Dead Man's Cache Traditional Cache
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I placed this cache in this location as it's a place I spent several summers working as has everyone in my family with the exeption of my mother. The longest running family member has been there almost 15 summers and the shortest 4 summers. This is a great place to work and visit whether you're a history buff, picnicker, or just like being around the water. The cache container is a .50 cal ammo can.
The cemetery at Colonial Pemaquid contains gravestones dating from the 18th century. Very likely, villagers from the 17th century also buried their dead in or near the present graveyard, although the oldest graves were marked with field stones and wooden markers, long since rotted away. Many field stones still indicate where unknown settlers were buried.
One gravestone mentioned in John Cartland's Twenty Years at Pemaquid, but of unknown location now, was believed to be that of Sergeant Hugh March, a member of Fort William Henry's garrison, killed on September 9, 1695. The earliest slate stone found in the burial ground belonged to Mary Mors, who died in 1734. The original cemetery is believed to have been much larger than the present area, which was first fenced in by James Partridge circa 1847.
Although many families may have established small plots on their own property, the graveyard probably remained the preferred burial ground of village inhabitants throughout the 18th century. One of the more notable graves is that of Alexander Nichols Jr., son of one of Fort Frederick's last commanders. He and his family were also the first documented occupants of the Fort House. Descendants of the Partridge family continue to be buried in the current cemetery.
The Bureau of Parks and Lands does not own the cemetery. It is owned by a private cemetery association. Visitors are encouraged to appreciate and photograph the old stones with their interesting designs of willows and death's heads and decorative borders. However, the making of gravestone rubbings is prohibited because of the damage it causes to the fragile stones.
Be sure to check out the headstone of James Boyd near the main entrance. In other cemetary caches I've done I have noticed that the way he died was pretty common back then.
5/27/2009 - Adding the following story from WLBZ2.com....
BRISTOL (NEWS CENTER) -- "For most of us ... this is all that will be left of us." Says Kai Nalenz of Bedford, New Hampshire. That's why the young craftsman started a business restoring old gravestones.
Nalenz was born and raised in Germany, and came to the U.S. to be a TV photographer. But he became interested in the hundreds of old cemeteries in New England, and in the art of saving and restoring the old headstones. Nalenz now operates his own business, Gravestone Services of New England, where he combines modern materials and tools with research, skill and brute strength to rebuild the old granite, marble and slate stones.
That's what brought him to the Old Fort Burying Ground in Colonial Pemaquid. The beautiful spot was the site of one of the earliest English settlements in New Endland - dating to at least 1633, with seasonal visits much earlier. Historians with the group Friends of Colonial Pemaquid say those early settlers did not leave permanent grave markers, but their descendants did. The earliest stone found so far in the cemetery is from1734, but it is believed the spot was a "burying ground" long before that. The cemetery is still privately owned, and overseen by descendants of the family that used to own and farm all the land that now comprises a State of Maine Historic Site, though only a portion of the graves are members of that family. They teamed with the Friends of Colonial Pemaquid to pay for Kai Nalenze to come and restore 30 stones. They're trying to raise money to restore a group of old veterans' stones next.
NEWS CENTER
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(Decrypt)
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