Somewhere in the woods in Waterbury, behind where the former Vermont State Hospital was located, there’s an unmarked cemetery that includes up to 20 bodies of former patients who died at the psychiatric hospital in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
But that cemetery is not where mental health advocates thought it was located.
The Division of Historic Preservation last month led an archeological project at the site, where mental health advocates put up a plaque in 1991 based on old maps and historical records.
Vermont State Archaeologist Jess Robinson was there to see if he could determine without doubt that the site was indeed the location of the former cemetery.
“The newspaper articles and other accounts are vague enough that we’re not exactly sure,” Robinson said as he made his way up the steep knoll where the plaque is located. “And so what we’re doing today is a strategy to basically try to uncover — not the burials themselves, we’re not digging down nearly that far — but just shaving enough of the soil off to see if we can identify discolorations in the soil that are indicative of burial shafts.”
The archaeological team was there because Northfield Rep. Anne Donahue wanted to put up a fence around the site to protect it from a growing mountain bike trail system that runs very close to where the plaque is located.
But before the state spent the time and money on the fence, Robinson wanted to know for sure if the location of the cemetery was accurate — and after six hours of work the team determined that the plaque was not in the right location.
And so the site of the unmarked cemetery remains hidden away.
“The newspaper articles and other accounts are vague enough that we’re not exactly sure."Jess Robinson, Vermont State Archaologist
“You know, it would have been nice to have a definitive result; well, we do have a definitive result, positive result I should say,” Robinson said at the end of the dig. “But we’ve answered the question, and now the search continues.”
Donahue became interested in the cemetery in 2011 when Tropical Storm Irene flooded out the Vermont State Hospital, which led to the eventual closure of the troubled psychiatric facility.
“I remembered having heard about there being a cemetery and I thought, 'Gee, if everything’s moves away, are they going to forget that cemetery?'” Donahue said. “So I started trying to find it.”
Donahue did not even know about the plaque until she started looking into the existence of the cemetery after Irene, and when she finally was able to find the plaque, a few years later, it was overgrown with saplings and weeds.
The Northfield legislator got the state to take on maintenance, and it’s in pretty good shape now.
The plaque stands on a mound, which is raked and cleared a few times a year by the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation.
“These are people that the state had in its custody, the state had in its care,” she said. “And most of the folks who died at the state hospital during that time, their families took them home. These were people who had no one. So, I think obviously there was an obligation to respectfully address their remains, but then also to remember, not to just leave them abandoned.”
The archaeologists began by digging down about 4 inches, within a large area about the size of two coffins.
They cleared away the top layer of soil, made up mostly of decayed leaves and branches.
They then got down on their hands and knees and gently scraped their way into the next layer of soil.
If anyone had dug a grave there over the past few hundred years, the soil would have been mixed and not uniform in color.
But after uncovering four large areas on both sides of the plaque, the team did not see any soil disruption.
“These were people who had no one. So, I think obviously there was an obligation to respectfully address their remains, but then also to remember, not to just leave them abandoned.”Rep. Anne Donahue
And so they said, without a doubt, the plaque was erected in the wrong area, and they were not near where the former state hospital patients were buried
Donahue has spent hundreds of hours poring over old records and looking up newspaper accounts in the hopes of giving names and stories to the people who were buried, without names, under wooden crosses that have long since disappeared.
She said she is sure there is a cemetery somewhere, because in many of those historic accounts there is reference to a cemetery where people whose families did not claim them after death are buried.
Donahue said through all that work, the one sure thing she could hold on to was the fact that she knew where the cemetery was.
“I mean this is the one part of all this work that was sort of not in question,” she said after receiving the crushing news. “So, um, I really, really expected it to be found here, and it’s a big disappointment to think it’s somewhere out there elsewhere, and we don’t know."
Donahue wants to keep the plaque there, as a memorial to the patients who are buried somewhere in the area, though the wording will have to be changed.
There might even be a second cemetery, down in the valley, according to her research.
And so she said she’ll keep on looking.
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