Clear evidence that space aliens visited my back yard: a lawn circle.
Note also that the grass is unusually green for August. Clear evidence that it has been raining a lot around here, or at least it was until early last week.
Vibrant green was also in display recently at Forest Hill Cemetery in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, when I stopped by.
Forest Hill has no hills that I could tell, but there are enough trees and bushes to make a small forest.
As an active cemetery, there are more recent stones, some of which lushly adorned.
I don’t think Scamper and Jasper are here, except as fond memories.
The only memorial I’ve ever seen featuring swans.
Find-a-Grave lists two “famous” permanent residents of Forest Hill, whose stones I didn’t happen to see, but which memorialize a father and son who both died in similar accidents. Namely, race car accidents.
From Find-a-Grave:
Don Vogler (d. 1981):He was killed in a one car accident during warm ups for a United States Auto Club midget car race at the Indianapolis Speedrome. He was pronounced dead at Community Hospital following the accident. Some witnesses said that they saw Vogler clutch his chest before the mishap. His car went out of control and flipped over the track’s outside wall.
Rich Vogler (d. 1990):In the last race of his life, July 21, 1990, during an ESPN Saturday Night Thunder national broadcast, he was killed while leading a sprint car race at the Salem (Indiana) Speedway with a little over a lap remaining. He was posthumously declared the winner. “White Lightning” was reconstructed and has been driven by Steve Butler, Robbie Stanley (who also lost his life in this car) and Johnny Parsons. The car is still racing today.
US 20, according to the Federal Highway Administration, is the longest road in the country. That wasn’t the case in 1925 when the US highway system was created; it was number two at that time. Various adjustments afterward (told in highway-nerd detail on the FHA’s Highway History page) made it so by 1963.
“US 20 is 3,365 miles long, according to the 1989 log,” the site notes. “The route begins in Boston at a junction with Massachusetts Route 2 and ends in Newport, Oregon, at a junction with US 101. Because U.S. numbered highways are not designated with[in] National Parks, US 20 is divided into an East Section ending at the eastern entrance to Yellowstone National Park and a West Section beginning at the west entrance to the park.”
In Illinois, the highway is also the General Ulysses S. Grant Memorial Highway.
When time isn’t an issue, US 20 is my preferred route westward toward Rockford and, for an ambitious intrastate drive, Galena. Last month, it was our preferred route most of the way to Union, Illinois, to visit the Illinois RR Museum. On the way back, we stopped briefly in Marengo, which is one of the many towns along those 3,365 miles.
A modest downtown, but at pop. 7,500 or so, it doesn’t need to be anything else.
A run of buildings from the late 19th century, along Main St. Such as the current home to the Marengo Emporium, closed that late Saturday afternoon, in spite of what a red neon OPEN sign said.
The Marengo Union Chamber of Commerce notes that the building, dating from 1875, housed the first bank in McHenry County in its early years. “In the later years, Swonguer Furniture & Undertakers, Marengo Farm Store, Vidiots, Wholly Smokes and State Street Pub occupied the building but perhaps [it’s] best known for housing the Marie Ann Dress Shop,” the C of C says.
Swonguer Furniture & Undertakers. Not as odd as it might sound and, apparently, a known combination in a number of places more than a century ago. After all, how different is making pine boxes from making pine tables and chairs, at least for a skilled wood worker? Also, it explains this trace of the former furniture and undertaker establishment, in the form of abandoned commercial mosaic text.
Other buildings on the street.
There’s been a fair amount of re-bricking and other construction over the years on that last one. The building looks like it was assembled Frankenstein-style, though I’m sure it wasn’t. The corrugated metal awnings look a little out of place, but I suppose it was an economical addition. To one side, an unusual ghost sign.
First Presbyterian, a block from Main.
An 1898 rebuilding of a previous church. Naturally McHenry County says: “The architects, Tumbull and Jones of Elgin borrowed elements from various Romantic styles when they designed this church. Foremost is the Moorish-style square bell tower.”
I’ll say. How often does one encounter Moorish-style square bell towers here in the heart of North America? Maybe more often than I know, but I figure no one’s done a census.
Not far from downtown is East St., which takes you to the City of Marengo Cemetery. Cubs pitcher Lundy Lundgren (d. 1934) is buried there; I saw his marker across the street during a previous visit to Marengo. This time, I took a look at the older section of the cemetery.
I suspect there are more burials than stones, but in any case, the stones are worn.
In some cases, propped up by metal structures.
As usual for any cemetery, there are stones that hint at sad stories of extinguished youth.
Six years, three months and 24 days. Whatever else you can say about being old — and I’m at that point — you can be sure you aren’t going to die young.
One of the more pleasant drives in greater Chicago is along the Fox River. Two state routes parallel the river, Illinois 25 near the east bank and Illinois 31 near the west bank. The roads follow the river especially tightly from St. Charles to Oswego. During a recent drive on Illinois 25, I noticed North Cemetery, one of the six cemeteries in St. Charles (I later read).
“North Cemetery, aptly named for its location in relation to St. Charles, is the resting place for many of the community’s early settlers,” notes the St. Charles History Museum. “It was owned in the latter 1800s by William C. Irwin… Irwin was a cooper or barrel maker by trade. He was also the town funeral director for a number of years. He was probably best noted for developing Irwin’s Block, a collection of commercial buildings, located on W. Main St. between 1st and 2nd Streets. When he died in 1900, he was laid to rest in the cemetery he owned.”
Barrel maker, undertaker and commercial property developer: as always, I’m in awe of the professional flexibility of the 19th century, and just a little envious. I didn’t encounter Mr. Irwin during my short visit, since I never heard of him until later. But North Cemetery has a nice variety of stones, including some clearly from the early days of St. Charles.
Some very much beaten down by Time.
The cemetery is home to a few memorials of some size, but not so many. Before St. Charles became a far suburb, it was an ag village and river town. Prosperous, but even its city fathers were unlikely to have vast stores of wealth.
A mail-order memorial for veterans who, by 1902, were starting to disappear.
Another veteran. Who wasn’t born yet in 1902. There will always be more wars, though.
For years he rang the town bell.
A job as gone as Mr. Pettingell himself, who apparently was well enough known to a distant descendent to rate a spanking-new stone more than 150 years after his death.
Across Illinois 25 from North Cemetery is another one of the St. Charles cemeteries, Union Cemetery. Mostly newer stones, including a poignant section for children: a patch of ground enclosed by a ring of bushes in the shape of a heart.
Not far away, this stone. For an adult.
Always something new. I, for one, had never seen a circus monkey on a grave marker.
Just before noon yesterday, the clouds opened up and dumped rain and small bits of hail on my part of the world. One of those short, sudden downpours of summer. By this morning, the deck had dried out enough for me to do what I often do there, have breakfast and engage in some loafing.
Another summer note: in the evenings, crickets have received their chirping orders. For a few nights, only one or two bothered, on and off as the cicadas faded for the day. Now strong cricket choruses sound off by night. An excellent sound to fall asleep to.
Doesn’t this sound grand: a few weeks ago I attended a social event on the North Shore. But it wasn’t grand, not in the sense of a palatial setting. But it was at one of the many pleasant middle-class neighborhoods of the area whose real estate valuations lifted stratospherically in recent decades.
Driving all the way to the shore of Lake Michigan means passing through some thick traffic, so to my way of thinking, that also means you should go a few hours early for a look around parts of the North Shore, that narrow but long strip from Evanston to some point in Lake County to the north.
Drive up that way and you might find yourself at Lake Forest Cemetery. At the entrance gate.
Who’s waiting there, as part of the iron gate? St. Peter. Usually he has keys, but I suppose he’s holding the book he consults at the Pearly Gates.
Among the grand old rural cemeteries of metro Chicago, Lake Forest is one of the smaller ones, at 15 acres. Due to its lush landscaping, however, it seems bigger.
It too has a rural cemetery pedigree, selected as a cemetery site in 1857, coinciding with the founding of the town of Lake Forest.
“The site… selected contained the characteristics appropriate for a design in the naturalistic style,” according to a detailed history of the property at the National Registry of Historic Places. “It had topography with gently rolling changes in grade, ravines that added a rugged dimension, and a vista toward the lake.”
But some decades passed before its roads and landscaping were in place. William Le Baron Jenney (d. 1907), who designed the first fully metal-framed building – the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, the first skyscraper – did the roads and some other features in 1882 (not long before Home Insurance).
“In 1900, Ossian Cole Simonds [d. 1931] was selected to develop the site further and is responsible for its design in the Prairie Style. He perfected its beautiful graded surface, its broad open spaces, and its simple groups of trees, often with branches sweeping to the ground…
“Whereas the site had previously been open like a park, he enclosed the property with plantings, providing a feeling of privacy for the bereaved. The location of the cemetery on the bluff above the lake and surrounded by ravines provided a natural setting for quiet meditation that he emphasized through plantings. Unlike other cemetery sites that have been overtaken by urbanization, Lake Forest Cemetery still retains the character that Simonds emphasized through his plantings.”
I’ve happened across some of Simonds’ other work — Lincoln Park, but also Library Park in Kenosha.
Like any good cemetery, there’s a mix of memorials. Considering the decades of affluence on the North Shore, no shortage of sizable mausoleums.
More modest stones, but certainly weighty. Physically, but also emotionally for the bereaved.
More artful stones.
Not much Egyptian Revival that I saw, but there was a little.
The aforementioned sun dial memorial.
I liked this small section: unkempt on purpose, I think.
Lake Forest’s landscaping is meticulous otherwise, so that seems more reasonable that an omission by the groundskeepers.
Not to be too carried away with AI image creation – whose power at mimicking continues to astonish – but it’s like I’ve discovered a new toy. Late to the party, as usual, but so what?
The other day I figured, what better than Victorian-style landscape painting to render an image of a cemetery whose founding and inspiration was Victorian? Of course, you can argue that “Victorian” is too nebulous to mean much, but this is AI we’re talking about. Its entire realm is nebulous – and yet also a dive into a vast body of images somehow or another associated with “Victorian,” thus spinning out something new in some old style.
That’s a long-winded way to say that I gave AI treatment to some images I took a couple of weeks ago at a major Chicago-area cemetery, more about which later. Some of the photos I’d taken hadn’t impressed me particularly, but I wanted to see what the image grinder could make them into.
Prompt: “Victorian-style landscape painting”
Original.
AI made a reasonable choice when it came to shifting the light around the image. I didn’t ask it to keep the lighting the same or similar, but even if I had, it might have ignored those instructions, as it does.
As I said, a new toy.
Prompt: “Escher-style”
Original – a sundial as a headstone. I don’t know that I’d seen that before, but it fits. As the surfers say, Tempus fugit, dude.
Prompt: “Socialist realism style.”
Original. Heh.
With the information marvels at hand, it didn’t take long to figure out “Workers of the World, Unite.” It looked familiar anyway. I regenerated the image a few times, and the slogan came back again and again. Also, the system persistently associated socialist realism with workers’ overalls. Guess there are good reasons for that.
The run of days from Juneteenth to July 4 at least, and even better to Nunavut Day (July 9), would be a fine time to slow down, like between Christmas and New Year’s Day, only warmer and without the mad runup to December 25. Back to posting around July 6.
Thousands of impressions flitter by on the road, most instantly forgotten when literally on the road – driving, you need to be in the moment, or else – or quickly forgotten, when “on the road” means you’re out and about somewhere that isn’t home. Still, a handful of details stick, even without photos. But photos help.
Maine
I call it “Self-portrait with Goth Prom.” Poster spotted in downtown Bangor.
In the Maine Statehouse, a flat-ish object of a different kind.
Lincolnville, on the coast of not far from Belfast.
Carnivorous whelks. I was frankly ignorant about carnivorous whelks, and glad to learn a little about them. Because what a great name for a snail.
Too bad I wasn’t hungry in Belfast. I’d have had tacos.
The Penobscot River and the Penobscot Narrows Bridge. A literal and scenic highpoint on that part of US 1 as it winds through near-coastal Maine. The bridge includes an observatory, unfortunately not open in April. Driving over the bridge itself was another pleasure of coastal Maine.
Helen’s Restaurant in Ellsworth. Tasty fish and chips. Haddock, specifically. What do you take for a haddock? “Well, sometimes I take-a aspirin, sometimes I take-a calomel.” It was some years before I learned that calomel was something I’d never take in a million years.
Massachusetts
Our Lady of Czestochowa Parish, Turners Falls.
The church was closed. So was Poet’s Seat Tower.
As the tower appeared more than 100 years ago.
Shelburne.
Massachusetts 112 (Route 112) in Hamilton County. Car commercial driving.
Goshen Cemetery, just off Route 112.
Ohio
A solid bank building in Niles, across the street from where William McKinley was born. The Dollar Savings Bank Co. sounds like the kind of place that George Babbitt would mention, but distain in favor of a bank with longstanding ties to the best business men in Zenith.
An Admiral Dewey clock at the McKinley Birthplace Museum. A textbook case, that Dewey, of how fleeting fame usually is.
Passing through northeast Ohio intrigued me greatly about that part of the state. Akron, Canton, Youngstown, Austintown — all places I can imagine going, and enjoying the visits. See ’em before the reverse migration really gets underway.
Further west, the drive on the Lincoln Highway (US 30) was a pleasure: mostly four lanes, rarely crowded. The flat farmlands don’t qualify as conventionally scenic, but the budding springtime fecundity has a lot to recommend it, even as a strictly visual pleasure: the bright greens of new leaves, the brown and grays of the fields recently plowed, small roads heading off usually at right angles to the main road, a run between Upper Sandusky and I-75 near Lima with few buildings of any kind, except distant farm structures.
Downtown Lima: the Allen County courthouse, seen from North St.
Looks like my kind of breakfast place. Closed on Sunday anyway.
Another North St. detail. Spiderman sitting on — something. A large scoop of strawberry ice cream?
Saint Rose Church in the hamlet of Saint Rose, not far east of the Ohio-Indiana line. A Cross-Tipped Church.
Pennsylvania
The hills at the edge of Punxsutanwney.
The drive west across Pennsylvania began across the Delaware River from Port Jervis, NY, taking US 209 southwest through part of Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. Bet the straight-ish, two-lane road is busier in peak recreation season in the Recreation Area, but in April, I booked along without encountering much in the way of traffic. Trees were still budding, but it wouldn’t be long before some stretches of the highway would pass through green tunnels. The sunlight was already casting green leaf shadows on the road.
Watch Groundhog Day, and the impression is that the festivities are held in the center of town — which they are, in the Punxsutanwney stand-in of Woodstock, Illinois. Go to Punxsutanwney itself and learn that the February 2 fest is a few miles from town in a place called Gobbler’s Knob.
One more Phil. Iron Phil.
The clerk at the Gobbler’s Knob gift shop took pains to let me know that the site, and the festivities, were overseen by a nonprofit, not the commonwealth. Outside is the nonprofit’s bus, or at least I assume that, probably used to ferry people from town to GK and vice-versa, to help deal with the popularity of the event.
I like a good local festival as much as anyone, but February 2 is a deal-breaker. Can’t Phil come out again on August 2 to predict how much longer summer is going to last?
One More (Indiana)
Miami Chief Francois Godfroy stands at the corner of Main Street and Huntington Street/Indiana 18 in Montpelier. Well, maybe it’s supposed to remind passersby of the chief more than actually depict him.
A Daughters of the American Revolution historical marker says: Reserved by U.S. to Chief Francois Godfroy of the Miami Nation of Indians by treaty at St. Mary’s, Ohio, 6 October 1818. 3,849 acres on Salamonie River at La Petite Prairie, Harrison Township, Blackford County: reserve lands sold 1827, 1836.
Waymarking says: “The statue was made in Venice, CA in 1960 for the Tom Wood Pontiac dealership in Indianapolis. Later it was in front of the Indian Museum at Eagle Creek Park In Indianapolis. After the museum closed, the statue (of more a plains Indian than a NE Indiana tribe) was obtained by Chief Larry Godfroy — a descendant who presented it to the City of Montpelier and they erected it as a monument in 1984.”
The main gate of Mount Auburn Cemetery, an Egyptian Revival structure, was behind a temporary fence the day I dropped by. That’s only reasonable, as an object that needs periodic renovation.
I took a paper souvenir from the cemetery, one that’s given away: a detailed map and guide. An exceptionally detailed map and guide, I should add, including not only the vehicular roads that twist around the grounds (something like the roads in greater Boston), but all of the many, many footpaths, all of which seem to have names. Also noted are special features, including chapels, ponds, named knolls, the sites of 62 notable people buried on the grounds, plus the sites more than 20 notable memorials or works of funerary art. It’s more than anyone could take in during a short visit, or even a lot of longer visits.
That’s never deterred me. I parked near the entrance and set out, picking up the map at the visitors center and spending a moment at Story Chapel.
The chapel is named for Joseph Story (d. 1845), associate justice of the Supreme Court, colleague of John Marshall and, in as much as I know about the subject (not much), a titan of early U.S. jurisprudence. He was also first president of Mount Auburn and, when his time came, he was buried there, though that was among the many memorials I didn’t happen to see.
So many memorials. Some more conventional, but no less beautiful or impressive for it.
Some less conventional. Any grand cemetery needs a component of the unusual or odd.
A number of mausoleums, though perhaps not as many as you’ll see at Green-Wood or Woodlawn in the Bronx.
More modest stones.
Men who died for the Union.
A good many couples.
A sad story, one of many.
Maybe a sad story. A little enigmatic, anyway.
Looking at the map’s list of famous permanent residents, one thinks: “Right, I know him. And him. And him. And her. There’s another person I’ve heard of. And another. And I think I know that one – I do…”
On it goes. A short selection of those I didn’t have to look up: Louis Agassiz, John Bartlett (of Quotations fame), Edwin Booth, Charles Bulfinch, Dorothea Dix, Mary Baker Eddy (“discoverer” of Christian Science, the map says), Edward Everett (spoke at Gettysburg, was upstaged), Fannie Farmer, Felix Frankfurter, Buckminster Fuller, Charles Dana Gibson, Curt Gowdy, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Julia Ward Howe, Henry Cabot Lodge, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Bernard Malamud, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., B.F. Skinner, I.F. Stone, and Charles Sumner.
I could have spent all day looking for them, but mostly I didn’t. I did see Charles Sumner’s stone. People leave smaller stones. I found one and did too.
Near Sumner. I’d never heard of him, but I like that name.
Solomon Sias Sleeper (d. 1895), successful Cambridge merchant and local politico and philanthropist.
The map also lists impressive memorials. I found a number of those. Such as the Rev. Hosea Ballou Monument, honoring a Universalist clergyman (d. 1852).
A Civil War memorial, erected in 1872 — the only time I’ve seen a sphinx used for that purpose.
“The sphinx was chosen because of its ideal personification of intellect and physical force and its representation of the combined ideas of beauty and strength,” the notes on the map say. I know the sphinx has a very long history and comes with a lot of encrusted lore, but that sounds like a peculiar Victorian interpretation that didn’t really stick.
The Scots’ Charitable Society Lot.
An organization founded in 1657 in Massachusetts. It “aims to help people of Scottish heritage by providing relief to Scottish-American individuals and families in need, and by granting undergraduate scholarships to the Scottish-American community,” says its web site because it is still around.
Bigelow Chapel.
Named for Jacob Bigelow (d. 1879), second president of Mount Auburn.
Washington Tower. The highest point on the grounds, honoring George Washington. Designed by Bigelow in collaboration with architect Gridley J. F. Bryant. I didn’t have the energy to climb the hill and then the tower at that moment. Too bad. I understand the view of the Boston skyline from there is terrific.
I was delighted to see it. In its way, as important as Lewis and Clark’s journey, and something I’m certain 99-point-more percent of Americans have never heard of.
Back to Joseph Story. He gave the dedication speech at the cemetery on September 24, 1831. It’s a long one, per custom of the time. Per custom of my time, a short quote:
Here, let the brave repose, who have died in the cause of their country. Here, let the statesman rest, who has achieved the victories of peace, not less renowned than war. Here, let genius find a home, that has sung immortal strains, or has instructed with still diviner eloquence. Here let learning and science, the votaries of inventive art, and the teacher of the philosophy of nature come. Here let youth and beauty, blighted by premature decay, drop, like tender blossoms into the virgin earth; and here let age retire, ripened for the harvest. Above all, here let the benefactors of mankind, the good, the merciful, the meek, the pure in heart be congregated, for to them belongs an undying praise.
The weekend I spent with friends in Boston in April wasn’t actually in Boston most of the time, but its suburbs, and not with my friends quite all the time. On that Saturday, late morning to early afternoon, I passed some warm springtime moments by myself in the thrall of Mount Auburn Cemetery, mostly in Watertown, partly in Cambridge.
How is it that I’d never gotten around to visiting Mount Auburn Cemetery until 2026? What kind of cemetery tourist lets that one go for so long? This is the Ur of landscaped American rural cemeteries, acknowledged as the first one, established in 1831. Did I also mention that it’s drop-dead gorgeous? So to speak.
Mount Auburn is one of those rare cemeteries – like Arlington National outside DC or Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1 in New Orleans – that attracts visitors even in our time. Not a huge number, at least when I visited, but a healthy trickle. Spring, I suspect, is a popular season there.
Arlington National inspires feelings of patriotism from as deep an historical well in North America has to offer; New Orleans’ tombs are dressed in mystery and garlanded with voodoo. What does Mount Auburn have? Landscaping of the highest order. A pattern by which all the following garden cemeteries can be judged: stones of great variety, plants equally various, and an alternation of flat and hilly contour.
The Massachusetts Horticultural Society, itself a recent establishment by the 1830s, created Mount Auburn during a time of peace and expansion in Boston, with the violence of the Revolution barely in living memory and U.S. sectional friction deepening, but not to the strife it would become by the ’50s. The president of the society, Henry Dearborn (d. 1851), is credited with designing Mount Auburn.
The site, with its twists and minor vistas, turned out to be just the place for a revolution in burial practice. Dearborn must have had a gardener’s instinct for the reinventing the wooded hills, but he was much more than a gardener, and the cemetery is much more than a garden. And anyway, Dearborn just set the thing in motion nearly 200 years ago, in collaboration with landscape architect Alexander Wadsworth and botanist Jacob Bigelow. The cemetery, a place to recall lives that are over, is ongoing.
Since then, every stone, every planting, all the small decisions and actions that go into managing 174 acres with 100,000 or more permanent residents, have formed a national treasure.
It’s one thing to see Hannibal Hamlin’s bronze in downtown Bangor, but true vice presidential enthusiasts can’t leave it at that. The 15th Vice President of the United States also happens to repose in Bangor, along with a number of other Hamlins, at Mount Hope Cemetery.
He’s in the company of a lot of other Mainers, too.
Including a lot of 19th-century Maine politicos and nabobs, and silent screen actor Ralph Sipperly. Of course I had to look him up, even though I didn’t see his stone.
Wiki notes, ultimately citing the NYT for the theater anecdote: “Ralph Sipperly [d. 1928] was a comic and character actor who appeared in ten films (mostly silents) between 1923 and 1927. His most notable portrayal was as the barber in the Academy Award-winning film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927).
“During one theatrical performance of Six-Cylinder Love in New York in 1921, Sipperly, who played a high-powered car salesman, accidentally drove an actual automobile off the stage and into the first row of seats. No one was injured, though screams erupted in the sold-out hall, and one woman ‘became hysterical’ as people scrambled out of the way. The incident made The New York Times the following day, but apparently had no effect on Sipperly’s career.”
Mount Hope is credited with being the second U.S. cemetery of the rural cemetery movement. The cemetery organizers picked a partly wooded bluff whose slope rolls down to the Penobscot River. The first such rural cemetery was, of course, Mount Auburn in Massachusetts, which opened in 1831.
“At Mount Auburn, a large tract of land was converted into a romantic park with ponds, bowers, grottos, and a great variety of planting. It was consciously designed for the living as well as the dead,” the cemetery web site says.
“The City of Bangor was not long in following suit. Bangor became very much alive with the settlement of the Penobscot River Valley in the years preceding the Revolutionary War. In 1834, Bangor was declared a city. Among the citizens of Bangor came a strong sentiment for the creation of a new cemetery grounds for the burial of its dead.”
The new cemetery was opened in 1834, along the aesthetic lines pioneered in Boston. Climb the slope – I’ll admit, I drove on the road that snakes up that way – and you’re rewarded with a vista peppered with memorials.
Views of the river and the road that parallels it for a while, the epic US 2.
The cemetery extends further inland, all together totaling about 300 acres.
Aged and crumbly stones in mix, as usual.
Not a lot of large memorials, but some.
More modest memorials.
Actually, that isn’t the only memorial for Harry Merrill (d. 1924).
You have to wonder what the decision-making process was like among Harry’s family. Maybe they couldn’t agree on a fitting memorial, and one group went with a ground plaque, the other with a plaque-on-boulder?
A month from now, Main St. in Bar Harbor is going to be a busy place, sidewalks thick with shoppers and walkers with their coffee and ice cream cones. People will gather at the well-trimmed Village Green. The park at the end of Main, Agamont Park, named for a storied 19th-century hotel on the site that burned down long ago, will be alive with the pleasant sounds of people on vacation, taking in the view of the harbor. Boats will ply the harbor. Lobsters will die en masse to make their appearance on the menus of Bar Harbor restaurants.
One place in town that will not be busy come high season, just as it wasn’t busy a month ago when I visited — and was the only living person there — is the Village Burying Ground, which is a minute’s walk from Main St., tucked away on a small slice of land between two churches, Bar Harbor Congregational and St. Saviour’s Episcopal.
“Established before 1790, this cemetery holds in many unmarked and unknown graves the remains of those courageous men and women pioneers on the frontier of Downeast Maine,” says a sign on site, put there by the Bar Harbor Village Improvement Association.
“Sea captains, fishermen, shipwrights and hotelmen, selectmen and legislators, their wives and children, and the occasional sailer [sic] dying far from home also rest here.”
One of those sea captains, Israel Higgins (d. 1823).
Capt. Higgins, son of Eden (later called Bar Harbor) founder Israel Higgins, was lost at sea. “Israel was considered a master mariner and served as an Eden selectman in 1802, 1803, and 1809,” notes the blog Adventures in Cemetery Hopping. “He was in command of the schooner Julia Ann (his son Seth was also aboard), thought to be the first ship built in Bar Harbor in 1809. Israel and Seth died at sea on March 29, 1823 about 25 miles south of Sandy Hook, N.J., which is about 600 miles south of Bar Harbor.”
Lived to be 89. In those older days, an old sea dog who liked to hang out in the technically illegal bars in Bangor and tell harrowing and probably exaggerated stories about his seafaring youth? One of those old sea dogs who didn’t discuss the old days much? Did he regard steamships as unworthy of real seamen, or take positive joy in hearing about progress in seafaring?
Stones two by two. Maybe not coupled in life, but they are now.
Many stones are on their way to disintegration, as usual with a cemetery that goes back this far.
Dark rectangular slate, as seen in a lot of New England, though no others in this cemetery that I noticed, except for a handful of lighter-colored rectangles.
A memorial to Union soldiers from Eden, erected in 1897, ordered from a catalog. Attributed to Cook & Watkins of Boston, memorial makers.
The village paid for most of it, though the public at large donated. Their efforts were probably pushed along by the idea that we’d better get around to this now, what with all the graybeard vets.
