Tales of sadness, bravery in Pittsfield cemeteries
Editor's note: This is the second in a summer-long series in which Advocate Assistant Editor Judith Fairweather visits old cemeteries to try to dig up interesting tidbits of local history.
PITTSFIELD - Growing up on Roberta Road meant that I traveled West Street often, including to and from various events at Berkshire Community College. However, clearly my powers of observation are not that good.
Each time I drove out to BCC and back, I had to drive right past West Part Cemetery. Yet I never knew it existed until recently, when I met some extremely helpful women in the local history department at the Berkshire Athenaeum.
After my first Grave Matters column, I realized this topic was going to require more legwork than I had initially suspected. Thus, I made a reconnaissance trip to the library. My approach this time was going to be quite different. I intended to find my interesting people and then go search out their stones.
It was actually far easier than I thought. The two knowledgeable women told me of the existence of two cemeteries I had never been aware of - West Part, out by BCC, and East Part, on outer Williams Street near Burgner's. They gave me tons of other great information and then handed me some folders chock-full of fascinating stuff.
I told them I didn't really have time that particular day to do research; I was really there to try and find out where to start. Even so, history geek that I am, the yellowed newspaper clippings peeking out of the folder sang their siren song and lured me to a big table. I was going to only flip through the files quickly, I told myself, so I would know where to start when I returned. Yeah, right. That's like a gambling addict going into a casino with the intention of only counting the slot machines.
Close to two hours later, I forcibly pulled myself out of the past, firmly shutting the files. When I went to return them, both women had disappeared. So here I am, journalist extraordinaire, with no names for my sources. Sigh. Thus is the power of a history addiction, which can sometimes overrule my logic and good sense.
The information they provided was a veritable treasure trove. I am interested in epitaphs and so was excited to find a compilation of the residents of both cemeteries along with each of their inscriptions. Across the top of the typewritten list it said, "From the Corbin manuscript collection in New England Genealogical Society." Bless the person who acquired those.
Take Leverrett Deming May, for example. May was the son of Chauncy and Huldah May. He died July 12, 1832, at the age of 5, and is buried in West Part. The following is inscribed on his stone: "Friends and Physicians cannot save/This mortal body from the grave/Nor can the grave confine it here/(unknown) . buried in cement."
Chauncy and Huldah May suffered much tragedy in their lives. Along with Leverrett, other children buried there include Andrew Jackson May, who died Feb. 3, 1832, at 7 months old; Augustus C. May, who died Oct. 19, 1817, at 17 months old; and Lemuel A. May, who died Nov. 13, 1825, at 2 years and 4 months old.
My pencil scribbles slowed as I recorded the names, years and ages, the significance dawning on me - four dead children, in the space of 15 years, two of them dying only five months apart. What grief those parents must have felt.
When I knelt in front of Leverrett's grave to take a picture of his stone, the epitaph nearly obliterated, I was overcome by sadness.
Clarissa Root, who died at age 45 on Jan. 13, 1814, is also buried in West Part. I was struck by the graphic nature of her epitaph: "Corruption earth and worms/Shall but refine this flesh./Till my triumphant spirit come/to put it on afresh." My daughters, who accompanied me on the search for my new-found friends, grimaced at the image those words inspired as we brushed away the grass clippings to trace the faint letters with our fingers.
After finishing up there, we traveled across town to East Part to find the grave of Sarah Deming. Deming arrived in 1752 in Pontoosuck (sometimes referred to as Pontoosuc) Plantation, the name of the settlement before it was renamed Pittsfield. She gave birth to the first white child born here. To the north of the settlement stretched several hundred miles of wilderness between it and French Canada.
That wilderness was home to the Abenaki Indians, who, in the service of the French, raided English settlements such as Pontoosuck.
Within East Part is a monument to Deming, inscribed on its various faces. One of the inscriptions, in part, reads: "Surrounded by Tribes of hostile Indians, she defended in more than one massacre, unaided, the lives and property of her family, and was distinguished for the courage and fortitude with which she bore the dangers and privations of a pioneer life. A mother of the Revolution and mother in Israel."
Keeping company with the brave Sarah Deming was Frank Hirst (1840-1911), a second lieutenant in Company E, 27th Regiment, Massachusetts Infantry, of the Grand Army of the Republic. A comrade in arms to poor Johnny Atwood of Hillside Cemetery in North Adams, Hirst had a large granite monument, rather than the slab with three initials that marks Atwood's final resting place.
Another East Part resident had an interesting epitaph. Aaron Roberts, who died May 21, 1830, one of numerous Roberts family members there, had these words for visitors: "When you my friends are passing by/And this informs you where I lie/Remember you ere long must have/like me a mansion in the grave."
In learning about these people, long turned to dust, I forged a connection to them. I can't wait to see whom I meet next.
A story by Gerald "Rory" B. O'Connor, which appeared in Berkshires Week on June 22, 1995, was used as a reference for some of the information in this column.
Judith Fairweather can be reached at 413-663-7942, ext. 234, or jfairweather@advocateweekly.com.