On this particular outing we weren’t expecting to find much worthy of photography as this cemetery seems to have a rule about only using flat headstones and nothing else making it look more or less like a mowed field.
However there was a lichen covered bridge that made for a delightful photographer’s distraction as well as some sort of witchy resource? Something about water that goes under a cemetery… I’m not a witch so I just blinked at this information.
Another even better distraction was across the parking lot where a church hid all the interesting headstones! The churchyard was small but unique. On this day it was being set up for what I’m guessing was a wedding. An overworked groundskeeper jokingly asked if I was in need of a few buckets of grass. Not today!
We resumed checking out the stones. The first one I saw that stood out was a full bronze woman lying down with a small horse at her feet. Nearby were slate stones with family crests, dragons, and castles. It was very weird! Like we just stumbled into a European cemetery. And then there wad a creepy snarled tree that also distracted me for a few minutes before we made our way back to the car.
It’s been many many years since I went to Jaffrey’s Old Town Center. I’m not sure I ever went into the cemetery but on this day I did! I had heard that there were two famous people buried here: Amos Fortune and Willa Cather. As a child I had heard about Amos Fortune, a formerly enslaved man who made quite a name for himself, but Willa Cather was news to me. She was a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist.
I’ve been trying to do more Catching Marbles entries this month than usual, but my body has NOT been happy with this new goal, and I was knackered even before I arrived. Still, seeing this place again brought back some fond memories of my childhood. The Old Jaffrey Town Center looks more or less like it did 200 years ago, a small cluster of churches and big farmhouses sitting in a neat little circle, a big grassy common in front of them all. It’s quaint and sweet. They even kept the carriage house intact behind the church as well as the absolutely tiny one room schoolhouse. Plaques and memorials are scattered about making a self-guided tour very easy. The atmosphere was absolutely charming and the Old Burial Grounds behind the church were no different. They were nestled in a quiet spot with a gorgeous view of Mount Monadnock beyond. The perfect place for eternal rest.
Out front of the gates there was a big plaque stating that this was a stop on the Black Heritage Trail because of Amos Fortune. I was told online maps of the cemetery would be at the entrance. There was…. sort of… one big map but it was not laid out in a user-friendly manner. On it several graves were marked out under letters although you pretty much had to read this huge thing about all of them to figure out which was which. I passed because I could see immediately beyond a big number one sitting next to one of the graves. Cool. Surely the two graves I was looking for would be on this numbered tour, right? Right?
I had wandered around and enjoyed all the old slates and got a feel for the place when I realized none of the 13 clearly labelled stops were either Amos Fortune or Willa Cather. What?? I managed to just bump into Willa Cather on accident at the corner of the cemetery not far from the gates. I’d only gone to look at her monument because I saw a ton, and I mean a ton, of rocks on top of her stone. I wanted to know who was so well loved! And I was happy to see it was her. Novelists rarely get that much attention after death. From what I gather she had a claim to fame by writing a series of novels about pioneer life back in the day.
Before I found Will though I found a bizarre monument at the other end of the cemetery in the back that was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It seemed like a vault grave but different somehow? On it the face of a woman was carved as well as a series of religious scenes below. It was chunky and odd, like a folk-art representation of the ostentatious wealthy Catholic memorials I sometimes see. I knew from one of my cemetery books that this monument was carved by a man driven mad by grief from the death of his first wife (whose face it was at the top.) After some drama in creating this… unusual display he eventually lost interest, moved away, and remarried. Doesn’t make for the greatest story but it does make me want to ask a lot of questions!
After all this I was having a hard time standing. I sat on a huge tree trunk near the crypt and rested. Where was Amos Fortune?? I had consulted the map earlier on in the day. He was labelled as “J” but seeing as I have no sense of direction I read the map all wrong and didn’t find him. Asking my phone also resulted no results so I went back to the map and realized it wasn’t oriented in the way I thought it should be and tried again but only after looking up what the memorial looked actually like. It was distinctive in that all the slates in this cemetery seemed to be in perfect condition except for his. His looked as if at some point it has cracked diagonally and snapped in half. A repair effort had fused the pieces back together but not in the most delicate of ways – a large white cement crease could be seen as well as some rusted bolts. Not to be bitchy but this was the worst attempt at stone repair I’d ever seen.
And so I tried again. From the gate I walked forward until I came to the stone wall on the opposing side and then I took a small left and it wasn’t long before I recognized this unique stone. I’d been looking for something drenched in pennies but it didn’t look like anyone had been here. Not a single penny, rock, or trinket, lay testament to a man whose name is burned so heavily into this town’s history. I apologized for this and amended the situation leaving a penny on both his and his wife’s stone.
So who is Amos Fortune? Well, he was an African man who was sold into slavery in the 1700’s and brought to Boston where he labored until he was able to purchase his own freedom at the age of 60. After this he moved to Jaffrey, founded a successful tannery, bought the freedom of his wife and adopted daughter, and lived what looks on the outside to be a good life until his death at 91 where upon he bequeathed a substantial amount of money to the church and community. In 1950 he was once again remembered with Amos Fortune, Free Man a Newbury Metal winning biography by Elizabeth Yates.
I have driven by this cemetery hundreds of times but only recently noticed it because it’s tucked away on its own little road and not something you’re likely to notice unless you’re like me – constantly on the lookout for stones. I had noticed there were a few at the top of the hill all tucked away when the leaves fell off the trees and I have been waiting all winter for the snow to melt so I could go check it out properly.
Ashby is the same town with the grave of a black revolutionary war soldier named Prince Estabrook who is literally just down the road a little bit. Very close. So I was hoping for something else cool here.
As I drove down the little dirt road that ends in the cemetery I noticed there was a house on my right and a turnoff on my left. Was the turn off parking for the cemetery? There weren’t any signs and it looked kinda sketchy ahead so I decided to park there anyway and save the Prius an embarrassing moment stuck in the mud or needing to reverse or something.
There was an old man at the entrance fixing the little fence and dealing with the egregious number of tree limbs that had come down during this past winter. He seemed grumpy at first, or maybe confused why anyone was walking up, but I gave him a big smile and said hello and he warmed up instantly. Above him a big sign read no pets allowed which is bizarre for a cemetery in the middle of nowhere that already doesn’t appear to have any regular visitors but whatever, you do you.
I then walked into the older part of the cemetery which was near the gate. Almost all marble stones from the 1800’s. Not anything particularly remarkable about any of them. Similarly, a quick check with Find A Grave told me there was no one of note in this cemetery. No one?! That’s a first! Even the tiny cemeteries usually have some town contributor or local businessman of note. There were over two and a half thousand stones here, how could none of them have anything to say??
I continued to walk. It was a nice little setting surrounded by thick woods on all sides. Then I spotted the new part of the cemetery, the section that seemed to still be taking in new residents. And for the first time since the Weeping Angels found their way onto Doctor Who in 2007 I FOUND A WEEPING ANGEL! I’d been looking in every cemetery I visited for years and although I found tons of weeping women and lots of angels I’ve never found a weeping angel. It was on a new stone. In fact it was one of only a tiny handful of stones that showed any personality at all. I got up close to it (without blinking) and saw it was the stone of a young man. I don’t know what happened to him but it seemed obvious he probably got this special treatment due to his age and perhaps the sudden circumstances of his death. It was sad but I told him he had a beautiful monument before moving on (I talk to the ‘residents’ of these cemeteries all the time – best be nice and respectful so I don’t drag anything I don’t want home.)
It was only after the weeping angel I started to see a glimmer of personality elsewhere. There was a stone that was in the shape of a horse and then off in a corner with their backs facing the rest of the graveyard I found two slates and went to investigate. They were THICK slates and I was a little shocked to find they were modern. Real modern. Set in the 1990’s but with traditional crudely drawn Cherub head decals. never seen this before but I was intrigued.
I moved back into the older bits of the cemetery and was delighted to find some more modern slates from the 1920’s-1950’s, some with crude cherub heads some with exquisitely delicate carvings of flowers. They all looked like they’d been put up yesterday. Absolutely beautiful. And then I was back at the gate having explored the whole cemetery in a pretty short time.
This was the perfect little distraction for the day I was driving by and if you’re in the area, perhaps eating at the 823 Cafe & Tavern or checking out the Old Burial Ground just up the road this might be a fun little bonus. Otherwise, it probably isn’t worth the drive…. there really wasn’t much here.
How could we go out for a day of sight seeing without ending up at a cemetery? We can’t, that’s how. Especially when said cemetery is in pristine condition, hosts rows of beautifully engraved slate stones, and is right in the same historic district we were already wandering around. Such is the case for the Charter Street Cemetery which is bordered by memorial stones which have all the names, birth, and death dates of all the Salem witch trial victims who were not buried here – in consecrated ground – but were buried in unmarked graves somewhere. We have long since lost where. It’s an interesting turn of events as it was installed by the town in the early 1990’s and now surrounds the same cemetery which hosts the hanging judge who condemned them all to death as well as a number of other historically pertinent individuals involved with these unfortunate circumstances.
The cemetery has its own gift shop which… I mean, that’s a cemetery after my own heart right there. Who wouldn’t want a T-shirt with the cemetery’s name and a death’s head brandished on the front? This is the place for the morbid at heart. And the cemetery itself is gorgeous! It’s VERY well taken care of and although the stones are from the late 1600’s and early 1700’s they’re in great shape. Almost all of them were legible, above ground, and displaying some delightful art. There wasn’t just death’s heads here but cherubs heads, skull and bones, and random faces.
And the people were hilarious. I was not the only one with an expensive camera sitting on the ground taking close up of the stones I found interesting and all the other taphophiles here seemed very welcoming. This was definitely a different kind of tourist and part of why I love Salem so much.
Meanwhile, as i dithered about, my travel companion was on a quest to find the hanging judge. Luckily there was a little map at the beginning of a cemetery that was easy to follow to find this grave. His stone was encased in granite for some reason, maybe to prevent theft? I don’t know but it was the only stone I could see that looked like this. We held in our boos until we left but really… it’s probably best not to be known as a real life super villain. Just saying.
In any event the cemetery was small but absolutely beautiful and I fell in love with the death’s heads and wish to use them as inspiration for tattoo designs. Would definitely suggest a visit to this cemetery to anyone in the area who may appreciate these things.
Today I wanted to go exploring in the Petersham area because I don’t know it very well but the few times I have been through it seemed like a gorgeous local. So I packed up the car and hit the road not having the foggiest idea where I’d end up. I drove to Main Street in Petersham just so I’d have some direction and ended up taking a right at the church onto West Street which is how I came across the West Street Cemetery.
It was a small cemetery with a few older stones in the back so I figured I’d check it out and see if there was anything interesting. Years ago I know I helped archive a cemetery nearby although it wasn’t this one. I was delighted to find that in the very back of the cemetery there was evidence someone else was doing similar work – one of the stones had sunken in the ground making the prose at the bottom unreadable but someone had tried to dig some of it up. The stone was of Fanny Hildreth and was ornately carved and made from marble unlike surrounding stones. I never figured out why.
I’m happy to note that according to Find a Grave 97% of this cemetery has been photographed and it appears to be thoroughly archived. I did not come across any stones with pennies on them and I didn’t see any stones that alerted my curiosity further but it was still a sweet little resting place out in the woods for a lot of the oldest families in this town. There was at least one revolutionary war soldier (Moses Sanderson) who served a month in Connecticut.
This cemetery had a few of the old slate stones I adore so much. The prose was as beautiful and at times humbling as I expect these things to be. I noticed a great deal of them had the same carvings as other cemeteries I’d been to which usually means the stones were ordered from carvers in Boston Massachusetts rather than created nearby. I was however pleasantly surprised to find a new design I’d never seen before on two stones, both of children. I do not know its significance, if any.
This is the first of three cemeteries I randomly visited today (including the Northwest Cemetery and the South Cemetery) but first I visited a nice fishing hole and a hiking trail in the middle of nowhere. As such this was a great start to my day.
Today I had to go to Marlborough and decided to let the GPS drag me down some back roads. I am so happy I chose to do this instead of going the way I knew! I ended up on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere (which is always a nice thing for me) and when I passed a cemetery that looked like it was full of old slate stones I couldn’t resist. Oh! This cemetery had the most character of any slate graveyard I have been in! Whoever was carving those old stones must have had quite the personality! I got to see all the usual designs – cherubs, urns, weeping willows, but with so much added extra flair it was unbelievable. Odd swoops and swirls, intricate geometric designs, and even one which had a 3-D face. Totally bizarre! But how wonderful!
To add to my joy there was a perfect view of Mount Monadknock from here, a ton of adorable mushrooms springing up, the largest Old School outdoor crypt I have seen in this area (with SEVEN rooms!) and adjoining the cemetery there was the ruins of the old meeting house and the crumbling foundation of the town pound, which I must say was also enormous, historically speaking. Marlborough must have been an epicenter at some point. I was amazed. It’s a tiny town today, mostly populated by trees – so much so my GPS wanted to get me home on an old logging road. I denied this. Didn’t want to die up there. In any event this was a happy little detour for me and my poor mother who I was dragging along for the ride. I made sure to buy her an ice cream afterwards, a belated birthday celebration…. ice cream and a cemetery…. We’re an odd bunch.
If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!
Today I had to go to Marlborough and decided to let the GPS drag me down some back roads. I am so happy I chose to do this instead of going the way I knew! I ended up on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere (which is always a nice thing for me) and when I passed a cemetery that looked like it was full of old slate stones I couldn’t resist. Oh! This cemetery had the most character of any slate graveyard I have been in! Whoever was carving those old stones must have had quite the personality! I got to see all the usual designs – cherubs, urns, weeping willows, but with so much added extra flair it was unbelievable. Odd swoops and swirls, intricate geometric designs, and even one which had a 3-D face. Totally bizarre! But how wonderful!
