|
 Norwalk Citizen-News
Friday, July 6, 2007
Preserving the Past:
Restoring Mill Hill Cemetery
By Jeanne Goodman
He may not be related to the seasoned bones that lie beneath weathered tombstones at Mill Hill Burying Ground, but Norwalk resident David Westmoreland is committed to restoring their resting places.
“I received my master of landscape architecture from Cornell in 2006 and have a strong interest in historic landscapes like Mill Hill,” Westmoreland said on a recent Saturday morning as he and several helpers erected tilted, fallen tombstones at the Mill Hill Historic Complex at 2 East Wall St.
Westmoreland, from Tuliptree Site Design, Inc. in Norwalk, has been working on the first part of a three-phase restoration project to spruce up the burying ground. He donated a crew from Tuliptree and the trucks and materials to get the work done. He also had some extra helpers from the local Boy Scouts of America Troop 19. Five scouts and a few adult chaperones helped to straighten the stones that have slumped more than 15 degrees over the years.
With music softly playing in the background and the sun peeking through the trees, Westmoreland and company dug around one side of each severely leaning headstone, pushed it upright again and filled in the remaining gap in the ground with crushed stone. When the crushed stone is packed tightly and covered with a layer of soil, the tombstones won’t budge.
“It’s something in David’s heart,” said David Park, a member of the Historical Commission and the chairman of its Cemetery Committee, as he watched the crew working away at Mill Hill. The commission oversees the burying ground, along with the city’s other three cemeteries. This was the second Saturday Westmoreland was out there resetting tombstones at the complex, Park said.
After a full morning of work, all of the askew stones were straight once again, and the heavily damaged ones would soon be attended to. IN addition to resetting the tilted or fallen stones, the first phase of the project included excavating the buried ones, which Westmoreland and volunteers completed in June. The next step is documentation, which will begin next week. Westmoreland will photograph all of the broken stones and assess the type of damage and the repair that is needed. He’s not, however, a professional conservator, and some of the stones will have to be professionally restored. With the documentation gathered by Westmoreland, a package will be prepared so bids can be sought from professional conservation services. That way the money required can be requested in the city’s next capital budget cycle, Westmoreland explained.
In August, Westmoreland will begin repairing “simple breaks,” where the pieces of tombstones will fit cleanly together with epoxy, and organizing volunteers to clean up the Mill Hill Burying Ground.
Phase Two will take place from August to October. It entails cleaning the stones and ground, which will be done by volunteers, mainly Boy Scout Troops, using D/2 Biological Cleaner, which is universally recommended by most conservators for use on stone, Westmoreland told the Historical Commission in an April presentation on the restoration project. The cleaner will kill biological growth, but it will no remove staining, for those worried about “losing the patina associated with ancient burying grounds,” Westmoreland said. Tree pruning and removal is another aspect of Phase Two. Westmoreland hopes to remove dangerous limbs that are close to tombstones. He also proposes to restore historic views of the Norwalk River, which are now impeded by trees.
Phase Three, which is set to take place in the fall or summer of 2008, is to have professional conservation done on severely damaged stones. Based on a 2003 assessment this is estimated to cost up to $43,150, according to Westmoreland’s April presentation. He added that additional deterioration has occurred since 2003 and some are beyond repair at this point.
The earliest known burials at Mill Hill took place in the early 1750s, Westmoreland said. The burying ground was created from land given by the Town of Norwalk to The Prime Ancient Society, which was associated with the Congregational Church on the Green during the first half of the 1700s. A 2002 inventory completed by an Eagle Scout shows 228 surviving tombstones. According to Westmoreland’s presentation, “It contains graves of at least 19 American Revolutionary War veterans and at least one veteran of the War of 1812. It has all the prominent families of early Norwalk,” including the Betts, Comstock and Lockwood families and three ministers from the early Congregational Church. Mill Hill also contains all three major Colonial gravestone designs. The oldest is the “death mask with wings,” which dates back to the time of the Puritans and reflects their somber attitude toward death, Westmoreland explained. Puritans were more concerned with survival than happiness. The terse epitaphs and scary skull, or death mask design, were reminders that “they’d better behave,” because everyone will die and will die soon, he said.
The angel or cherub with wings design came afterward in what was “the first softening” of the Puritans’ views of death. The epitaphs also evolved into a softer tone. The third popular design was a weeping willow with an urn, which symbolized grieving and memorializing the dead, Westmoreland said. The epitaphs became more laudatory as well. “The tombstones are from typical materials of the period,” Westmoreland said. Slate and brownstone were used in the Colonial period. The burial ground has about 45 Colonial period stones – pre-1800s. In keeping with an earlier Christian custom, it was common practice to bury bodies facing east.
Burials in the Victorian period reflected the more elaborate times commemorating the dated with huge monuments. In the Victorian period, marble was used quite frequently, as was limestone. The post-1800 tombstones number about 183, and at least three large family vaults contain unknown numbers of burials, Westmoreland said.
People stopped being buried at Mill Hill in the late 1800s with the exception of a fluke burial of a 1-year-old girl in 1941, Westmoreland discovered. It’s hard to say exactly how many people were buried there. During the Colonial period, only one-third of the graves were marked with tombstones, he said. “People couldn’t afford it.” Those who didn’t have the money for a fancy marker often placed field rocks where a person was buried, he added. “You don’t ever want to disturb those,” he said, looking over a rock half buried in the earth. He estimated that there might have been at least 400 burials at Mill Hill.
Westmoreland got involved in the Mill Hill project through a series of fortunate events. He earned his master of landscape architecture degree at Cornell University and he minored in historic preservation. His thesis was on a cemetery preservation project at St. Paul’s on the Green, which caught his eye because it was such an eyesore at the time, he said. Westmoreland looked at the use of technology in cemetery restoration and community involvement in the project for his thesis. After his work was completed at St. Paul’s, Historical Commission member Debbie Mathies asked him to look at other cemetery projects in the city. He helped do some work with the Pine Island Cemetery and became a member of the Norwalk Historical Society and its board of directors.
Eventually he moved on to Mill Hill. It’s an important project, Westmoreland said, because the burying ground is very visible, located near the city’s other historic holdings, including the Little Red Schoolhouse, the Governor Thomas Fitch Law Office and the Norwalk Town House. Between April and May, 400 elementary school age children parade through the Mill Hill Historic Complex during their lesson on the Colonial period he pointed out.
Aside from doing a bit of good, Westmoreland is fascinated by old cemeteries. “Tombstones are amazing archaeological artifacts,” he said. A wealth of information is right out in the open for all to see. By comparing tombstone inscriptions and the birthdays, deaths and sexes of those who died with those found in other cemeteries around town, one can learn a lot about the city’s demographics from 1651 through the 1800s, including birth rates, death rates, male-to-female ratio, the resident’s attitudes towards death, what the trades were based on the types of stones used, and information that’s “fixed in place and time,” he said.
The Boy Scouts were there to help beautify Mill Hill and to learn the ropes in the hopes that they can do similar work at Brookside Cemetery. “I have a whole idea in my head of how it could look,” Westmoreland said. “We could turn Brookside into a beautiful neighborhood spot”. |
|
