Brave Little State is Vermont Public’s listener-powered journalism podcast. Every episode begins with a question submitted by our audience. Today, a question from Kathleen Cuneen, of East Thetford:
"Who takes care of all the tiny cemeteries in Vermont, and how did they begin in the spots they are in?"
Note: Our show is made for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript. Transcripts are generated using a combination of robots and human transcribers, and they may contain errors.
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Sabine Poux: From Vermont Public and the NPR Network, this is Brave Little State. I’m Sabine Poux.
Kathleen Cuneen and her friends call themselves the “walking women.” They do a lot of walking around Thetford, where they live.
Kathleen Cuneen: Walking and talking and running and talking and talking and talking. And on so many of these little roads, you know, you just come around the corner and there's like five headstones in a little tiny clearing.
Sabine Poux: Headstones in a clearing. These are cemeteries Kathlen’s talking about. Tiny ones, that sort of sprout from the woods. There’s one on her road with just a few graves.
Kathleen Cuneen: And I would see that the grass was mowed, and I'd see that it was tidied but never quite knew how that happened.
Sabine Poux: Recently, Kathleen noticed that the fence had been redone. Someone is quietly taking care of this cemetery, of these graves, without recognition. And she finds it touching.
So she asked:
Kathleen Cuneen: Who takes care of all the tiny cemeteries in Vermont, and how did they begin in the spots they are in?
Sabine Poux: There are more than 2,000 cemeteries in Vermont.
Some, like the ones that sparked Kathleen’s curiosity, are tiny — it just takes one grave for a cemetery to be, legally, a cemetery. Others are huge, with rows and rows of stones. Some are more like parks, with trails, benches and, from time to time, new burials.
In general, there are some basic rules about cemetery care. But in practice, it’s patchy. And many towns are having trouble finding volunteers to help out — including in Thetford, where Kathleen lives.
But there are also people who care a whole lot.
Charlie Machant: I tend to judge a community by how well its cemeteries are taken care of.
Sabine Poux: That’s after the break.
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I tend to judge a community by how well its cemeteries are taken care of.Charlie Marchant, regional chair of the Vermont Old Cemetery Association
The Lorax
Sabine Poux: Cemeteries are managed a few ways: by religious institutions, like churches or temples; by private nonprofit groups, AKA, “cemetery associations"; or, by towns.
And town cemeteries, they’re the most common. The cemetery our question-asker Kathleen was wondering about, for example, it’s maintained by the town of Thetford. It was Thetford that decided the cemetery needed a new fence to protect against neighboring cows. And it was Thetford that found the money in the town budget to pay for it.
An hour down I-91, in Putney, it’s the town that takes care of some of my family’s graves.
I have deep family roots in Putney. The oldest of my ancestors there was its first official town clerk. During the Revolutionary War, he was even put under house arrest because of his enduring loyalties to the English crown.
Anyway, he and a bunch of his descendants — my ancestors — they’re buried at the Old North Burying Ground on Westminster Road. It’s one of more than a dozen town cemeteries in Putney.
And it’s where I meet up with someone who’s repaired a lot of old headstones — and who cares a lot that cemeteries like this one are well taken care of.
Charlie Marchant: You know, you wouldn't go to the art museum in Boston and find all the paintings hanging crooked. Absolutely not!
Sabine Poux: Charlie Marchant, of Townsend, is like a cemetery Lorax. If, in Dr. Suess’s story, the Lorax “speaks for the trees,” Charlie speaks for Vermont’s old cemeteries and the people who are buried in them.
He showed up to a selectboard meeting in a town he does not live in to ask them to take better care of their cemeteries. He has testified in court as a cemetery expert. He even knocked on a landowner’s door to ask them to take down a tree looming dangerously over neighboring plots.
He’s also the regional chair for a group full of cemetery Loraxes — the Vermont Old Cemetery Association, or VOCA. When I meet Charlie at the Old North, he’s wearing a VOCA baseball cap and sitting in the bed of his truck. On its bumper, a sticker says, “I break for old graveyards.”
Charlie Marchant: I tend to judge a community by how well its cemeteries are taken care of. To me, that’s a reflection on the community.
Sabine Poux: Charlie has been working in cemeteries since he was eight years old. It really suits him.
Charlie Marchant: I know it sounds, you know, kind of folky, jokey, but in general, the people you're working for don't call you, you know, you know what I mean. So it's quiet work. And if you do a good job, people like to see it. Especially a cemetery like this, right next to the road.
And I look at cemeteries as, you know, a true cultural resource that is good for the business of what’s called “heritage tourism.” Like, your relatives are here so you come here to see your relatives’ stone.
Sabine Poux: One of my family’s stones at the Old North is marked with the name Hannah Sabin.
Sabine Poux: Who died May 28, 1802 In her 17th year.
Charlie Marchant: She’s 17 years old.
Sabine Poux: On her gravestone, Hannah is described as “amiable.” It’s a word I’ve only ever heard in Jane Austen books.
Sabine Poux: Does it mean something specific in this case?
Charlie Marchant: She was a good person. Friendly. “Amiable.” They rarely put on a gravestone that someone was a schmuck or a loser. You’re always a good person in death.
Sabine Poux: Hannah’s grave is more than 200 years old. But the writing on it is legible and the slate headstone is in one piece. It hasn’t been overtaken by weeds, and the grass around the stone appears to have been recently mowed. That’s thanks to the town of Putney — more specifically, to a locally elected body called a cemetery commission.
Its mission statement is this Benjamin Franklin quote: "Show me your cemeteries and I will tell you what kind of people you have."
Here are some samplings from recent cemetery commission meeting minutes: There’s a growing interest in green burials, and the town isn’t selling as many burial plots. A team of volunteers is assembled to put flags on veterans’ graves for Memorial Day. The town is to put out a request for bids on mowing and monument repairs.
That landscaping contract — it’s a big part of the cemetery budget. Putney pays a company $15,000 a year to mow the town’s biggest cemeteries a couple times and cut branches at risk of falling.
But there’s another variable that isn’t such a simple fix: people-power. The town hires who it can to take care of the big stuff. But there’s essentially always more work that can be done — more cleaning, more repairing and more governing.
'Show me your cemeteries'
Jonathan Johnson: And there's just so much work, you know. I mean, I can’t do everything myself.
Sabine Poux: Jonathan Johnson is head of Putney’s cemetery commission. He’s also the town clerk.
Jonathan has had a hard time getting other people to run for the commission. At one time, he was the only one on it. And this fall, he tried to gather a small gaggle of volunteers for two hours on a Saturday to clean up one of the smaller cemeteries in town, near Putney Mountain. He advertised apple donuts and cider.
Jonathan Johnson: But no one came. And I don't know how you reach people who… or how you engage people in that.
Sabine Poux: Jonathan Johnson and Lorax Charlie Marchant — they love old cemeteries.
And they’re not alone. The organization Charlie works with — the Vermont Old Cemetery Association — it has a loyal corps of members that, on a newsletter’s notice, will flock to a Vermont cemetery of the group’s choosing to help pull weeds and fix stones.
Of course, that sort of thing doesn’t interest everyone. You and I, we might look at an old graveyard and just see a bunch of rocks.
It wasn’t until visiting my ancestors’ graves, in Putney, that I started to understand the sorts of stories these places can tell. And turns out, this sort of personal connection may actually be the key to getting more people to care.
Betsy MacIsaac: In some ways, I feel like an extension of the family.
Sabine Poux: We’ll be right back.
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Betsy and the Aplins
Betsy MacIsaac: So here we are.
Sabine Poux: Wow! Wow, so this is really close. How many feet do you think we are from your house right now?
Betsy MacIsaac: I don’t know, 75, maybe 100?
Sabine Poux: Betsy MacIsaac lives on a farm in East Putney, out the road from the town offices, up on a hill overlooking the Connecticut River. There's a farmhouse, a barn and a teeny, tiny cemetery.
Betsy MacIsaac: There are five stones. That's the oldest one over in that corner.
Sabine Poux: And this is all Aplins?
Betsy MacIsaac: These are all Aplins, yep.
Sabine Poux: Aplins. That’s the family that’s buried here, on Betsy’s land.
That’s because before it was ever Betsy’s land, it was the Aplins’. Their family came from Rhode Island in 1789 and settled here, in East Putney. They farmed the land and lived in the farmhouse. And the earliest Aplins are buried here.
Betsy Aplin: And they lived here, the Aplin family lived here until the late ‘60s. So, 175 years, the family was on this property.
Sabine Poux: Our question-asker Kathleen, from Thetford, is wondering not just about who takes care of cemeteries, but also why they end up where they do.
Well, like the cemetery on Betsy’s land, it’s often a simple answer: because that’s where the family of the people buried there lived. That’s probably true for the cemetery on Kathleen’s road. The family that likely started that cemetery used to live on that road, too.
Even though Betsy isn’t part of the Aplin family, she took up the mantle of caring for their dead when she moved back to Putney 20 years ago.
Betsy MacIsaac: Oh, it was the first thing I did after we closed on the property, it was like the first maintenance thing that I did. I don't know why. For some reason I was just really drawn to it.
Sabine Poux: At that time, some of the headstones had fallen off their bases. Betsy did some research and found out how to use epoxy to glue it all back together. She ended up at a highway products store in Chicopee, Massachusetts to get it.
Betsy MacIsaac: It came in five-gallon containers. And so I had these two five-gallon containers of this epoxy.
Sabine Poux: Not everyone who lives next to a cemetery would be so willing to drive down to Chicopee like Besty did. But this idea — that there are some people out there who might have the time, energy and interest to take care of a tiny cemetery — it’s catching on.
It’s a way around those fluctuating town budgets and no-show volunteer days. Putney is trying to formalize this model of care, which clerk Jonathan Johnson refers to as “adopting a cemetery.” He’s already found a few additional families to do it. The same goes for Townsend, where cemetery Lorax Charlie Marchant lives.
In Betsy’s case — no one ever asked her to care for these stones. She just does.
Betsy MacIsaac: If I didn't take care of it nobody would.
Sabine Poux: Betsy says there aren’t any Aplins in town anymore. But she’s had members of the family stop by, to visit the house and the cemetery.
Betsy MacIsaac: They love to come. And I know that the family, the you know, the generation that were the last to grow up here, really love coming back.
Sabine Poux: When they walk around the property, remembering, she follows close behind. It makes her feel more connected to the land — and to the Aplins.
Betsy MacIsaac: In some ways I feel like an extension of the family.
Sabine Poux: One member of the family, Pauline, visited a while back. She grew up in the house and has since died.
Besty MacIsaac: This is, this is the letter.
Sabine Poux: Betsy’s kept a letter Pauline wrote her after her visit. I ask her to read it out loud.
Betsy MacIsaac: So, it's dated October 2, 2006. “Hello, Betsy. We all wanted to thank you for spending the time with us on the farm. It's so nice to know that you folks appreciate the farm so very much and that you didn't mind our taking up so much of your time. Here are some of the pictures we wanted you to have…”
Sabine Poux: Pauline tucked several photos of the house, and her family, into the envelope with the note. In it, she describes the pictures, like one of her family of nine sitting in front of the house. She talks about a time her dad hit a baseball through the milk-house door.
Betsy MacIsaac: “You bet he made a home run. Keep up the good work, and we hope to get down there again sometime. If only the walls could talk. You could learn so much history of all we Aplins. Thanks so much, Pauline.
P.S. Enjoy the pictures. It's good to know we will all be home again, if only in a picture.”
Like that, that chokes me up.
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Credits
This episode was reported by Sabine Poux. It was produced and edited by Josh Crane and Burgess Brown. Digital support from Sophie Stephens. Angela Evancie is Brave Little State’s Executive Producer. Our theme music is by Ty Gibbons; other music by Blue Dot Sessions.
Special thanks to Sam Eaton, Tom Giffin and Martha Howard.
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