BATH — It’s a sobering sight: weather-beaten tombstones leaning over or broken, pieces of granite strewn in overgrown grass or buried like the people whose names they carry – if the inscriptions haven’t been worn away.

Such neglect is common in small cemeteries everywhere, including Bath, which has a handful of ancient burial grounds that were documented as recently as the 1970s, but remain difficult to find.

Brenda Cummings and Tim Richter, a wife-and-husband team long interested in finding and maintaining such monuments, particularly those of military veterans, will discuss “Bath’s Lost Cemeteries” as part of the area’s annual town history series at Patten Free Library.

Co-sponsored by the 33 Summer St. library and Bath Historical Society, the event runs from 10:30-11:30 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 2. Avery Hunt’s talk on the “Inns and Eats in West Bath, Then and Now,” follows the next Saturday.

Bath has at least 20 known cemeteries. That’s few in relation to neighboring communities; Phippsburg has more than 100.

“From the early 1900s (Bath was) densely populated, so that leaves less room for family cemeteries,” Cummings said. “Because you don’t have a ‘back 40’ (acres) when you’re living in the downtown here.”

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The city maintains its “big three” cemeteries: Oak Grove, Maple Grove and Calvary. It also manages four smaller burial grounds, often named for the families interred there, or for their locations: the Dummer Street graveyard at Dummer and Beacon streets, Trufant at Spring and Middle streets, Pettingill on Riverview Road, and Fairview on Fairview Lane, according to Cummings.

Sadly, Cummings said, Pettengill has only pieces of stones remaining. “There’s a Revolutionary War veteran there, and that needs to be repaired,” she said.

Graveyards not managed by the city, which tend to be old family plots, include Harrison (Stoney Island Road), Crawford (North Bath Road), Roberts-Edgecomb (North Bath Road), Edgecomb (North Bath Road), Purington (North Bath and Whiskeag roads), Ham (Ridge and Whiskeag roads), Ward (Bayshore Road) and the “Irish” ground (Varney Mill Road).

The Whittam, or Witham, yard on Bayshore Road, and Wise-Welch on North Bath Road – which includes Bath’s oldest documented burial in 1749 – were identified in the 1970s, but are not found today.

“‘Known in the 1970s’ and ‘known today’ are two different things, because we can’t find the cemeteries,” Cummings said.

Those found in sources, but with no burials or exact locations identified, are South Street (possibly at South and Washington streets), Marshall (Washington and Marshall streets), the “Turnpike” ground (likely in West Bath), and Marr’s Hill (area of Corliss and Washington streets).

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Richter’s family is buried in the Ward Cemetery, which he and Cummings searched a decade ago, sparking their interest in further searches. Richter also worked for the city’s Cemeteries Department one summer, and he and his wife – who is the city assessor – are members of Bath’s historical society.

There isn’t an easy answer as to who should maintain Bath’s small burial grounds, said Cummings, who hopes next weekend’s talk will drum up volunteer interest. She will have a sign-up sheet ready; those who want to lend a hand can also reach the historical society at 443-5141.

“There are cemeteries, particularly ones with veterans in them, where we need to do something,” Cummings said. “But how we’re going to do something, and how we’re going to continue to maintain them, is a question that it turns out has been troubling people in Bath” since at least the 1850s, when residents urged the city to take over the Dummer Street Cemetery.

A call to lot owners in the Maple and Oak Grove cemeteries went out via the Bath Independent in 1880, according to a clipping Cummings shared. While “some of the families are almost if not quite extinct … there are none who have not a friend in the city or near at hand, who might, and I hope will, improve the condition of the grounds” of the deceased, cemetery Superintendent A.W. Wing wrote at the time.

“Those who are living should make some provision for their last resting place for very few are important enough in life that strangers will care enough after they are gone to keep the graves cleaned and graded,” one person wrote in the Bath Independent in 1929. “It is a crying need of towns, the question of up-keep of these old family burial lots.”

In most cases with such lots, “the deeds to the current landowners exclude the burial grounds, which was typical,” Cummings explained. “Because you’re essentially maintaining your family plot, and the right to get to that family plot.”

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State statute requires private landowners to give access to descendants of the interred, she noted.

But of course, as time goes by, those family members might move away, or die, leaving the graves unattended.

While state statute defines a public burial ground, like Oak Grove, as one owned and operated by a municipality, or cemetery corporation or association, an “ancient burial ground” is a private cemetery established prior to 1880.

“If an ancient burying ground or a veteran’s grave within an ancient burying ground is not maintained in good condition or repair,” by either the municipality or a person owning land having such a cemetery, state statute says, “the municipality may take over the care or appoint a caretaker to whom it delegates the municipality’s functions regarding an ancient burying ground.”

Cummings noted that “there is already not enough time, money and resources” for the city to care for every cemetery, adding that “by their nature, cemeteries are permanent institutions marked and documented by impermanent devices.”

Alex Lear can be reached at 780-9085 or alear@theforecaster.net. Follow him on Twitter: @learics.

Small, ancient burial grounds that have fallen into disrepair, like the Dummer Street Cemetery in Bath, is a focus of a talk being given by Brenda Cummings and Tim Richter at the Patten Free Library, Saturday, Feb. 2.

Brenda Cummings, who will be discussing Bath’s lost cemeteries with her husband and fellow Bath Historical Society member Tim Richter, shows the locations of some of the city’s ancient burial grounds.


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