Cemeteries are not ghoulish places. They are fascinating. Believe me. Here are a few simple stories about some cemeteries I went to while doing research on the family history.
My father & I were in Evergreen Cemetery in Plainfield, NJ looking for the headstone of Randolph Marsh. We had seen the house the family lived in circa 1910 & were now eager to find some graves. Well, Evergreen Cemetery has not be tended to for 3,000 years. It was in a mostly black neighborhood. The cemetery was maybe a city block size. But it was so overgrown in tall weeds that reached my height of 5' 10". There were also shorter annoying weeds & beers can & bottles. It was very hard locating headstones. But with luck & enough traipsing around we found Randolph's headstone. We were delighted.
But there was a headstone close by that had fallen over or was pushed over, face down so we couldn't read it. We tried lifting the stone, but it was far too heavy. Using a long tree branch as leverage was no use. So a bright idea came along. I went to the car & got the car jack. We set up the jack & began slowly jacking the stone upright. Meanwhile across the street sitting on a porch looking at us were two older black women. We got the stone raised enough to read it. I can't imagine what the two women were thinking as they watched us. Before we left I decided to add a personal touch to the headstone. In chalk I wrote on it, "WE HAS RISEN!" Hope the women stopped over later.
In Columbia County, NY we stopped in at a very small cemetery. A McDonald's parking lot would be bigger. The headstones went back to the 1700's. We noticed at one grave a large hole along one side of the grave. Exactly opposite on the other side was another large hole. What we discovered was that a gopher or ground hog had burrowed down from one side of the grave to the other. What was particularly startling was that in it's burrowing, the animal went straight through the coffin. How did we know this? Well, there were small pieces of purple fabric, pieces of damp & crumbling wood, a button & more disturbing, small bones. Human bones! My father, being the fun kind of guy he is, decided to take the spoils home. And yes, the bones too!
We were in Chatham, NY one summer. Chatham is a very small, quaint little village with it's one main street & old Federal & Victorian homes. We were staying overnight so checked into the town hotel, rather than go looking for a Holiday Inn. The hotel was a large Victorian type at least one hundred years old. Inside was dark, not quite dank, plush & homey. The room we were in was at one time some ones real bedroom. An elderly couple owned the hotel. They were very pleasant & the room was $20 - cheap. At 10:00 pm we decided to go see a movie in the local movie house. In telling the owners of this, they responded that they are going to bed after locking the front door. So they gave us the key in order that they not be disturbed when we returned! We saw the movie & let ourselves in to the hotel.
The next morning we got up, got ready to check out. That is when we found a note on a table. The owners had written that they went shopping & if we leave before they return to please leave the key to the hotel on the table! We not only could have taken the key, but also their Worldly possessions. I was struck by their trust in strangers. You will not find that trust in more populated areas. It would be downright dangerous. Such is life away from the city.
We were in Evergreen Cemetery in Newark, NJ (yes- another Evergreen). This Evergreen was overgrown like the Evergreen in Plainfield, the only difference being that this Evergreen was 3-4 times as large. Evergreen in Newark is off Springfield Ave., the same Springfield Ave. that witnessed the Newark race riots in the late 1960's. The cemetery is near the heart of the black community - very poor & very crime ridden. I went to Evergreen once before by myself & wandered through the growth, encountering no problems. Looking back I don't know if that was one of my brightest ideas. Anyway, my father & I pull up the the caretakers house. No answer.
We get in the car & I'm about to drive off. Suddenly up ahead of us about 50-60 yards are six, good-sized black males walking into the cemetery & approaching us. The scene could have been taken out of "West Side Story" in the way the six walked toward us, looking everything like a gang about to strike it's prey. My father in quick words said, "Let's get out of here." I immediately reacted by hitting the gas. The tires skidded & kicked up the gravel road. I suddenly thought, no, I'm not gonna be intimidated by them. False bravado also kicked in. I let up on the gas & slowing drove directly up to these "killas". In as calm a voice as I could muster, I asked if they knew where the caretaker was. I was told by one of them that the caretaker was on lunch. As for them? They were the cemetery work crew returning from lunch! With hearts almost in throats & feeling foolish, we left. Impressions.
Another time south of Albany, NY we spotted a lone headstone out in the middle of a farmers' field. Out of curiosity we stopped & walked out into the field to look. Still curious, we spotted a house in the distance that looked like it belonged to the farm. We walked to it, knocked, & asked the women who answered about the headstone. No special story here. But what was special was that she invited us in, gave us lemonade & we all chatted away about genealogy & what-not.
It's a different world up there. Everywhere we went people were absolutely friendly & more than willing to help us. Small town mentality? Small town upbringing? Small town isolation from the more harried suburbs & cities? Dunno. But hospitality was surprising & refreshing, along with the slow pace of life up there.
We stayed in a motel one night in Valatie (pronounced Va-Lay-Sha), NY, along the Hudson River. That summer night was the first time I ever saw the Milky Way Galaxy. It was awesome. Living in the light polluted area of New York City, I was lucky if I could see 20 stars on a good night. I envy people that see this every night.
While in Valatie we went to the local cemetery. Now my grandfather, if I recall correctly, had two sisters that died in childhood, Lydie Mae & Mabel. They died in the late 1800's. I'd seen the names countless times in my research. Two names on paper. We thought that they could buried in this cemetery since the family lived in Valatie for a while. It is a fairly large cemetery, full of trees, very old headstones, well manicured & very green. We walked all over the place. Many stones had no names or were too worn to read.
The girls --->
Running out of places to look, we spotted two headstones along one edge of the cemetery. They were all by themselves on a small rise & next to a large shady tree. It was them! The stones were small & had just their full names on each stone, as I recall. It was so peaceful, so quiet. We left & returned with plastic flowers, cleaned the stones up & placed the flowers in front. I then took photos of these little graves. I left wondering when was the last time anyone ever came to them. The family moved to New Jersey about 10 years after they died. Were they last visited ninety years ago? One Hundred? Sad. But I felt good that we kinda put closure to it. The family returned to them.
Columbia County Courthouse. The town Columbia is a handful of miles south of Valatie. A much larger town with respect to Valatie, but small & rustic compared to where I live in NJ. We wanted to look for documents relating to the family. The old Federal style courthouse is something you would typically expect to see in such a setting.
We went inside to the small, antiquated lobby/office. A woman behind a railing helped us. Kind of. She was busy, so gave us a set of keys which were for their records office & vault. We unlocked the door to the records & went in. There were, among other documents, shelves of very old ledger-type books. The books were huge, like something out of a Charles Dickens novel. Inside these books were the original writings & record keeping of people who long passed back in the 1800's. Reading them & touching them was a thrill, just because of their age. When we left we dropped off the keys to the woman. Again, I could have walked out with the keys or original records because the woman was busy & didn't notice us. You would never be given keys down this neck of the woods. Incredible.
Another cemetery near Valetie proved daunting. It had maybe 15 headstones in it. A wrought iron fence surrounded it. The headstones were from the mid-to-late 1800's. Getting there was half the fun. It sat off a small road & into the woods. "Into the woods" doesn't do the phrase justice. It was literally a jungle to get there, incredibly dense. The woods were so completely overgrown with brush, bushes, vines, & strange vegetation that a machete would really be best. We pushed & pulled things out of our way, chopped down things with small branches, in lieu of machetes. It really was an ordeal getting to the cemetery. At the cemetery we had to climb the fence & then pull away the overgrowth from the headstones. A long forgotten cemetery.
One last story. My girlfriend & I went up to Massachusetts & stopped at a Bickford's Pancake House. Across the highway we noticed part of a small, old cemetery. So after eating & her getting a Bickford's balloon on a stick we drove over to it. The cemetery was about 1/2 the size of a tennis court. Very old - 1800's. Not many graves. We saw one grave for someone named Samuel Cheevers. He had a headstone & a foot stone. Foot stones were common back then. They were like miniature headstones about 1 1/2 - 2 feet tall, placed at - duh - the foot of the grave, hence the neat name "foot stone." Don't ask why they had foot stones - I don't know.
Well, my girlfriend thought it would be neat to take the foot stone home. I wasn't too wild about the idea, but what the hell. I pulled out the foot stone & she replaced it with the Bickford's balloon, sticking the stick in the ground. We then left. End of story.
Not quite. About a month or so later we went back up to Mass. Planned to stop at the yummy Bickford's Pancake house. Only when we got to Bickford's we discovered that it had burnt to the ground some time before. No mas. No more. We always wondered - was this Sammy's revenge? But hey, at least he got a balloon out of the deal.
Cemeteries have an appeal to me. They have a solitude about them that is appealing. Quietness. An escape from the real world. They are interesting. Just the architecture of the stones is interesting, from plain simple headstones to all kinds of designs & sizes. The inscriptions are interesting too. From simple sentiments to outrageous comments & poetry & facts. Some are neglected jungles, some are squeaky manicured. Most are pretty, especially the ones in the hinterland. I never really took photos of the interesting headstones. It would have been a nice hobby.
No comments:
Post a Comment