New England Explorations, part 4: the Cemeteries
many, many cemeteries
I looked up the definition of a taphophile — a person who is interested in cemeteries, funerals, and gravestones. I want to deny this is what I am, as cemeteries aren’t where my discovery journey ends, but it’s just a stop along the way; however, it is undeniable that I am, in fact, interested in cemeteries, because here I am writing about them. A taphophile am I.
As I wrote in part 3 of the New England Explorations, the mysteries of the Rutland Prison Triangle have taken hold of me. I started by just wandering around the roads in this great wilderness, and then wondered why the roads were there, and remain there while they served no obvious purpose, or brought people nowhere in particular.
As it turns out, looking at the old maps of the area, there are farmsteads located along all of the roads in the blue boundary. Looks to me like few of these farms had more than 40 acres of land, which may have been the acreage a farm could support in the age before modern machinery was available. One clue to the old farms’ existence is the prevalence of rock walls EVERYWHERE. More about them later.
After noticing the roads (by y’know, being on them), the next thing I clearly noticed were the cemeteries. There were far more of them than I expected, and more than my brain could keep track of. I kept wondering whether I was seeing the same one in different places, or whether the woods were getting the better of me.
Yes, I read and watched Pet Sematary, and I do believe, as Herman Munster said in the film version, “sometimes, dead is bettah.” There is something a bit spooky about the New England burial grounds that makes them creepier than the Midwestern variety. Maybe it’s the terribly thin stone slabs they use, which lead to the gravestones’ awkwardly tilting resting angles, or the illegibility of the face carvings due to age, erosion and lichen growth. Maybe it’s the surrounding trees, leaning over the grounds like they want to grab and hold you, like the mean trees in the Wizard of Oz.
Please allow me to interrupt myself with a brief digression to clarify terminology. Cemetery, graveyard, and burial ground are used interchangeably at times to mean a place where human remains are buried. After considerable study on the topic, it is my conclusion that burial ground is the generic term from which the other two evolved. Graveyard usually refers to a burial ground attached to a church, while cemetery usually denotes a more modern, organized burial ground.
With all of that out of way, let’s get to it. Here’s that same map I’ve been using with the addition of numbered yellow circles to locate cemeteries:
And here’s the list to go with those circles:
Kendall Plains Burial Ground (circa 1811)
Caldwell Cemetery (1746)
Riverside Cemetery (circa 1800)
Parker Cemetery (circa 1810)
Coldbrook Burial Ground (circa 1874)
Glen Valley Cemetery (circa 1864)
Route 62 Cemetery (1850?)
Goose Hill Cemetery (1812)
Rutland Prison Cemetery (1903)
I’m going to discuss Caldwell first, because it is the oldest in the set. For comparison, the oldest cemetery in the area is the “Old Burial Ground” in nearby Rutland, which “opened” in 1717. (Well, probably 1/3 of the blue area of the map is Rutland, so it’s more than nearby — it simply is, and Barre used to be known as West Rutland.) At any rate, the 1717 date gives me some context of cemeteries in MA.
Of course, Massachusetts began in 1620 with the Plymouth Colony, and it took the settlers some time to move west into the wilderness. In fact, I’m gonna say it took settlers more time than I might’ve thought to move west. Massachusetts is a relatively small state, and it took people ~100 years to move halfway across the state? Who’d’ve thought? The USA started out pretty slowly.
Well, that’s not entirely true. It took more time to settle the hills and valleys of Central Mass than other, more westerly parts of the state, it appears. As these things go, people with choices took the choicer land first, leaving others to fill in the remaining gaps. Springfield, MA, for example, on the big and bold Connecticut River, was founded in 1636. That’s a pretty quick migration to the western edge of civilization, after all. But I digress, as usual.
Caldwell may have started as a family plot (yes, another term), but it became a town-maintained cemetery at some point, and it started to fill up. At that point, Kendall Plains took over. It has at least one impressive monument:
And here’s the sign:
Moving forward … I’ve covered Riverside Cemetery in a previous article, due to its one notorious gravesite, but here’s another pic of it, with the mighty g650x slowly sinking its kickstand into the sand.
Parker Cemetery is located in what used to be East Barre, or Barre Falls. The drive to the burial site is dominated by the Barre Falls Dam, which came along in 1958, well after the cemetery did in 1810. This is the least populated (at least by stone monuments) of the cemeteries on this list … with the exception of the Rte 62 cemetery, which I’m not sure is officially a cemetery.
But let’s talk about it, out of order again, because it’s just a bit further east along … wait for it … Rte 62 … from the Parker location. While driving along, I just caught a glimpse of this place out of the corner of my eye, and it was gone. When I finally stopped and looked around, I saw the site is dominated by a large pyramidal grave marker:
I’ve not seen the like of it in any other place, but like I mentioned, I’m not a registered, card-carrying taphophile. Here’s one more shot of this site as we move foward:
One of the first sites I came across in my triangle travels was the Coldbrook Burial Ground. It is very close to the Coldbrook Springs (aka Smithville) village former location, so that must’ve been the population it served. As no one lives there anymore, this site might take some time to fill.
Next on the list is Glen Valley Cemetery, which is one of the newer spots here. It’s also the one that appears to be most carefully planned, both in current layout and room for growth. Unlike the Rte 62 cemetery, which is right alongside a fairly speedy road, Glen Valley appears to be quite peaceful in comparison.
The last two sites are probably the most unique as a pair, due to some location quirks. Goose Hill Cemetery is more or less the real boundary of the wilderness, with state park on one side of the road and rural residences on the other. Goose Hill has a nice, hillside location in itself, but the more unusual burial site of the two is the Rutland Prison Camp Cemetery, opened in 1903. I stopped by Goose Hill, saw the blue historical marker, and thought that it referred to Goose Hill, not another site located along a road wandering off into the woods. Thus, I had to return to find the Prison Camp burial ground, as modest and mysterious as it is:
That’s Goose Hill, followed by the Prison Camp:
Going through this exercise has helped me keep all these locations better organized in my mind, and if it is at all entertaining to anyone else, that’s a bonus.
Next up, maybe we’ll discuss rock walls …