I had already been enjoying a long ride down so many dirt roads, passing old farms, camps, and artist houses, interspersed through miles and miles of trees. It was gorgeous. And I was feeling totally refreshed from my stop at Guaco Pond. A little stop in a cemetery to stretch my legs seemed appropriate. So when I found a quaint little gathering of stones I parked my car and went to explore.
This cemetery was odd in its placement. Although I had traveled on some very rural roads to get here it seemed to be nestled in a little neighborhood of sorts. A house sat to one side, another across the street. People passing by seemed curious who it was in the cemetery. This place was just large enough to be a proper cemetery but not large enough to rule out being some sort of private family plot which are scattered throughout New England. Granted it seemed very well kept. A little stone staircase led into it. As was usual it was surrounded on all sides by a stone wall.
Of course it was the slate stones that drew me to them first, settled to the back left hand side. Most of these stones seemed in remarkable condition. They were legible and groomed although one was broken in half and set against the stone wall, a few others had fallen on their back. I am always happy to see the rough backs of older stones which apparently didn’t have the need to grind smooth the ridges made from quarrying the raw slate.
I found a marble stone from 1879 which had the most unusual name: Dedidamia Bradley Shaw. Died April 20th 1879, aged 80. A remarkable age and a strange name. I looked her up when I got home but she wasn’t in any records online. In fact she wasn’t even listed on Find A Grave which makes me suspect this cemetery has not been archived. Sooooo…. if you’re looking for this long lost relative, good news! I found her! Otherwise this was an odd footnote. It always makes me a bit sad when I find something unusual and then can’t find any more information on it. Clearly this woman led a long life, she must have made her mark somehow… and yet she’s completely forgotten to history. It’s a solemn thought.
Even more curious was a modern stone – seemingly the only one dated 2002. That of Reverend Wilton Edson Cross and his wife Rosella M Cross Bemis. Judging by the name change I think she must have gotten remarried. Oof. Must be weird to be buried next to your ex husband after you’ve remarried… In any event it was time to go back to the car and go to my next destination the Federated Women’s Club State Forest.
I wasn’t on it for long before I hit massive gridlock. There were cars sprawled out for miles and miles. A helicopter flew overhead and people started craning their necks out their windows to see my awesome doodle job on Daisy, which I had recently touched up an added to. She’s been in and out of the shop all winter and spring so this was my first outing with her in a long while. It was unfortunate as it was over 80 degrees that day, in full sun, and Daisy’s AC isn’t functional. I’d also left my water and phone charger in the Prius, having been accustomed to using that car in Daisy’s absence. As traffic ground to an absolute halt I found myself stuck, not for the twenty or so minutes I had expected, but for more than two hours. By this time I was suffering heat exhaustion. I was dizzy, nauseous, and soaked in my own sweat. To make matters worse I was bored because the CD player decided it was also overheated and stopped working along with the radio. I traveled only a little over a mile in those two hours and watched as everyone in a truck just drove over the grassy meridian and sped off in the other direction. My car is tough but too low to the ground for that. I was stuck until I finally made it to the Westford exit and was forced to take it, they had closed down the entire road ahead of me. So I drove into Westford, and the first thing I saw was a Panera’s, so I drove in and used their bathroom to cool down, taking a paper towel and soaking it in fresh cold water, splashing my face in their sink before returning to the counter and buying a smoothie and half a sandwich. I ate before stopping to consider where I was and what I should do. I didn’t want to find some ulterior way to the pet store, still being more than half an hour away, with the 495 still closed, but I was in the same area as a friend so I asked if I could drop by and maybe take a cold shower, when the answer was yes, I then decided I would make my trip out worth something by checking out a local trail I found on previous drives.
I ended up at the Tophet Chasm, travelling along their boundary trail, which was 3.3 miles. It was still well over eighty degrees but the shade of the trees was sufficient enough for me for quite a while. I had heard these woods were haunted and had some link to Native American religious rituals back in the day. I found the trail to be…. exceptionally ordinary. What they were calling a chasm just looked like an average wooded hill. There wasn’t anything particularly interesting on this trail, no weird plant life, no funny little birds, no amazing views. In fact the trail wound its way through the back borderlines of numerous private properties. Had I lived on one of them I might find this very neat, having traveled to hike, I found it… less than interesting. The only thing I found that amused me was a gargoyle placed near the trail by one such private residence that appeared to be waiting in ambush for hikers. Super cute!
By the second mile in I started to suffer heat exhaustion again and wanted nothing more than to be off it. I got super nauseous, dizzy, lethargic, and because the pollen count was so high (with the ground looking as if it had snowed yellow) I was getting some super pissed off sinuses starting to give me a headache on top of everything else. I trudged on. There was one view, at what I think was called Lookout Rock, near the end of the trail, that did in fact look over a good part of the town. It wasn’t amazing but ti was something! Onward I walked, melting… By the time I got back to the car I was sooo ready to be home. I drove to my friends house instead where my heat sickness escalated and I ended up pretty much downed for the next couple hours, trying to regain strength to drive home. Here I learned the traffic jam I found myself stuck in earlier had trapped some cars for up to four hours and was caused by a fire in the power lines. I’ve learned a lot of lessons from this. Always have water in the car. Don’t try to hike in the afternoon when the weather is in the 80’s. Check traffic reports.
It’s the first day of October which means my favorite holiday of the year is coming up – Halloween. In celebration of this I have decided to make this month’s travels themed. So welcome to the first entry of my Haunted New England Tour! I will try my best to go to locations that are haunted, creepy, abandoned, surrounded by local myths and legends, stalked by cryptozoological beasts, or part of our brutal history. Of course there will be a number of cemeteries and this month could be a great way to get all you history and psychology buffs involved as New England is the site of many murders and mysteries! I shouldn’t have any problem finding new places to go!
I am starting out with a familiar stomping ground for me – the graveyard behind the town common in Ashby. If you’re wondering what the difference between a graveyard and a cemetery is I am told cemeteries exist on their own while graveyards are consecrated ground adjoining a church. It took me way too long to figure out what this particular graveyard was called. I had to stare at Google street view for quite a while! But the Church is the First Parish Church (Unitarian Universalists) and the graveyard behind it is called 
But anyway this cemetery is mostly slate stones which are the older stones you can find here, mostly dating to the 1700’s. These stones were particularly beautiful as they clearly had several different artists, all adding their own unique signature styles to familiar symbology. This was the first time I found a triple-headed stone. There’s usually one or two double-headed stones here and there, most often married couples or more grimly the gravesites of slaves, infants, or peasants (as double stones are cheaper than two separate stones…) From what I could guess these appeared to be siblings, all children, all dying in the third year of their life. Another sad find was a double stone for a twenty three year old woman in the late 1700’s who died four days after giving birth and one day after her infant died. Was this due to complications, disease, or a broken heart? We may never know but there did seem an inordinate amount of children here, even considering the time period.
Because of its age this graveyard is littered with Revolutionary War soldiers. I have become accustomed to seeing their stones, usually easy to spot because of their metal war plaques and the small American flags that are placed at each. During my first visit here I noticed a very lonely little stone at the very back left corner. It was just a square marble post, looking more like a property marker than a gravestone. It was showered in pennies. In New England this is an old tradition that denotes respect for an important historical figure. Who could it be? I wandered closer and read the stone, “PRINCE ESTABROOK NEGRO GREATON’S CO. 3 MASS REGT REV. WAR.” I must admit this confused me greatly. Was Negro his last name or was he black? And if he was black… we had black revolutionary war soldiers?! I didn’t have a penny to leave that first time I visited but I did today and it seemed to mean a little more because I knew who it was now after looking his story up.
Prince Estabrook was indeed a black man and also a slave. On April 19, 1775, after requesting and being granted legal permission from his owner, he became the first black man to become a revolutionary war soldier (yes, I said first, not only.) He fought and was wounded in the battle of Lexington and Concord, the first battle of the Revolutionary War. His service was on and off from there until the end of the war. We know shockingly little other than that. We have no idea why he volunteered to fight for a country which was enslaving him, we have pretty much no details of his personal life, only that after he eventually won his freedom he lived in Ashby Massachusetts with the son of his previous owner, dying at around ninety years of age. He does not appear to have been honored in any special way during his life and on his death he was buried outside the graveyard’s official boundaries, forever segregated. This explains why his stone was so… isolated. It was moved at some point in recent history to at least be within the graveyard’s official grounds. Only in 2008 did he get recognition being mentioned on a memorial facing the Lexington Green where he fought.
