The monument marking the grave of John Custis IV is one of Virginia’s most ambitious examples of colonial funerary art. The elaborately carved pyramidal-topped marble block is decorated with the Custis family coat-of-arms, a drapery-framed inscription, and a human skull motif. It was executed around 1750 by William Colley of Fenn Church Street, London, whose name and address is on the tomb. Also in the cemetery is the limestone slab of John Custis (1630-1696). The Custis Tombs are located near the Northampton County site of Arlington, the Custis family seat. John Custis IV’s great-grandson George Washington Parke Custis named his Fairfax County plantation, now Arlington National Cemetery, after his Eastern Shore ancestral home. The Custis Tombs were maintained for years by the Northampton County Branch of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (now Preservation Virginia), and the cemetery is now owned and maintained by the Archaeological Conservancy.