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Letters
Region
Obituaries
Abstract Paintings & Tribal Masks Exhibition At New Hampshire Antique Co-Op
Now on view through May 31, 2020
Congregational Church Stays Connected
During the suspension of in-person activities in light of the Covid-19 situation, the Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC has a variety of ways for members and others to connect with church programs. This is especially important during April as Holy Week and Easter are on the horizon.
The most up-to-date information about church activities can be found on the church’s website (ccamherst.org) or by calling the church office at 673-3231. Sunday services are broadcast on FacebookLive and recorded for later on-line viewing. Services are followed by a Virtual Fellowship Hour. Links for these and other events can be found on the website.
The church’s Facebook page is another source of information, including updates and video messages from the pastors. Pastors Maureen Frescott and Kate Kennedy are available to provide pastoral care during this time, and the church welcomes community members to connect with this loving, serving, open and affirming community of faith.
Lorraine Alice Hamilton
AMHERST – Lorraine Alice Hamilton of Amherst, New Hampshire, Beach Haven, New Jersey and Rancho Mirage, California died June 14, 2020 from pancreatic cancer at her home in California. She was 73 years old and a participant in the trial of a new cancer drug at NYU Langone in New York City since April 2019. She hoped that results from the trial would improve care for other patients who develop this cancer. She was with her family when she died and was
Donald Richard Haaker
Donald Richard Haaker, 80, born June 2, 1940, son of Carl E Haaker and Jeanne LaRochelle Haaker of Fitchburg, MA, son, brother, father, grandfather, and great grandfather, peacefully passed away on Sunday, June 7, 2020 at Saint Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford, MA.
Don, as he was affectionately referred to by friends, and Dad or Grandpa by family, was a proud veteran, avid fisherman, former business owner, collector of “As Seen On TV” gadgets, and
Historic Amherst
Cricket Corner Cemetery: Slate gravestone of Levi Adams [Jr.] (1834), who had split off this parcel from his homestead farm in 1832 for a public neighborhood graveyard., and also of his young daughter who died a month later.
Meeting agreed to the same conditions, so the Town in Dec. 1832 bought a different parcel for this purpose, wedged between Boston Post Road and Merrimack Road, next to the Cricket Corner District 3 Schoolhouse, for $10 from Levi Adams (deed 172:96).
Prior owner: Levi Adams Jr. (1795-1834), who had come from Temple where he had been an innholder, in 1829 had bought 369 Boston Post Road with 125-acre farm. (His father, Sr., had been a tavernkeeper at 107 Ponemah Road at Danforth’s Corner in the SW corner of Amherst from 1802 until he died in 1805 from a kick to the gut by a horse.)
Earliest gravestone: Ironically, it belongs to Levi Adams (d. 1834, age 39), from whose farm the graveyard was split off, and is a combination stone with his daughter Lydia Maria who died a month later (age 2), the only members of this family buried there. It is a typical rounded-top slate stone with urn & willow motif.
Showiest plots: Luther Coggin (Sr., d. 1877, age 75), who ran the Fletcher tavern at 382 BPR which he had bought in 1853, has a family-size plot enclosed by a fancy black-painted wrought-iron fence, its gate embossed “L. COGGIN / 1860.” (His son Jr. (1835-1890), who owned & occupied the farm at 369 BPR
from 1866 till his death, has a separate lot and stone.) The Fletcher family have two family-sized plots in the center on opposite sides of the central walkway, with chunky granite monuments listing multiple family members. Buried there is Maj. Joseph Fletcher (Sr., d. 1843, age 78), who since 1824 had owned the tavern at 382 BPR, which he leased to his son Daniel, and 2 Thornton Ferry Rd 2, occupied by another of his sons but inherited by three daughters, and in 1825 bought the farm of 377 BPR as his own homestead. Daniel Fletcher (d. 1873, age 77) is also buried there even though he had moved to the Village when he retired from the tavern-inn.
Pauper Cemetery
Date: In 1840, nine years after the alms house was opened, a small piece of ground belonging to the pauper farm was set aside and fenced for a burial place, located on Route 122 a short distance north of the intersection with Route 101A and the railroad line. When Amherst sold its town farm in 1898, the deed stipulated “reserving the burial lot on the premises situated on the west side of the highway leading from Amherst Station to Amherst Village.”
Number of burials: No one now knows how many persons were buried there (the records probably went up in flames with the alms house in 1892) but tallying up the numbers given in annual town reports, at least 40 paupers died at the poor farm since 1840, 23 of them in the 1840s and 12 in the 1850s. Not all of them were buried there, but probably most of them.
Name: In the annual town report of 1924, it was called Poor Farm Cemetery; in 1932, Town Farm Cemetery. Clarence H. Hagar (1892-1965), elected sexton for 28 years until his retirement in 1960, felt those appellations were disrespectful, so instead he called it Ponemah Cemetery. In schedules of town property, into the 21st century, it has been called Potters Field (lot 1-1-32).
Monument: In 1938, sexton Hagar erected a small plain marker made of cement, with a guess at where it should go. A few years after 1982, under the direction of Amherst’s road agent Richard G. Crocker, Richard Medlyn of Medlyn Monuments in Milford created and placed the granite marker with the inscription “Pauper’s Cemetery, Town of Amherst” that stands there to this day. (Since 1961 when Amherst did away with the elected office of sexton, maintenance of the cemeteries falls under the highway department’s purview.)
Saint Patrick Cemetery
Date: In 1869, the Right Reverend David W. Bacon, Bishop of Portland, Maine, bought 4 3/8 acres on Merrimack Road, intended as a Catholic cemetery, for $218.75 from four Milford men (deed 387:157). At that time, the original Saint Patrick’s Church (erected 1859, sold 1895, burned 1902) was also located on Amherst soil, on Souhegan Street in the Irish immigrant district called The Acre. Since 1884, when New Hampshire was split off as its own diocese, this cemetery falls under the purview of the see of Manchester and is the cemetery associated with Saint Patrick’s Church of Milford.
Prior owners: These four men were in business together in the lumber firm of Howison & Marvell, and as such owned various real estate. In the 1870 census, they were listed as: Marvell John, 54, farmer, real estate $7000, personal estate $7000; Marvell James, 54, brick mason, $2000/$1000; Richardson William, 50, farmer, $5000/$3000; and Howison Robert R., 55, express & stage owner, $30,000/$30,000 [sic].
Civil War graves: As of 1878, when Milford’s G.A.R. post included this cemetery in its “Decoration Exercises,” there were three graves of “fallen heroes” there.
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Acknowledgments: I am grateful and indebted to Jackie Marshall (JLSM) for her extensive research and thorough cataloging of Town Hall, Meadowview, Chestnut Hill, and Cricket Corner Cemeteries, including proper genealogical entries in Findagrave.com. Jackie wrote the Old Burying Ground and Meadowview Cemetery sections of Walking Tours of Amherst Village book (2010).
Further Reading: If you are interested in the symbolism of the carved motifs and who the carvers might be, see Prof. David H. Watters’ lecture and tour of the Old Burying Ground, “New Hampshire Gravestones: Art and Life in Colonial Times” (June 1991) in the Amherst Town Library as audiotape and transcript.
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Katrina Holman welcomes comments to HistoricAmherstNH @ juno.com