Western Cemetery Volunteers Uncover Secrets and Restore Monuments

Western Cemetery Uncovered

Another year of volunteer work in Western Cemetery uncovers secrets

By J. Peter Monro 

With little interest and effort, the Western Cemetery might be made a credit and an ornament to our city. Certainly our dead merit it and would cry out against the neglect.  

— Nathan Gould, Portland historian, 1913 

Another year of Stewards of the Western Cemetery’s extensive on-site volunteer work has drawn to a close with many achievements to look back on. For one thing, almost every grave marker along the path by the hillside tombs has been cleaned, repaired, and re-set upright.   

As a result, several massive marble tablets for the Poor family covered in dirt and grass in June now stand proudly three to four feet high beside passersby.  

This summer and fall, volunteers also removed most of the cemetery’s unwanted saplings and shrubs, perhaps the site’s most visible change thus far. Stewards also hired Davey Tree, Inc., to remove dead trees and low-hanging branches throughout the grounds. 

More discoveries and mysteries have been unveiled.  

We uncovered and restored the first family plot known to belong to a Black family. Markers for the descendants of Andrew Barnett and Mary Ann Barnett, originally Marianna de Remila from Dutch Guyana, included one of the most enthralling finds to date. Visible at first only as a small white patch in the grass, a marble emerged that included a fully carved lamb fronting an infant’s small gravestone.   

Meanwhile, the rough granite head and foot stones of Joseph Dresser were cleaned and straightened. He died in 1800 even though the first private burials of the Vaughan family only began here twenty-six years later! 

Late in October, the four legs and their apparent ledger tablet for a table stone monument were located. It is the first grave monument of that form discovered in Western Cemetery and may prove to be one of the few in Eastern or Western cemeteries that is intact, according to Ron Romano, an expert on the area’s nearly gravestones. 

These efforts complement last year’s cleaning and repairs to the more than a dozen grave markers along Vaughan Street. 

Overall, in the past two years, 44 of our volunteers have cleaned 73 gravestones and repaired 33, including a major obelisk. The professional conservator Joe Ferrannini helped us for several days again this year with his expert skills and specialized equipment.  

Kip deSerres organized a series of tours in October as a trial for the coming year. Behind the scenes, John Johnson, a public historian, continues his historic research to build a nomination of the cemetery to the National Register of Historic Places. Stewards’ president John Funk readied our upcoming one-time capital campaign, while treasurer Sam Wilson prepared grant applications.  

After ground-penetrating radar revealed only an abandoned water line, the city’s Historic Preservation staff approved the construction of a tool shed and new water line near the cemetery’s maintenance entry.   

Stewards’ volunteers also restored the cemetery’s paths, posted pamphlets, put out flags on veterans’ graves for Memorial Day, and documented work completed. 

All told, volunteers have invested more than 1,000 hours in the past 21 months, belying Mr. Gould’s belief that only a little effort would be required to improve Western Cemetery fully. 

Weed wrench does the trick.

Invasive sycamore maples and Norway maples were removed from the steep northern hillside as a result of the Bunyanesque efforts of one regular volunteer, Frank Mitchell. He repeatedly used our chest-high steel lever called a weed wrench, special-built for the purpose of uprooting saplings.  

Native saplings of red oak and sugar maple remain that we hope will generate enough shade in time to suppress invasive groundcovers like garlic mustard and black swallowwort now populating the slope.  

We have begun to apply vinegar and acids and to grub out woody sprouts that have proliferated against grave markers over the years, hoping to remove these threats once and for all.   

Preparation for work next year includes clearing the site of three thick marble tablets of shrubs and daylilies and the re-setting of their bases level, and the re-setting of two tablets with partially missing midbases that need specialized mortar to re-form.   

For its part, the City of Portland, the cemetery’s owner, removed the accumulated piles of shrub and tree debris, mowed the cemetery, and provided wood chips for mulching around the remaining trees. The city continues to guide us and collaborate with our activities.   

Capital campaign coming…

Soon, we Stewards, a federal 501(c)3 nonprofit, will launch a $250,000 capital campaign to pay for needed improvements recommended in the cemetery’s city-adopted Master Plan. Significant projects include constructing the tool house, extending the water line, completing the perimeter fence, and restoring a historic fence remnant along the Western Prom. For this last project we have already received a community grant from Maine Medical.    

If you wish to donate to the Capital Campaign, mail your check payable to the “City of Portland” with a memo to “Western Cemetery Fund” addressed to the City of Portland, 212 Canco Road, Ste. A, Portland, ME 04103.  

---

Peter Monro, a West End resident, is the clerk of the Stewards of Western Cemetery, Inc. He is a retired landscape architect who has served on the Portland Parks Commission and as board chair of Portland Trails