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Jane Treat, granddaughter of Connecticut’s deputy governor, opened her bible one spring Sunday-and became the subject of American journalism’s rst obituary. It was 1704. Sitting outside, reading the scriptures, she was struck “by a terrible ash of lightning.” The Boston News-Letter recorded this event in its next edition (June 5-12), telling readers her death had been instant, that the lightning strike left her body “much wounded, not torn but burnt,” and that in life she was a model of piety and sobriety. Although death reports had previously appeared in American journalism, the story of Jane Treat quali es as the earliest obituary because it offers also an appraisal of character, an essential determinant in the achievement of obituary classi cation.