Cemeteries Offer History Lessons (Greenwich Time, 1992)

Greenwich Time, Greenwich, Connecticut
October 30, 1992. Page 1, Column 1
by Thomas Mellena, Special Correspondent

Tomac Cemetery, Old Greenwich. August, 2014

Brown and yellow leaves lie like a thick carpet at the foot of Nathaniel Lockwood's tombstone.

It has few companions back here, few stones reach up out of the undergrowth and leaves. Some have been stolen over the years. Others, having fallen over a long time ago, lie under overgrown sod, buried as are the people whose graves they marked.

This is the deepest part of Tomac Cemetery, Greenwich's oldest burial ground.

Brownstone markers in the cemetery identify Greenwich residents who died during the Revolutionary War. Other markers, nondescript stones and rocks that were pulled from the woods, are too faded to read. Near the front of the cemetery, closer to Tomac Avenue, 19th century stones are made of marble. They are arranged in rows, surrounded by manicured grass.

Gravestone of Nathaniel Lockwood, Tomac Cemetery. August, 2014. 

Stones throughout the graveyard are engraved with names like Mead, Peck, Ferris and Lockwood.

To horror movie aficionados and those with overactive Halloween imaginations, graveyards – with their promise of zombies ready to climb out of the ground – represent the ultimate no man's land.

To the less superstitious history buff, they are a direct connection to the past.

There are at least 65 burial grounds in Greenwich, ranging from multiple-acre cemeteries to three-or-four-grave family plots. Many provide the first step to unlocking stories of the town's past.

"The overwhelming number of family grave plots used to be part of the large farms that used to exist in town," said Jeffrey Bingham Mead, historian and chairman of the Burying Grounds Committee of the Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich.

Mead became interested in cemeteries in 1984 when cleaning up one of the several Mead family plots in town for a relative. He started a family association to care for all the Mead plots in town.

Mead this month presented to the public a series of slide shows and walking tours of Greenwich graveyards. The six-part series was attended by about 20 people, Mead said.

Something as simple as the symbol carved in an 18th century tombstone or an epitaph engraved in the 19th century stone can say much about how life was lived at the time, Mead said.

Puritan residents in the 1700s lived in a world without modern medicine, where women often died during childbirth, where a minor drought could spell disaster to a family, where sweeping epidemics and the children dying during infancy where the norm.

The pessimism bred from enduring such hardships is reflected on many Puritan tombstones, like that of 30-year-old Simon Redfield, who was buried in 1823 in the Anderson Family Burial Ground on King Street.

"Farewell my young companions all/In the dust you soon must be/Be wise and oh remember this/That you are bound to die."

The gravestone of Nathaniel Lockwood, Tomac Cemetery, Old Greenwich. 

Two stones in Tomac Cemetery near Nathaniel Lockwood's were decorated with the death-head – a winged skull – a common symbol used by the Puritans to remind the visitor of the inevitability of death.

Time passed and some families began to acquire land, wealth and a sense of permanence. Some of the pessimism began to fade.

The death head was replaced by crowned winged soul effigies – a face instead of skull, with wings to symbolize the resurrection and a crown to show entrance to the kingdom of heaven.

Later in the century, symbols from nature, such as the weeping willow trees, became more popular.

The gravestone of Charity Mead, wife of Joshua Knapp, is adorned with weeping willow trees.
The stone is in the Knapp Family Burying Ground at the corner of Round Hill Road and Sumner Road.
Image: October, 2014. 

"You get the impression from the 19th century stones that death was a source of release and comfort," Mead said. "But with the Puritans it was, 'Like it or not, you're going to die, and it's cold and dark here.' Something from the Stephen King movie."

Epitaphs and symbols have mostly become a thing of the past, Mead said, because of the price of stone-carving today. To have a stone decorated like many in the town's older cemeteries could cost as much is $15,000 today, he said.

Which spells bad news for future historians, because it's usually the epitaph that spurs people like Mead to research a name found on a tombstone.

The epitaph on the gravestone of Benjamin Mead III in the Mead Burying Ground at North Greenwich off
Cliffdale Road. 

"There are those sparks," he said. "It might be, for example, that someone died in battle. I'll see that and say, 'Wow this is really interesting, and go from there."

Searches often lead to the records vault at Town Hall, obituaries in old newspapers and the many written and oral histories of town. Sometimes though, searches end abruptly.

The gravestone of Garret Schloter, Old Burying Ground at Clapboard Ridge. October, 2014. 

Like the search for Garrett Schloter, whose tall brownstone marker in the Old Burying Ground at Clapboard Ridge, on Butternut Hollow Road, is decorated with a winged soul effigy – the only stone decorated as such in the cemetery.

"The only other places that symbol is found is in Tomac and Cos Cob (the Old Burying Ground at Cos Cob on Strickland Road)," Mead said. There is no record of Schloter owning any land or living anywhere in town.

"He's in none of the histories," Mead said. "Yet he has a very large stone, much larger than any other there. It's like, 'Well, who was this man?' "

Often, Mead find members of his own family in the graveyards.

"I can't put it in words really," he said of, for example, discovering the grave of an ancestor who served in the Revolutionary War. "But I've read about these people and have heard about them from the old folks. It's a sense of discovery. And a sense of completeness too."

With tough economic times, he said the burden of caring for smaller cemeteries should be taking care of taken off the town – which does maintain many – and picked up by families or churches. Many have responded to his requests, he said, but about 20 percent of town burial grounds remain in need of care.

The other problems facing graveyards are theft and vandalism, Mead said. Before laws were passed in the early 1970s that imposed strict penalties for stealing tombstones, theft of New England stones for sale in New York antique stores was a major problem. The two deaths-head stones near Nathaniel Lockwood in the Tomac Cemetery were stolen in 1972. One was returned anonymously to the Historical Society.

Vandalism remains a larger problem. Last December, at least 24 headstones from the 19th century were smashed or toppled at the cemetery of the first Congregational Church in Old Greenwich.

"I'd like to ask people in town that, if they see any suspicious behavior, to please call the police," Mead said.