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07/22/2008
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Staff Photo by Joe PhelanLITCHFIELD -- Kneeling and pullling back clumps of sod, George Luckhurst unearthed the gravestone of Franklin O. Berry inch by inch.
Brushing and then blowing away the fine dust, Luckhurst read that Franklin Berry died Dec. 13, 1858, at 22 years and four months old.
"He's one of the three people we couldn't find anywhere else," George Rogers said.
Rogers and Ed Avis led an expedition last week that took members of the Historical Society of Litchfield to a hillside overlooking the blue waters of Pleasant Pond.
There, on private property off Plains Road, they sought the family burial plot of the Berrys, descendants of Capt. Nathaniel Berry, one of Litchfield's first settlers.
"So far, we're batting 1,000," Rogers said as two other stones were dug out from the property that once belonged to Otis Berry, Nathaniel Berry's grandson, who died in 1859. Otis Berry was a great-great grandfather of Muriel Bonin, a longtime selectman, and the great-great-great grandfather of Rayna Leibowitz, who came to help with the unveiling.
"When they buried them, they almost always buried them on an east-west axis so that if they sat up in the grave, they could see the sun come up in the East," Rogers explained to his fellow searchers.
Kris Stenberg used a thin metal rod to poke the ground in an area where several pieces of gravestones were found 20 years ago by Earl Lamoreau, who was haying the area at the time.
He had propped up the pieces of stone around the bases of two young trees.
One of the broken stones belonged to Hannah Berry, wife of Otis Berry, who died June 29, 1872. The couple had seven children.
The rod slipped cleanly through the soil a few times, then stopped barely inches into the ground.
"There's another piece here," Steinberg said.
Stenberg found the granite bases for the stones, each with a slot for the marble headstones.
More prodding located the headstones, footstones and a few rocks.
The unbroken and almost unblemished stone of Hiram V., a son of Otis and Hannah Berry, who died Feb. 18, 1873, "age 22 yrs. 10 mos." was uncovered next.
Then the searchers located the bottom half of Otis Berry's gravestone, carrying over the top to ensure the match. Leibowitz found some of the history of her ancestors in the "History of Litchfield, Maine and an Account of its Centennial Celebration, 1895" by Oliver Barrett Clason.
Avis and Rogers have been locating and rehabilitating small family plots for more than a decade. Once they repair and reset the stones, the town's sexton or others take over maintenance.
"If there's a veteran in there, by state law the town has to take care of it," Rogers said. "The town has been very good about it."
The stones lay flat in the earth. "We don't take it out until we get it plotted," Avis said, as he took photos of work. "We'll come back a half a dozen times."
He expects to attract even more help.
"We found enough so more people are taking an interest," Avis said.
The cemeteries are then registered with the Maine Old Cemetery Association.
Avis, who does most of the stone repair, said it is easiest to locate the graves in the spring when the ground is soft.
Most times, the gravestones are buried by time and frost heaves, the sites simply slipping from memory as land changes hands.
"It's amazing how quickly these cemeteries can disappear," Avis said.
He said his interest began in 1995 when he found a reference to a graveyard while reading the deed to his Upper Pond Road property.
"My son and I spent a summer looking for it," he said. Eventually the were successful despite the misleading clues in the deed.
The searchers found more than the three graves they expected and solved a few mysteries to boot.
People who want to find more more about the historical society can go to www.historicalsocietyoflitchfieldmaine.org/
Betty Adams -- 621-5631
badams@centralmaine.com
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