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Historical Information
Some historical information on Jaffrey's cemeteries from Volume I of the Jaffrey Town History:
Chapter XXXVI
Old Graveyards
The Old Town Burying Yard
As runs the glass
Man's life doth pass.
—New England Primer
In the summer of 1770, old John Grout died, and a vague tradition tells us that he was buried in the parcel of ground reserved for a common at the center of the township. This tradition accords with the probabilities because we know from a petition to the township proprietors that before the incorporation of the town, a burying place had been reserved on the Common "and some persons interred there." In April of that year, in the "Dying imperfect words & Letters of a Dying man," John Grout had sent to the distant proprietors his last petition begging that he might be confirmed in his disputed homestead right, and now he was granted by his townsmen a habitation whose tenure was unimpaired. They carved no stone to mark his grave, and, when after five years all trace of it had been obliterated and forgotten, they raised the meeting-house over his ashes, a fitting monument for one who was by his own statement the first permanent settler of the town. John Davidson, Grout's contemporary and also a reputed first settler, long survived and, almost alone of the pioneers, a slate headstone marks his grave. Some of the pioneers were buried in their own fields, and a wooden slab or unmarked stone was the transitory memorial that, for a time, marked the place where they lay. Some, when the infirmities of age came upon them, returned to the place whence they came to die among their kindred; and some, perhaps, rested in the shadow of the old Presbyterian meeting-house in Peterborough, which, before the building of the Jaffrey Meeting-house was the church of many of the Jaffrey pioneers. After the meeting-house was built, the place of sepulture, from ancient custom brought over the sea, was in its shadow. God's Acre it was called, and he was exiled in death who might not share with his kindred this appointed place of rest.
In 1784, a committee was appointed to lay out the "burreing yard," which in solemn phrase they denominated" the house appointed for all he living." With the long vista of mortality opening before them, they were sparing of room, and before the second generation had passed, they were looking for new fields wherein to lay their dead. The lot selected was about one and one-half acres in content and was divided by an "alley" through the center, twelve feet in width. No family lots or subdivisions, so far as now appears, were provided in the first survey. In the meeting-house, they apportioned the pew ground because there was pride of family and place, but here they were reduced to a common level, and there were no perplexing questions of precedence or right. Nevertheless, with seeming regularity, the graves were placed in rows from north to south. They built their roads with windings and curves, but here they worked by rule and line so that they might be found orderly on the Great Day. After a hundred years, the old slate headstones stood tilted and askew, and though righted with filial regard, they still move as if some premonitory stirring had seized upon these sequestered bones. It was not by chance that those early graves were dug due east and west, with the headstone facing the sunset. It was the mode their faith had taught them so that when they arose to meet their Lord in the air, their faces would be illumined with the effulgence of morning.
On the year following the laying out of the yard, they built a wall around it so that stray cattle would not tread the turf above their dead and disturb their sleep. It was built according to the specifications for such use made and provided, and a competent committee was appointed to "lett out the work, view and except the same." The builders were approved workmen, and the wall has stood their fitting testimonial to this day.
In 1778, they chose a "Saxon to dig graves." He was a mighty man, that "Saxon", and never ceased his labors until he had gathered the last of the stubborn old pioneers into his narrow field. James French was the first sexton, and his line of employment remains unbroken. For many years, there was no hearse in town, and, after the dignified custom of the old times, the coffin, covered by a pall, was borne upon the shoulders of men. In later years, after the steeple had been added to the meeting-house, down to the memory of many now living it was the custom to toll the bell for the dead; and the solemn, undulating tones, as they rolled away over hill and valley, told to the scattered farms the number of the years of the departed.
The old headstones were generally of slate, and the inscriptions and emblems were those common in old New England. Some of the best of the slate headstones were, it is believed, imported from England, and their condition—many as legible as when first engraved—is the best possible evidence of their fitness as memorials. Many bear the emblem of sorrow, the weeping willow and the urn; some, the hourglass, and one, the rude round form of a human face adorned with wings, emblematical of heavenly flight. Great age and tender youth lie side by side. Here lies Moses Stickney, according to the inscription, the "first child who trod the wilds of Jaffrey." His farm was on the east shore of Thorndike Pond, and he lived, as a man should with such a beginning and such surroundings, a full century of healthful, active years. Many more are here who lived to a good old age, but, alas! A larger number were cut down in infancy and youth. The stones are proportioned to their age and stature, tall and imposing for an old and respected citizen, with military and ecclesiastical titles carved large to view; and a tiny stone for a child. The children have been there long, and it is so still down there that they have grown impatient, it seems, and the little tilted stones are like childish hands protruding from the turf, crying like youthful Samuel lest they be overlooked: "Here am I, for Thou didst call me!"
It is easy to think of life in a retired New England town as sheltered and serene as its woodland lakes, but here were lives full of episode and adventure, pulsating from their struggles with an untamed wilderness and amid the throes of the Revolution out of which a nation was born. Half a dozen lying here so quietly could have told you from vivid experience the story of Bunker Hill. Others could have recounted the weary march to Bennington, where they stood with Stark against the invading foe. Here in the family lot of Joseph Thorndike, whose better memorial is the beautiful lake that bordered his farm at the foot of Monadnock, is a cenotaph that takes us from the limits of the township into the realm of conjecture and romance. It is erected to the memory of Luke Thorndike, who followed the sea, and as captain of a ship, died and was buried in the storied island of Martinique.
But strangest of all is the record over the two humble graves of Amos Fortune and his wife, Violet:
- Sacred to the memory of
AMOS FORTUNE
Who was born free in Africa,
a Slave in America.
He purchased his liberty,
Professed Christianity,
Lived reputably,
died hopefully, Nov. 17, 1801, a. 91 - Sacred to the memory of
VIOLATE
by sale the Slave of Amos Fortune,
by Marriage his wife,
by her fidelity,
his friend and solace.
She died his widow,
Sept. 13, 1802, a. 72
Here lies Dr. Adonijah Howe, a skilled and progressive physician in his day, whose fame and usefulness extended far beyond the boundaries of the township. He was first in the region to inoculate for the dread disease of smallpox. Students of medicine came to town for study of their profession with him, and he was employed by the State for the treatment of obdurate cases of soldiers wounded in the battles of the Revolution.
On a monumental double headstone are the names of Captain Samuel Adams and his wife, who were cut down untimely by typhoid fever, the dreaded pestilence that walked in darkness, which none could avert. It is his sufficient fame in Jaffrey that he built the meetinghouse that is still his monument and throws its shadow upon his grave.
Among the arrivals in 1786, warned from the township by the constable, as the Nation yet warns the poor and unfit from its door, lest they become a charge and a burden, were Peter Davis, a clockmaker, his wife, Hannah, and Hannah, his child. It was a cold welcome for the poor clockmaker, and had he heeded the warning, the town of Jaffrey would have missed the memory and influence of the singular, self-reliant, and devoted life of the daughter that it has long treasured. She lived alone in her own little house to a good old age, loved and honored as few in town have been, and was laid to rest beside her mother here, and, no doubt, beside her father too, completing the family circle, where a marble stone tells her name and years, and its inscription, "I know that my redeemer liveth" bears testimony to her unclouded faith.
And here a little farther on is a disciple of peace, whose grave might well be a place of pilgrimage in a troubled world. His gravestone is our introduction, though he was often honored with places of trust by his townsmen. He is "Mr. Lemuel Maynard, who died May 4, 1803, in the 65 year of his age." That he was respected is shown by the honorable title of Mister, which was not, in those days, indiscriminately applied. But his character as a neighbor and townsman, we may be sure, is truthfully represented by his epitaph: "HE WAS A MAN OF PEACEFUL LIFE."
In the southwest part of Jaffrey, rising toward Gap Mountain and watched over by Monadnock, are breezy uplands once cleared and occupied by prosperous farms. The pioneers of this region were active in the affairs of the town but were so far removed from the meeting-house and center of community life, that in matters of trade they were largely tributary to Fitzwilliam, while in social affairs they came from their isolation to have a close-knit neighborhood relation that was peculiarly their own.
They had come into the unbroken wilderness as to a promised land, which they expected to transmit to their children for an inheritance forever. Before 1800, the region was fully settled with incredible toil. They had cleared away the forest, and the marvelous yield of the virgin soil promised comfort and happiness for the future. Wheat yielded thirtyfold, and tall men were lost to view standing in their fields of uncut hay. From their doorways, they could count their increasing herds upon their rock-strewn pastures. The schoolhouse in their midst overflowed with the children of the second generation. The pioneers were growing old and, in the course of nature, must soon relinquish their control and entrust the future of the district to their descendants. As the strong men weakened and the less strong yielded to the rigors of pioneer life, like Abraham, when he was old in a strange land, there came a desire for a suitable place under their immediate care where they could lay their dead. Following the Revolution, there had been an era of land speculation in New England. The new townships afforded a promising source of gain to the capitalist class in the older communities, and so it happened that a thousand acres, more or less, in the township of Jaffrey came into the possession of the wealthy and distinguished Phillips family of Massachusetts. Two hundred acres of this land, including the farm at present owned by George R. Brown, was made a part of the original endowment of the famous Phillips Academy in Andover, but the largest portion of the Phillips holdings were in the west and southwest parts of the township. Lt. Governor Samuel Phillips of Andover, greatly honored as a public benefactor and pillar of State, became the owner or administrator of this portion of the Phillips estate. It appears from his real estate conveyances that he came often to Jaffrey. Esquire Roger Gilmore acted for him as Justice of the Peace, and the neighbors were called in as witnesses. He sold land to Captain Joseph Perkins and his sons, to Abraham Ross and others, and so became intimately acquainted in that outlying district. True to his character, and knowing the needs of his friends in this remote community, in 1797, for a nominal consideration and the condition that it should be fenced with a good stone wall, he conveyed to the town a tract of ninety-five square rods for a burial yard, which was an immediate need. The town complied faithfully with all the conditions of the gift, and out of the rough fieldstones of the vicinity, it built the typical New England wall that has stood straight and secure for more than a century. The tall gate posts also were of stone, hewed by Josiah Ingalls, a worthy man of that neighborhood whose work is his only monument. The entrance gate is on a long abandoned, grass-grown road, early described as leading "from Mr. Abraham Ross' to Mr. Phineas Spaulding's," names and highway ending now within the enclosure of the dead.
A full century and a quarter has passed since they set apart their acre of consecrated ground, but it is not full. The yield of the fertile farms to mortality has been small. If we count the memorial stones still standing here, less than the number of the first generation may be found after one hundred years in their appointed resting place. Of the remainder, some are buried in the older yard by the meetinghouse, some found new homes and were buried where they lived honored lives and died regretted, and some were wanderers of whom it may be said that "no man knoweth their sepulchre to this day."
Among those buried here are the men who cut away the forest primeval and let the light of the sun upon the forest floor that had been darkened since primordial time. Here lie Captain Joseph Perkins and his wife, Ruth, first of the name in Jaffrey from whom came the strong generations which have improved the town by their labor and their counsel. Here lies Phinehas Spaulding, whose monument looks down upon the homestead that he cleared. His life story, were all other records destroyed, might stand as a faithful picture of our heroic age. With his ax and his gun, he came alone into the unbroken wilderness at the foot of Monadnock (see Vol. II).
Here are the mortal remains of the Comstocks, the Jewetts, the Adamses, and the Bakers, all honorable names in the annals of the church and town. Here lies Moses Worcester, selectman and trusted town officer, and many of his tribe. Here are Putnams, Rosses, Stanleys, Marshalls, and Stones, names once prominent but no longer heard when the roll of voters is called in town meeting.
A striking memorial is that in the north end of the yard, looking across to Gap Mountain. It is a great stone chair, fit to be the throne of a monarch of the hills. It is a memorial of the Ross family, three generations of whom lived hereabout. It is said that according to the belief of a descendant, spirits often return to the scenes of their earthly existence, and so, with filial respect, he placed for them this chair, facing the sunset, where in seemly fashion they may sit at ease when they return to muse upon the scene of their earthly existence.
For most of those who are resting here, the final journey was brief. Their temporal homes were nearby, and often, they had looked with composure across the unobstructed fields to this pleasant hillside, where they counted on a peaceful sleep and a glorious awakening. Upon their gravestones are the old sentiments of sorrow and loss, sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust in a better hereafter. Their epitaphs and inscriptions are our introduction to those who have gone the way of earth before us. They are the means by which they sought to communicate to us, as in duty bound, the lessons they had learned from the brevity of life and certainty of death.
In these latter years, the quietude of this secluded spot is seldom broken by the funeral train, for even death has forgotten this appointed spot. The inscriptions here cover a century and a quarter, but mortality has not kept pace with time, for less than the same number of names are recorded here. It seems that already this field has served its purpose, and there are no more, or only a scattered remnant, to be gathered to their fathers.
Interrupted nature reaches out to reclaim her own. The young pines and bushes creep up over the hills where their great ancestors once held sway. They stretch to their greatest stature and peep over the walls of the fields and pastures. They pause by the vacant homesites to reconnoitre, but no enemy is there. When the wind blows, their leaders stand up straight and tall and wave defiance and scorn to their retreating human foe. Once a year, the mower comes with his symbol of Time and mows down the venturesome bushes and breaks that have trespassed between the walls; but, true emblems of life everlasting, they spring up perennially to defy him. The wild cherry, the sumac, the golden rod, the hardhack, the thistle, and the rose of remembrance flourish here more abundantly for the transitory dust that has returned to its dust. The lilac-run-wild has enveloped the grave of the patriarchal Captain Perkins like a purple cloud, each shoot striving to answer the ever-propounded question: "If a man die shall he live again?" "Life mocks the idle hate of his arch-enemy death; yea, seats himself upon his throne, the sepulchre, and of the triumphs of his ghastly foe makes his own nourishment."
The graven epitaphs are pleas for remembrance, but tears no longer water these lonely graves, and the rude memorials scarce in~ voke "the passing tribute of a sigh." Nature is wrapped up in the living and cares nothing for the dead. Life goes on and on, and it is only the inscriptions on the senseless rock and the carved effigy of the weeping willow and the urn that remain to remind us of "old, unhappy, far-off things" and sorrows of other days. But the influence of these lives goes on all about us. Their humble records of domestic virtue are as worthy of remembrance as the achievements of the great. It is no wavering faith that is manifested here. Always, there is steadfast insistence upon the immortality of the soul.
Read these inscriptions in the light of other days, and know that they meant literal truth and comfort in some simple home in days of great sorrow. It is natural for children to bury their parents, and we are admonished to " Weep not when the hoary head sinks to rest," but here on every side we have Rachel weeping for her children, and finding comfort in the vision of another existence where the budding life, cut short here below will have its full fruition.
- Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
Death came with timely care;
The opening bud to heaven conveyed
And bade it blossom there. - What a lifetime of resignation and sorrow is betokened by this tablet:
In memory of HARRIET, DAUGHTER OF
John & Sally, Worcester,
who died Jan. 9, 1832.
AE. 9 years. Without a tear without a sigh,
This happy youth alas did die;
Four infant babes beside her rest
While God is pleas'd to call them blessed. - Here on a little double stone is grandeur of trust and resignation, when two children of Moses Worcester are taken, expressed in the lines:
'Tis God that lifts our comforts high,
Or sinks them in the grave;
He gives and blessed be His name,
He takes but what he gave. - "He is not dead but liveth," were words of consolation to the bereaved ones when the head of the household was taken. "She hath done what she could", is the simple record of devotion to duty. "There is rest for the weary," and "God giveth His beloved sleep" are comforting thoughts to those who have borne the heat and burden of the day. But there is also warning for the thoughtless in that awful challenge found in every old churchyard in New England:
- Behold and see as you pass by
As you are now so once was I,
As I am now so you must be,
Prepare for death and follow me. - Chapter XXXVII
Cemeteries, Smallpox, Epidemics, and Longevity
Let's talk of graves.
—Shakespeare
In Jaffrey Center, there is an old cemetery sacred to the Cutter tribe, who gave it. If you would find the place, leave the Center Village to the west, and branching off on the old road over Cutter Hill you will come after a few rods to a well-kept, shaded, and beautifully situated cemetery, laid out and owned for many years by an association of the Cutter family and its connections. It was founded in 1836 in accordance with the wishes of John Cutter, a prosperous tanner, whose home was the large house at the fork of the roads nearby. This yard was entrusted to the care and ownership of the town in 1927.
Contrary to the course of Empire, the town of Jaffrey grew from west to east, and as early as 1829 the thriving Factory Village (now East Jaffrey) found it too far to go to the old churchyard at Jaffrey Center to bury the increasing number of its dead, and as there was already a shortage of room at the old graveyard the town acquired on October 24, 1829, of Oliver Bacon, a tract of land on the outskirts of the village, north of the Turnpike and so near the Baptist Meetinghouse, then building, that it was sometimes called the Baptist graveyard. Two years later, on December 30, 1831, the town paid Thomas Davidson $79.65 for building sixty-five rods of "stone wall around the burying yard near the Baptist meeting house." The village yard was beautiful for the situation, and for a time, it was more used than the old yard at the center of the town. Again, the increasing population of the field of the dead set an even pace with the growth of the town.
Provisions for the mortuary needs of the town had never been adequate or well considered, and in 1859, it was already apparent that more room was needed for even the immediate future. Nine years before that, John Conant had retired from his farm near the Mountain to end his days in comfort in a new house in the village, now owned by James H. Fitzgerald, and perhaps because the village cemetery was in view from his door, he was made aware of the coming need. In his recently acquired lands, there was a sandy tableland alongside a hardwood grove and at a convenient distance from the village that seemed to him well suited to the needs of the town. His thoughts quickly found results in action. He gave to a newly-formed association, called the Conant Cemetery Association, this tract of land for a cemetery. The Conant Cemetery Association was organized in the summer of 1859 by John Conant, John A. Prescott, Andrews Emery, Orford Capron, Samuel Ryan, J. E. B. Jewett, James L. Bolster, David A. Wood, Orlando Cragin, and their associates. On Sunday afternoon, June 17, 1860, the new cemetery was dedicated, and burials that year were those of Andrews Emery, Thomas Chadwick, and a child of Granville Shedd.
John Conant fenced the new cemetery with a substantial picket fence supported by stone posts, and so well was the work done that after seventy years, it shows no sign of weakening or decay. After a few years, a border of pines was set out around the outer boundaries of the cemetery, and along the entrance aisle from the street, they have formed an almost completely arched avenue, sombre and still but beautiful and in keeping with the spirit of the place. It is a well-kept cemetery and a credit to the association and the town, but like its predecessors, it has kept pace with the growth of the town and recently, more room has been made available for burial lots.
On the brow of the hill in a corner of the pasture on the former Benjamin Pierce farm, now owned by Horace Deschenes, is a small plot of ground fenced off by a tumble-down stone wall and looking down on the Contoocook River below Cheshire Factory. Two gravestones peered over the wall for many years and could be seen from the road below, but every trace of the memorial has long since vanished. No Potter's field of dead waifs and strays was ever more neglected than this graveyard where many new-made towns, if they could count it as a possession, would erect a monument and make it an honored shrine. No path leads to this forsaken enclosure. No one comes here now except that occasionally a mild-eyed cow, standing by the stone wall, chews her ruminative cud and wonders vaguely if it be worth the while to climb over the obstruction to crop the sparse herbage within. It is the old smallpox cemetery. Six are buried here apart, a most incongruous company, as will appear below, but enough of tragedy and heartbreak is buried in this little forsaken plot to outweigh the grief for a hundred in the ordered communities of the dead. Here, no prayers were offered, no family and no friends gathered about, no "earth to earth," no "dust to dust" was said here. Rather, the burial was at night, as if it were the work of ghouls and not of men.
Visit the Smallpox Cemetery page for more information.