, and the brook carries the water of a spring through a field and across the road under a bridge, and out down the hillside. There are also fine orchards and groves, and altogether it is one of the show places of New Rochelle.
The monument cost about $1,000, and it was paid for in small subscriptions in New Rochelle and Tuckahoe, with a few from New York. On the front is a good portrait of Paine in low relief, surrounded by a wreath. The inscriptions are as follows:
“The world is my country;
To do good my religion.”
—Paine’s Motto.
“Thomas Paine.
Author of ‘Common Sense.’
Born in England, January 29, 1737;
Died in New York City, June 8, 1809.
‘The palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise.’
—Common Sense.
Erected by Public Contribution,
November 18, 1839.
Repaired and Rededicated
May 30, 1888.
Bronze Bust Erected May 30, 1899.”
On the sides and back are carved long extracts from Paine’s works, The Age of Reason and Crisis No. 1.
Across the street from the monument is an old stone house also known as the “Homestead,” which was formerly the residence of Alfred Badeau. In this house Paine boarded whenever he was on his farm. He had no housekeeper, and only wrote and slept in his own house. The old Badeau house is in a good state of preservation and is unchanged since Paine’s day, except for a wing added not long ago and sundry coats of paint.
Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, Norfolk, England, on January 29, 1737. His father was a Quaker and a stay-maker, and Paine was brought up to the trade. He left home before his majority and went to London, but soon moved to Sandwich, where he married the daughter of an excise man and entered the excise service.
Naturally a republican and radical, and so persistent a critic of England’s government and political customs that he seemed almost to hate his native land, Paine came to this country in 1774, and, through letters from Franklin, at once found work for his pen. Within a year he became editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, and contributed to other periodicals.
The literary work that gave him greatest prominence, and probably has had more influence than all his other writings combined, was Common Sense, a pamphlet published early in 1776, advocating absolute independence of England.
It has frequently been asserted that Paine was the author of the Declaration of Independence, but the evidence offered is far from conclusive.
Visiting France during the revolutionary period, he published, under an assumed name, a pamphlet advocating the abolition of royalty. In 1791 he published in England his Rights of Man, in reply to Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution. For this he was outlawed by the Court of King’s Bench, in spite of an able defense by Lord Erskine. Escaping from England, he again went to France, where he was received as a hero and elected a member of the National Convention.
His republicanism, however, was not extreme enough to please the Jacobins. He was opposed to beheading the king, urging that Louis should be banished to America. The Jacobins finally expelled him from the convention on the ground that he was a foreigner, although he had become a French citizen by naturalization, and Robespierre had him thrown into the Luxembourg prison, where he spent nearly a year in anticipation of the guillotine.
Released finally through the efforts of James Monroe, American minister to France, Paine resumed his seat in the convention.
In 1809 Paine died in New York, and by his own request was buried on his farm at New Rochelle. A few years later William Cobbett, an English radical, removed Paine’s bones to England, with the hope of increasing enthusiasm for the republican ideas of which Paine was still the favorite exemplar in print. But the movement did not have the desired effect, and it is believed that the remains found their final resting place in France.