Source: NMHS Newsletter, November 1988

As excerpted from "A Silent Family Circle in Greenwood"

The last few years of this wonderful man [John Comstock] were spent quietly on his farm, looking after his stock until the very last.  He was touched slightly with paralysis in the spring of 1879 but was better during the summer.  On the morning of September 30, 1879, he complained of pains in his shoulder but went about his farm some.  At four o’clock that afternoon while sitting in an arm chair in his home at the western edge of Liberty Mills he suddenly became unconscious and died as his grandson was lifting him to a cot.  October 3 his remains were laid to rest by the side of those of his wife, who had died about a year before, and those of his son---the only one of his seven children that was born in Indiana and that died when but a child.  It was probably the death of this child that was the first occasion of selecting a family burying ground and the highest knoll on the place was selected.  No one seems to know who made the plan for the arrangement of graves in his family cemetery, but knowing Judge Comstock and the wonderful scope of his mind, it is easy to think that this arrangement is a plan of his conception.  In the center and at the very top of the round hill are the graves of the father, mother and the one son that died in infancy.  Surrounding this in the form of a circle are monuments to the memory of the other six children, whether bodies are resting there or not, and back of these in a still larger circle are the graves or stones for their descendants.  Standing a few days ago in the center of the inner circle of this unique burying ground the writer removed his hat in honor of the hopes, the efforts, and the accomplishments of one of the men who by their initiative made possible the splendid community conveniences we have today.  If you have never visited the Greenwood Cemetery as it is named in the plat, or Comstock Cemetery as it is generally called, it is worth your while to do so.  It is between the Eagle farm and Liberty Mills.  A visit there, a little meditation over the part this one character had in the early days of the country, and perchance a little thought, too, about what you are doing yourself for your community will do you good.