Reader Behold As You Pass By (1991)

by Billie Lauricella, Special Correspondent

We'll never know her story, Jeffrey Bingham Mead said sadly, looking across the tiny cemetery with its three ancient gravestones to the field and pond beyond. A white mist rose from the ice-covered pond like a shroud hiding the past.

Sarah Gardner lies beneath the stone on the right, where Mr. Mead stood pensively. Sarah, aged 21, was en route from New York to Boston when she became ill and was escorted off the stagecoach in Cos Cob. She died on Oct. 24, 1795, and was buried in the old burying ground on Strickland Road. No one knows who carved her stone: "Behold and think as you pass by/as you are now s once was I/As I am now so you must be/Prepare to die and follow me."

The other two marked plots hold Mr. Mead's own ancestors-Benjamin Mead, died Feb. 22, 1746, the oldest known Mead grave in town; and obadiah Mead, died April 27, 1759. Both stones display the winged soul motif symbolizing immortality.

Mr. Mead, specializes in graveyards, and is chairman of the Burying Grounds Committee of The Histoerical Society of the Town of Greenwich and president/curator of the Historic Mead Family Burying Grounds Association. he is presenting an interpretive slide-lecture series, "Our Hallowed Grounds," at the Greenwich Arts Center.

The next talk in the series, titled "Reader Behold As You Pass By: The Epitaphs," is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. tomorrow in the meeting room of the arts center, 299 Greenwich Ave.

Mr. Mead's mission is to preserve the town's heritage, not just his family's but that of fellow descendants of the town's founders.

With 65 cemeteries scattered around town, Greenwich has one of the largest concentrations of burying grounds in Connecticut, Mr. Mead explained. Some have only one or two graves; others display row upon row of markers of all types. Many early stones are carved with expressive and enduring examples of American folk art: death-heads, winged faces, willow trees, and religious motifs.

Just as these stones recall an earlier time, contemporary stones reflect today's culture, Mr. Mead said. One in Putnam Cemetery has sheet music carved on it; others bear caducei, scales, even Mickey Mouse.

Although he grew up in Greenwich, Mr. Mead's interest in historical preservation developed after he left home. "I visited one of the family plots (there are three in town) in the winter of eighty-four," he said. "It was a mess so I cleaned it up. That's how I got started."

He organized periodic cleanups of neglected cemeteries, wrote short articles for Greenwich Time, and started researching and recording data. "One thing begat another," he said. "I had no idea when I cleaned up the family plot that I'd be doing a lecture series." He is also working on a book about the gravestones that his sister will illustrate.

When Mr. Mead moved to Norwalk, where he now lives, part of Greenwich moved with him. Friends tell him his home is a condo version of Bush-Holley House. "I've got all the old wall paper and chair rails," he said with a chuckle.

He hopes to teach in the Greenwich continuing education program in the fall, but "Right now, in my spare time, I'm doing a lot of research. I'm very detailed-oriented about the things I like to present to people, so I want to be as accurate as possible."

Having a master's degree in teaching from manhattanville College has helped him in this pursuit.

"A lot of it is packaging and structuring information, and dispensing it to interested people," he said.

He has never seen a ghost or anything other-worldly in his visits to area graveyards. About the strangest thing that ever happened was a barbecue that took place in the cemetery. "I was mortified," he said. "In a way it was sacrilegious. There are forms of etiquette for all different events, even visiting graveyards."

His walks among the dead and his study of death's symbols hasn't made him morbid, Mr. Mead said. Instead, it has given him a greater appreciation of life.

"People think if you run around graveyards long enough you have a cloud over your head and you wear black all the time," he said. "I've got a better dimension of what my forebears and the other residents and settlers of Greenwich were really like. I get the impression that life may not have been as sophisticated as it is today, but it was more wholesome, more spiritual, and you see that in their epitaphs."

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For more informations on Mr. Mead's talk, call him at 849-1464.