Does anyone ever wonder how people came up with names of people, cities, .......

[Pat McCotter]

Here is an example of the sources of street names. It is also a way to help kids learn the history of their town since most towns were centered around the church.

"When the young people from the Boys & Girls Club arrived to help a month or so ago, they were surprised to find so many familiar names, names of the streets and avenues of Meriden: Pomeroy, Hall, Parker, Curtiss, Twiss, Coe ... Many city streets are named for individuals and families, and many of them are buried at East Cemetery."

This is also a lesson in how government can become mired in paying for private property "problems."

East Cemetery makes for historic 'big puzzle'
By: Jeffery Kurz, Record-Journal staff
08/16/2008

MERIDEN - One day in March, Gary Shamock was with his father, a real estate broker, who was showing a home on Dryden Drive. Wandering through the backyard, Shamock made his way to the edge of East Cemetery and was disturbed by what he saw.

Everywhere he looked there were signs of neglect and mischief. Brush covered entire sections of the cemetery; spray-painted graffiti was evident on several tombstones; many finials, the decorative tombstone spires, had toppled and were strewn around the lawns and surrounding woods; gnarled tree branches clutched at grave slabs.

The 45-year-old Shamock, a lifelong city resident with a roofing and construction business, had been to the cemetery on and off over the years.

"I got disgusted in March," he said.

In the months since, Shamock has been at the cemetery three or four times a week and on Saturdays. His clean-up initiative has sparked a grassroots effort to restore the cemetery. Volunteers have included Boy Scouts, youngsters from the Boys & Girls Club of Meriden, local historians and others.

On an afternoon last week, Shamock found pieces of a finial in a hole near the burial site of Rufus M. Patchen, who died in 1877.

"That guy, he's going to be happy now, I think," said Shamock.

"Every time I come I find something new," Shamock said. "It's like a big puzzle in here."

And, he said: "Every time I come here I get more disgusted."

When the young people from the Boys & Girls Club arrived to help a month or so ago, they were surprised to find so many familiar names, names of the streets and avenues of Meriden: Pomeroy, Hall, Parker, Curtiss, Twiss, Coe ... Many city streets are named for individuals and families, and many of them are buried at East Cemetery.

Easily overlooked among all the monuments and familiar names is a small rectangular stone that marks the final resting place of Anna Gibson, who died in 1929.

Gibson, a longtime caretaker of the cemetery, may still hold the secret to the graveyard's future.

Gibson toiled nearly 40 years as sexton, or caretaker, of the cemetery. She was still toiling well into her 90s, when she was feted as the city's oldest employee. Meriden at the time was considered to have the only 90-year-old cemetery caretaker in the nation. She was working on upkeep of the cemetery when she died, at 94. Her husband, William Gibson, had died in 1900.

"A plain and simple duty"

Anna Gibson was born Anna Murphy, in Ireland. She came to Meriden in 1853, eight years before the onset of the Civil War, and was the housekeeper for Deacon Edward C. Allen in his home on Allen Avenue.

Gibson bought a home at the corner of East Main and Elm streets and had it moved to 64 Parker Ave., which was near the cemetery. She started work there as a volunteer, because she was concerned that so many lots were not being maintained. She'd cut the grass and tidy the lots.

Eventually, she put up a sign in the cemetery offering her services in maintaining the lots and graves. Her first client was I.C. Lewis, who hired her to take care of his family lot.

Shamock believes he can still find evidence of her handiwork, including slabs set up to reinforce grave markers that were in danger of toppling.

Gibson did similar work for several older residents of the community and by the 1880s she'd been appointed sexton. She cut and raked the grass and repaired with cement stones that had broken or fallen over.

At the time this was considered a man's work, but Gibson was apparently not shy about taking tools from the hands of her male helpers to show them how the work should be done.

That intrepidness still runs in the family, said Wendy Murphy, a Wallingford resident who is Gibson's great, great granddaughter.

Near the end of Anna Gibson's life, Meriden newspapers were taking notice.

"As one of the few remaining survivors of a generation of Meriden people fast disappearing, Mrs. Gibson considers it a plain and simple duty to see that the graves at East cemetery are well kept," observed The Record in 1925.

"Flitting here and there about the burial ground, with all-seeing eye and ever-ready hand and tool, she is the pride of twelve grand-children and seven great-grand-children. Her continued activity has caused her relatives and numerous friends no end of surprise."

But Gibson was also not happy, reported the newspaper, which was covering her efforts to prepare the cemetery for Memorial Day that year. She was exasperated because city residents with family buried there were not taking an active interest in upkeep of the cemetery. As sexton, she received "a small sum from the city each year" and felt Meriden needed to do more.

"The municipal money may help to keep driveways clear, but there is endless and ever-growing grass to be cut, crumbling stones to be mended and straightened, dead trees to be cut down, caveins to be filled up, monuments to be washed and decrepit fences to be repaired," wrote the newspaper.

Such conditions are characteristic of the cemetery today.

"Since Anna Gibson died, I don't think anybody's taken care of it," said Shamock.

As her life drew to a close, Gibson was urging descendents of the owners of East Cemetery lots to create a fund and use the income from the fund for regular maintenance. She wanted owners of large lots to sell half of the parcels and use the proceeds to establish a trust fund. It was reported at her death that a number of people had been persuaded to place funds with the Meriden Trust & Safe Deposit company.

Neglect of city's history

East Cemetery is one of the oldest in Meriden, purchased in 1845 from the estate of William Yale and Lyman Collins. Upkeep of most cemeteries in the city is the responsibility of associations or churches. But East Cemetery is one of three that are in the care of the city, which allots just $5,000 each year for maintenance. The others are Meeting House Hill Cemetery, off Ann Street, which is the oldest city cemetery, dating from 1717; and Broad Street Cemetery, which dates from 1771.

The city is required by state statute to maintain cemeteries that have no associations, said Lawrence J. Kendzior, Meriden's city manager. But the state offers no funding, he said.

East Cemetery is the least prominent of the three, snuggled in the midst of private properties. Access is via Miles Place, a dirt and grass path that leads from East Main Street to the stone-arch cemetery gateway.

In what is perhaps an emblem of the cemetery's neglect, a driver who follows the street sign for Miles Place off East Main finds the vehicle not on the grass and dirt road, but on a paved driveway that leads to three private homes. A small sign, recently set up by Shamock, now directs drivers to the proper cemetery path.

"The city should change the street sign," he said.

Miles Place is not an accepted city street, said Kendzior, and Michael George, whose home is on the west side of the cemetery entry route, said the path is not plowed during the winter.

George said city crews have done a good job in cutting and clearing in the last year, but maintenance at the cemetery "has been a problem going on for a long time."

George considers it "an embarrassment."

"We ought to be taking care of the resting place of our forefathers," he said.

East Cemetery contains the family burial ground of Charles S. Parker, who died in 1902 and whose Meriden company manufactured firearms that earned world renown. In particular is a famed shotgun made for Czar Nicholas II, the last of the Russian imperial dynasty.

The Charles Parker Company also manufactured coffee mills, spoons, clocks and piano benches, but the firearms have made the company legend.

Parker firearms remain coveted collector's items, and enthusiasts consider Meriden a sort of sacred ground. When a group of them visited the Parker gravesite, they were shocked to find it in such neglect, said Ken Cowing, a local historian. The group took on the task of cleaning up the site on their own, he said.

Brian Cofrancesco is a Maloney High School graduate entering his second year at the University of Virginia, where he's studying architectural history and historic preservation. This summer he's been working at the front desk of the Boys & Girls Club. It was Cofrancesco who led the contingent of club volunteers to the cleanup at East Cemetery in July.

A search for funding

Richard Seethaler, the club's development director, suggested that Cofrancesco contact Jeff Otis, vice president and trust officer at Webster Bank, which handles accounts from the former Meriden Trust. On an early afternoon last week, Otis met at the cemetery with Shamock, Cofrancesco and Dan DeLuca, a local historian.

Otis' investigation uncovered a number of funds from more than 25 separate cemetery plots, totaling about $85,000. Most of these funds were from individuals who, in their wills, had left money for the handling of their gravesites, sometimes just designating that flowers should routinely be set there.

There was no evidence of any trust associated with Anna
Gibson, he said.

Otis suggested seeking legal means of terminating the trusts and handing the money to the city for maintaining the cemetery. An alternative, he said, would be establishing a cemetery association.

In either case, income generated by the accumulated trusts could be used for cemetery maintenance.

"Going forward, this is going to be an expensive cemetery to keep up," Otis said.

There was no enthusiasm that afternoon for having the city take over the funds. Shamock said recently that he intends to pursue establishing a cemetery association.

Cofrancesco and DeLuca are in the process of investigating wills and other sources to search for any fund associated with Anna Gibson.

DeLuca said he's confident such a trust exists.

"I'm sure it does," he said. "She said she was going to do it, and she was a woman who meant what she said."

In the meantime, the volunteer efforts continue.

Robert Keeling, a manager with Luby Monuments, said work at the cemetery has not been easy over the years.

"We worked in here before and it was a hay field," he said. Workers would come out covered with ticks, he said.

Now, with the site being cleared, Keeling has offered to help Shamock with restoring monuments, gratis.

"We're going to help him out on nights and weekends," Keeling said. "It won't happen overnight, but if we help it will get this place cleaned up."

There are 2,033 interments at East Cemetery. They include
94 veterans of the Civil War. Among them is Charles R. McCorney, a member of the 12th Regiment of Connecticut Volunteers who fell, at age 28, at the battle of Cedar Creek, in Virginia, in 1864.

Also buried at East Cemetery is Walter Booth, a former general in the state militia, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and a deacon in the Center Congregational Church for 56 years. He died in 1870.

There is also William Merriam, a veteran of the War of 1812, who died in 1873 at age 79, four veterans of the Spanish-American War, five veterans of the First World War and three veterans of the Revolutionary War.

Robert Bradford, who died in 1808 at age 71, was both a veteran of both the Revolutionary War and the French and Indian War, which preceded America's independence.

Deluca said it was not uncommon for families to move graves to a cemetery when it opened.

East Cemetery is also the burial site of four Meriden mayors. They are Parker, elected in 1867; Wallace A. Miles, 1888; Levi Elmore Coe, 1894 and re-elected the following year; and George Seely, who served two, two-year terms beginning in 1901.

"A lot of history here"

People are still being buried at East Cemetery. The ancestors of Steve Hazelwood, a Meriden excavator, are there. "I've got family buried here from the 1800s," he said.

Hazelwood, who has been helping Shamock, said that when the time comes he plans to be buried at East Cemetery as well.

"It's good to know that people are taking interest," he said. "There's a lot of history here."

Gary Shamock's father, Walter Shamock, is a city councilor
and has been helping in the investigation of whether there are funds from long ago and has been calling for the city to do more.

Paul Novicelli, a local Boy Scout leader, has enlisted the Boy Scouts in cleaning up the graveyard and worked to establish The Friends of the East Cemetery to raise money for the effort.

"I'm hoping for a much bigger push," he said.

"The job these people have done is a work of love," said Arline Dunlop, who lives near the cemetery. "They must have taken a ton of stuff out of there."

Murphy, Gibson's great, great granddaughter, said she was "thrilled" when she found out about the volunteer work at the cemetery.

"Because I know how much it meant to her," she said.

It's taken 80 years, but Anna Gibson is finally getting the help she'd sought.