Death
In 1806 while visiting a friend Knox swallowed a chicken bone, which lodged in his throat and became infected. He died at home three days later, on October 25, 1806, and was buried on his estate in Thomaston with full military honors.
Lucy died in 1824, having sold off more portions of the family properties to pay the creditors of Knox's insolvent estate. The couple had 13 children although only one son, Henry Jackson Knox, survived to adulthood, and he was known for his drinking and scandalous behavior. Repenting and "impressed with a deep sense of his own unworthiness,' upon his death in 1832 the wastrel son Henry requested that his remains not be interred with his honored relatives but deposited in a common burial ground "with no stone to tell where."
Montpelier remained in the family until it was demolished in 1871 to make way for the Brunswick-Rockland railroad line. The only surviving structure is an outbuilding that currently houses the Thomaston Historical Society. The current Montpelier Museum is a 20th century reconstruction not far from the original's site.
Read more about this topic: Henry Knox
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“half-way up the hill, I see the Past
Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,—
A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,—
And hear above me on the autumnal blast
The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship—only backward. You try to start again but get into blaming over and over. Finally you are both worn out, exhausted, hopeless. Then lawyers are called in to pick clean the corpses. The death has occurred much earlier.”
—Erica Jong (b. 1942)
“Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grim god wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)