Howison Homestead
Howison Homestead
Stephen Howison I
1736 – 1815
Stephen Howison III
1776 – 1862
“The Graves of the dead who rest from their labors.”
Donated by the Howison Family 1991
The Home of my Childhood.
How dear to my thought is the place of my childhood
It once was my father’s, but now it is mine
Just under the lee of the Northwestern wildwood
Where mother milked cows and father fed swine.
No fashion or style e’er the building attended
But sheltered with strong oak of the best
The short winding staircase so easy ascended
The sliding plank window that looked to the West.
Here I when a child was protected from danger
Here I in my youth was accustomed to roam
Here often my parents have sheltered the stranger
And treated the traveler far from his home.
There stand in the yard the patriarch cherry
Where oft I have sat in the shade of the tree
Where mother with butter and milk from the dairy
Has feasted my sisters, my brothers and me.
The trees of red pears in the garden still standing
Spread over the lilac and cover the rose
Still bearing their fruit and their branches expanding
Shade o’er the green turf for a place of repose.
The trees of the orchard by storms have been broken
And many have mouldered and gone to decay
Yet, some of the strongest remain as a token
The marks of antiquity still to display.
The mossy old spring where I often have rested
When father and I had wrought at the plough
The bunch of green brambles where chickens have nested
Were there in past ages and still are there now.
My sister came there and I then did respect her
Her flowing locks waving as she tript in the gale
A sip from her gourd tasted sweeter than nectar
Before she took up and went home with the pail.
The oak at the spring whose shade has grown wider
Whose limbs are extended, whose tops have grown tall
The hickory tree where my father pressed cider
Still bearing and dropping its nuts in the fall.
The pine through whose branches cool breezes now fan us
In winter a covert, in summer a shade
Have grown like the cedars of Lebanon
And cover the fields which our fathers have made.
The graves of the dead who rest from their labors
I visit alone in the cool of the day
For there lie my parents, relations and neighbors
And some of my ancestors older than they.
For what the Lord gave He again hath exacted
The souls that He gave He hath taken away
The hulls are laid here, but the kernels extracted
Like the fruit that has fallen and gone to decay.
’Tis here I converse with my Lord and Creator
’Tis here I remember I shortly must die
Recounting my deeds with prayer to my Maker
While viewing the ground where I shortly must lie.
—S. Howison
Written by Stephen Howison, 3rd, born January 20, 1776, died March 1, 1862 “written in his twilight years.”
Marker can be reached from Minnieville Road.
Courtesy hmdb.org
