Residents of the town of Penobscot who haven’t already bought a cemetery plot currently can’t be buried in the Hancock County town when they die.
That’s because its only two active cemeteries — the town-owned Bay Cemetery behind its post office and the association-run Hillside Cemetery at the intersection of routes 15 and 199 — are out of room.
In response, residents have voted to explore taking ownership of one of the town’s many small, private old burial grounds, the former Hatch-Hutchings Cemetery just west of Hillside on Route 15. It’s one of dozens of historic family cemeteries across the small town and hasn’t had a known owner for 136 years.
“People live in Penobscot their whole life, and when it’s time that they be laid to rest, right now we don’t have that to offer them,” Select Board Chair Harold Hatch said.
The proposal is an example of potentially reclaiming and continuing to use one of Maine’s many old cemeteries, an idea that comes as some other municipalities in the state are approaching the limits of their current burying places and looking for solutions.
Having a local cemetery available is important for people who have spent their whole lives in the town and want to be laid to rest there, according to Hatch, who would like to be buried in Penobscot himself.
Some of his own ancestors are in the Civil War-era cemetery the town is now eyeing, which he and his wife, Penny, reclaimed from the woods decades ago and have maintained for 35-plus years.
Thirty residents voted at a special town meeting Saturday to use surplus funds for the cost of taking ownership of the cemetery, according to the town clerk, Rita Martynowski. No attendees opposed it.
Hatch described the vote as authorizing the Select Board to start exploring the process with its attorney. He said it’s not likely to be costly.
Research would probably involve using a title service. If it can’t find an owner on record — which he suspects it won’t, based on his deed research — Penobscot likely would pursue taking the property by eminent domain, if voters approve the move at a future town meeting, he said.
He didn’t know how long the town has owned the Bay Cemetery or how many people are buried there, but it’s been in use since the 19th century and expanded decades ago with the purchase of more acreage from the adjoining landowners.
The abutters weren’t willing to split off more land to help grow the cemetery again, he said, leading Penobscot to look at other options.
The Hatch-Hutchings cemetery isn’t big — somewhere around 2 acres — but owning it would give the town time to figure out if any other properties it owns could become a larger cemetery, according to Hatch.
Penobscot has 73 known cemeteries, according to local research posted on the town website, about half of them found long abandoned. Hatch estimates there are about 100, either forgotten or cared for by individuals.
The Hutchings-Hatch Cemetery, too, was once overgrown and barely visible from the road decades ago when Penny Hatch noticed grave markers through the trees and thought they should clean it up, he said.
They cut down trees and cleared out brush with local helpers over a few evenings, and have continued to work on it in the following years out of respect for veterans buried there, he said. The parcel is now neatly mowed, and contains more land that hasn’t been cleared.
Its last recorded owner — also a Hatch — was in 1890. The property is not on tax rolls because cemeteries are tax-exempt.
Town records list nine known burials in the plot, including at least one Civil War veteran, between 1862 and 1894. Most are members of the Hatch and Hutchings families.
The Hatches tried to figure out how to make it an active cemetery again so they and others of their generation could be buried there, Harold Hatch said.
His mother-in-law’s headstone was recently placed on the property underneath an American flag on a flagpole with a solar-powered light, but the family hasn’t put her ashes there because the future of the property is uncertain.
Renewing it as a privately owned cemetery would require creating a nonprofit organization and other steps, he said, so town ownership seemed like a better alternative when they recently learned no more public lots were available.
“There’s like 98 other cemeteries in town, but none of them are active,” Hatch said. “We need to do something for the town, and we thought that this would probably be a good opportunity.”
