TRENTON,Maine — With a combination of holy water and a gunfire salute, new life was breathed into an abandoned cemetery Thursday morning.
A privately-owned burial ground off Route 3, where Rhode Island resident Bob Whittaker believes two of his familial predecessors are buried, was re-dedicated with help from the Rev. Johanna-Karen Johannson of St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church and the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 109, both in Ellsworth.
About two dozen people stood at the edge of the reclaimed cemetery, about 120 feet square, as Johannson sprinkled holy water around the unmarked sunken graves and marker flags where other people might have been buried. After Johannson led the group in a prayer, three members from the VFW fired off a brief volley of shots and Taps was played on a lone bugle.
“Our Whitaker ancestors were originally from this part of Maine,” Whittaker — whose branch of the family spells their last name with two “ts” instead of just one — said after the brief ceremony. “We are confident that there are a least two Whitakers buried here.”
Whittaker said that a few years ago, when he and some of his distant cousins visited Trenton looking for traces of their ancestors, they were directed to the burial ground by local historian Patti Leland, who knew of its location. It is off Route 3, near where married couple Elisha and Ruth Whitaker owned a 100-acre farm in the early 1800s. The earlier Whitakers, Whittaker said, were his great-great-great-great grandparents.
According to Leland, the cemetery essentially had been abandoned about 100 years ago, with many of the gravestones removed and discarded elsewhere. None of the remains buried there — the number or extent of which is unknown — appear to ever have been disturbed, she said.
“There is a story that in 1914 a man named Spratt who was part of a livery stable in Bar Harbor came up [to Trenton] and bought the land and removed all the stones to the side and across what was the road at that point and used it as a hayfield,” Leland said. “It was totally overgrown. My dad [Robert Leland] and I have been coming up here since 1999-2000 checking it regularly, and it was total trees.”
None of the removed headstones have been recovered, she said.
There is one gravesite that has been identified, however, because of a broken headstone that was found a few feet away, toppled in the topsoil. Engraved in the stone is the name of William Norris, who Leland and Whittaker determined had fought in the War of 1812 and died in 1872.
The gunfire salute at Thursday’s ceremony was in recognition of Norris’ military service. A small American flag stood in the ground next to where Norris’ remains are buried.
Whittaker, who served in the Army, said he is “pleased” that a veteran is buried in the cemetery, and that the grave will be recognized and honored each year.
“Today, that military salute was something that brings tears to my eyes,” he said. “You just can’t help it.”
So far, Norris is the only person positively identified to have been buried in the cemetery, Whittaker said. He said he and his cousins have hired Topographix of Hudson, New Hampshire, to spend a few days in Trenton this week taking underground radar scans of the cemetery, to see if other graves can be pinpointed.
On Thursday, workers with the company were putting flag markers on potential grave sites.
“We will know where the bodies are when they finish with this ground penetrating radar,” Whittaker said.
He said that in the past couple of years, he and his cousins have acquired the property, cleared the cemetery of trees and put in an access road to it. He said they don’t plan to make further improvements to the site but hope that, if and when the names of other people buried there come to light, their descendents will have new grave markers installed at each identified burial plot.
According to Leland, the Whittaker/Whitaker family may own the cemetery parcel but, in keeping with state law, the individual plots are owned by the descendents of the people buried in each one. Unlike 100 years ago, state law now prevents any of the graves from being disturbed, she said.
Whittaker did not identify potential candidates, but said he and his cousins hope one day to donate the cemetery to an entity that would be willing to maintain it.
“It’s been a very expensive proposition thus far,” Whittaker said, without saying how much money the family has spent on the project. “We wanted to bring this back to life in some way.”
He added that he plans to have his ashes buried in the cemetery after he dies. Others with family connections to the burial ground also might be allowed to have their cremated remains interred at the site — but not casket burials, he added, which would be more likely to accidentally disturb undetected graves.
“This isn’t over,” Whittaker said. “This is just a new beginning.”
