In Brownfield, history is being reclaimed one gravestone at a time (2024)

BROWNFIELD – Only birds chirping in the distance broke the silence as Jess Davis walked past the gravestones dotting the grassy slope of Pine Grove Cemetery. The oldest markers, made of slate with intricate decorative carvings, date to the early 1800s.

But most of the stones are marble, long since faded to a dark gray from decades of exposure. Even in this well-maintained cemetery near Burnt Meadow Mountain, some stones have tipped over or sit askew, ready to topple at any time. Dozens of graves are unmarked entirely, their existence noted only in historical records.

Davis, president of the Brownfield Historical Society, is looking to change that.

She has spent years working in the cemeteries in and around Brownfield, an Oxford County town on the New Hampshire border with a population of 1,600. She cleans and resets old gravestones, uncovers ones that were partially buried and pieces others back together. This summer, she made 13 stones for people – most of whom died in the late 1800s – whose final resting spots had never been marked.

“Everyone deserves to be remembered in some way,” Davis, 43, said.

Davis, a middle school art teacher in New Hampshire, has been doing cemetery restoration work for the past two decades. She got her start after buying a house in Indiana and finding a few small cemeteries nearby that were in terrible condition and continued the work when she moved to Brownfield 15 years ago.

“There aren’t many people doing this and there’s such a need. So many cemeteries are neglected,” she said. “It’s always sad to me to see the town pioneers being disrespected with overgrown cemeteries and broken headstones.”

Some, like Pine Grove, are large and regularly maintained, she said.Others are small, overgrown and tucked out of sight.

Most of her work is done as a volunteer, but she is sometimes paid by cemetery associations or towns that have money set aside for repairs.

The work requires an immersion into Maine history. As she researches people buried in local cemeteries, Davis has been documenting history that was lost when the Great Fires of 1947 nearly destroyed Brownfield.

Fayralyn Chapman Davis, a lifelong Brownfield resident and curator at the historical society, said the work Jess Davis does to preserve history is amazing.

“In today’s world, someone who does something for the people who are invisible, who are forgotten, is really remarkable,” said Chapman Davis, who is not related to Jess Davis.

MARKING HISTORY

Originally a neighborhood cemetery, Pine Grove has grown over two centuries to include around 2,200 graves. Davis has made a record of each one in a spreadsheet – a tedious process that has revealed at least 200 graves are unmarked.

Among them were Elijah and Mary Tibbetts.

Tibbetts, described in his death notice as “one of Brownfield’s most respected citizens,” died on Sept. 7, 1889, “after a long and tedious sickness, which he endured with the utmost calmness,” according to the noticepublished three days later in the Portland Daily Press.

“He was 85 years of age, and enjoyed very good health until 1884, when he had a cancer in the roof of his mouth, from which he has suffered severely since that time,” the notice said.

The funeral washeld at Tibbett’s home and he was buried at Pine Grove Cemetery, next to his wife, Mary Lane Tibbetts, who died nine years earlier at age 73. Their graves, in the shadow of the stately Fogg family memorial stone, were left unmarked.

Davis tried to findtheir original homestead, but the home is long since gone and Davis could find no signs of it. She did find “foreclosure after foreclosure.”

“He just couldn’t catch a break, it seemed,” she said. “From all accounts, he was a standup citizen, but had bad luck with finances.”

Tibbetts wasa veterinarian – the person who now owns the property where he once lived keeps digging up old glass medicine bottles – and was likely a farmer, like many in the area, Davis said.

When Davis found out that Tibbetts served in the Aroostook War – a military confrontation between the United States and United Kingdom over the border between New Brunswick and Maine in the 1830s – she applied to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for a veteran marker. But it was denied because the Aroostook War wasn’t considered a war, even though people left their homes to make the long trek north to fight, causing stress and hardship for their families, Davis said.

“I knew I had to find another way,” she said.

Traditional headstones are expensive – that’s one of the reasons some graves go unmarked – so Davis had to get creative.

She made 13 gravestones out of concrete she poured and paver stones engraved by Blasted in Stone of Standish. The project was paid for in part by donations from people who sponsored the stones, which were installed in cemeteries in August.

Finally, after 135 years, the graves of Elijah and Mary Lane Tibbetts bore their names.

‘HE NOW EXISTS’

Another of the new stones was installed in the Durgin family plot, a few rows away from the Tibbetts graves at the top of the hill.

Melvin Eugene Chapman, who lived for one day in 1934, has always been buried there, but the family couldn’t afford a headstone for the infant. The idea of someone’s baby not being marked is especially sad to think about, Davis said.

Chapman Davis, the curator and Melvin’s niece, said her grandparents didn’t talk much about the baby they lost because it was too painful. She didn’t hesitate to sponsor his stone, along with markers for two other relatives, when Jess Davis came to her with the idea.

It has been emotional to see Melvin remembered 90 years later, she said.

“Now he has a proper memorial,” Chapman Davis said. “He now exists.”

Just down the hill from Melvin, the headstones for the Ricker family sit in two neat rows. At least some of them were originally buried at the family farm in Brownfield.

Their story is a sad one, Davis said.

The three daughters – Carrie Merita Ricker, 18, Elizabeth Evelyn “Lizzie” Ricker, 26, and Permelia Frances “Millie” Ricker, 20 – died of smallpox within months of each other in 1888.

The first to fall ill was Millie, who was working in the paper mill at Cumberland Mills when she “was taken suddenly sick and after three or four days died,” according to an April 11, 1888, article in the Portland Daily Press headlined, “Detected at last. How they doctored small pox for scarlet fever in Brownfield.” Her remains were brought to Brownfield for burial.

Carrie, who also worked in the mill, went home to Brownfield and fell sick within two weeks. She died “on the same day of the week at nearly the same hour” as her sister, the article said.

“The disease was pronounced scarlet fever; but the public were not at all satisfied,” the article said. “The feeling was such that Carrie was buried at the farm, and the family shut off from communication as far as possible with other people.”

Lizzie, the eldest daughter, became ill and later died. A 13-year-old boy in the home also had smallpox, but apparently recovered.

Their mother, Martha A. Durgin Ricker, died a few years later in 1895, leaving behind her husband, James Ricker, who had served as a corporal in the Civil War with the 30th Regiment, Maine Infantry.

When he died in 1915 at age 85, there was no family left to place a headstone – his grave was marked only by a flag holder until last year, when Davis requested his military headstone. The new headstone bears his name, rank and dates and sits next to a small American flag.

Standing next to the Rickers’ gravestones on a recent sunny afternoon, Davis reflected on the significance of the work she’s done. It’s rewarding and fun, she said, and she has no plans to stop.

“It’s so cool to see a whole cemetery transformed and feel like you’re giving honor to all these people who came before,” she said.

Davis said she’s committed to telling their stories – both to shine a light on local history and to make cemeteries a place people will visit instead of driving by without a second glance.

“There’s stories everywhere here,” she said. “It’s like a museum, but full of people’s stories.”