“We’re in a town called Rockingham,” Mike Hoey said, “Steve, we came here this week to go to the cemetery.”
“That’s right, Mike,” said Steve Perkins, executive director of the Vermont Historical Society, “(It’s) one of the oldest intact cemeteries in Vermont, with some amazing gravestone carvings. Historian David Deacon will be speaking with us and telling us a little bit about the process and what you’ll find at the top of this beautiful hill.”
“David, there are several cemeteries and gravestones here dating back to the 1780s,” Hoey said, “and you’ve just shown me one in particular.”
“Yes, it’s right next to here,” said the Deacon, “and he died about 1782. That doesn’t mean the stone was carved in 1782, but this place has been used as a burial ground since then.”
“This was originally the town center. When the town of Rockingham was first settled, it was a farming town and was built on the hill. It wasn’t until the 1790s that Bellows Falls, further down in the valley, was developed. These early stones in particular are, at least in my opinion, the most interesting.”
“This cemetery has been featured in a lot of articles because it has some really, I think, very fine early stonework,” Perkins said, “and they’re not the marble or granite that we’re used to seeing.”
“These are slate stones, probably quarried from just below Williams River Hill, and they’re carved flat, so in a way it’s almost as if they were written on paper,” Deacon continued, “There’s evidence here that there was an organized workshop of four to six carvers, all of whom had their own distinctive voices.”
“And we know some of their names,” Perkins added.
“Yes,” Deacon answered, “I think the master was named Adams. I know that his son, Sampson Adams, and his son-in-law, a man named Moses Wright, Moses Wright’s brother, Solomon, and Moses’ son, Alpheus, were sculptors here. When they were carving here, these faces were kind of symbolic of the soul being liberated from the body.”
“I think I’m using the sun to express the essence of light,” Hoey said.
“Exactly,” Deacon continued, “instead of wings, they rise with the sun or something.”
“We were also shown the old town graveyard,” said Hoey.
“For five or six months of the year, burials were not possible,” Deacon replied. “And since they couldn’t dig up the ground, they left the bodies in the graves (until the spring thaw). Then, in the 1850s, the old graves were replaced with more modern ones.”
“The town has some really interesting transportation history associated with this cemetery,” Perkins added.
“We have an old hearse,” Deacon replied.
Perkins continued, “An old hearse? How old is it?”
Deacon replied, “Did you say from…1816?”
Perkins exclaimed, “Oh my goodness!”
Hoey said, “Yeah, I think that’s what it was like!”
“As such, it is unlikely to be original,” Deacon concluded, “and is probably very close in date to[the original hearse used there]. The best way to learn about the stone is to come and see it when you have access to the Hilltop Meeting House.”
“It’s been a pretty steep climb to get here,” Perkins said.
“In the colder months, we park at the bottom of the cemetery,” Deacon said. “A walk through the cemetery is always welcome, but it’s especially a beautiful place to visit in the summer.”
