We can not now follow the good chaplain in his deeply interesting narrative.  He makes no mention in it of his family, but it is certain from other data that he left Mrs. Norton and his young children in garrison at Fort Shirley, and that just about the time of his return from captivity to Boston, which was August 16, 1747, his little girl, Anna, died at the fort and was buried in the field a little to the west of it.  Probably some soldier in the fort chiselled upon the rude stone the inscription as follows: 

  Hear lys ye body of An’na
  D:  of ye Rev: 
  Mr. John Norton.  She died
  Aug; ye ——­ aged ——­ 1747.

This stone stood there in the bleak field exposed to the suns of summer and the storms of winter for more than one hundred and thirty years.  The day of August on which she died and the number of years she had lived have become illegible by exposure,—­impossible to be deciphered.  The stone has lately been removed to Williams College, and with its companion relic, a stick of one of the timbers of Fort Shirley, and a few other memorials of the well and fort, are safe in a fire-proof building.

The tradition is still lively in Heath, and it may well be an historical fact for it has been handed down by an aged citizen there whose life began with the century, that there used to come up from Connecticut on an occasional pilgrimage to the site of Fort Shirley and particularly to the grave of Anna Norton some of her relatives.  This is very likely; for John Norton became in 1748 a pastor in the parish of East Hampton, Middlesex Co., Conn., where he died in 1778; and one may still read on his tombstone there the following inscription: 

  IN MEMORY OF
  THE REV.  JOHN NORTON
  PASTOR OF THE 3D CHURCH IN CHATHAM
  WHO DIED WITH SMALL POX
  MARCH 24th AD 1778
  IN THE 63D YEAR OF HIS AGE.

He left several children.  Among them an unmarried daughter, who lived till 1825.  It is no mean touch and print of vital human sympathy that is left upon the sod beneath the great tree in Shirley-field by the figure of one who came and came again from a distant place to catch, it may be, a note from the dreary Past and drop a tear upon the grave of a sister whom she never saw.

  To his Excellency William Shirley, Esq.  Capt.  Gen. and Gov’r in Chief
  of this Province, the Hon’ble his Majesty’s Council & House of
  Representatives in Gen. Court assembled—­

The Memorial of John Norton of Springfield in the County of Hampshire, Clerk, humbly showeth That in the month of February, 1746, he entered into the Service of the Province as a Chaplain for the Line of Forts on the Western Frontier and continued in that service until the Twentieth day of August following, when he was captivated at Fort Massachusetts and carried to Canada by the enemy, where he was detained a prisoner for the space of twelve months, during which time he constantly officiated as a chaplain