Cemeteries are a map to the past, but many in CT are falling into disrepair and neglect – Hartford Courant

Connecticut has about 5,000 graveyards that serve as home to its ancestors and a solemn reminder of its history. But across the state, graves are falling into disrepair as earth, grass and weeds swallow markers that have become illegible with years of corrosion and neglect.

“Cemeteries are a map to the past,” said Walter Woodward, Connecticut state historian emeritus and associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut. “They are quite literally cities of the dead and in some places you can trace the origins and development of the place and region just by the records of a cemetery.”

Woodward said cemeteries also function as cultural artifacts. Those artifacts can teach us about how we have viewed death, practiced religion, made art, designed landscapes, built structures and even run businesses throughout history.

“These are wonderful historical records that are largely neglected,” Woodward said. “Through neglect we really lose an important source of historical knowledge.”

Woodward said due to changing traditions and cultural norms, the future looks bleak for older cemeteries without volunteers stepping up to help preserve gravestones.

“There was a time when people were more connected with their ancestors but not so much today,” Woodward said. “The old traditions of caring for family gravestones is not nearly as common as it used to be. As a result, many gravestones are abandoned and neglected.”

The task has frequently fallen to the state’s many private cemetery associations, with no oversight.

“We need to do more to protect them,” Woodward said. “Sadly many cemeteries are falling into neglect and gravestones are becoming unrepairable. The past is literally crumbling away.”

In some cases, private citizens are stepping up across the state to help preserve the past.

Plainfield resident Jason Bowns has made it his mission to protect history one gravestone at a time. Bowns, a history teacher at Plainfield High School, became enamored of the town’s historic Old Plainfield Cemetery after wandering onto its grounds two years ago.

But after closer inspection he realized that some of the graves were in dire need of repair.

“Gravestones were leaning and some were lying broken on the ground,” he said. “There’s actually a tree growing right out of a grave. So that’s when I realized something needed to be done.”

Bowns said he was told by Town Historian Ruth Bergeron and members of the Plainfield Cemetery Association, which owns the cemetery, there’d been short-lived efforts in the past by volunteer groups to spruce up the cemetery that quickly fizzled. So Bowns decided to address the issue with the help of some likeminded individuals.

“I started an all-volunteer group to come out and take care of the town’s historic graves,” Bowns said. “We are a dedicated team of trained professionals helping to preserve our history.”

The Plainfield Grave Guardians Association — whose mission is to clean up and restore Old Plainfield Cemetery and the town’s other historic cemeteries — provides grounds maintenance and grave marker care and helps educate the community about those interred in Plainfield’s historic cemeteries.

“The earliest stone in there goes back to the 1730s. Not only are there veterans in there but ancestral families of the community,” Bowns said. “There is a surgeon who served at the Battle of Bunker Hill and three soldiers who were part of the African American regiment for Connecticut during the Civil War. I think it’s important we remember their contributions.”

Connecticut’s historic cemeteries often are the final resting place for veterans who served in some of the nation’s earliest battles and wars.

Old Plainfield Cemetery is unique for its conservation status of an endangered plant species that had been found 31 years ago. At the request of DEEP, a verbal agreement was reached decades ago to maintain the upper portion of Plainfield Cemetery, and stop mowing a 0.02-acre area where the endangered plants grow.

The state agency last year notified the town it planned to conduct a full survey of the grounds to determine if other examples of the plant could be found. But to conduct such a search, the cemetery grass needed to be left to grow.

Bowns worked out an arrangement that included restarting mowing around graves.

“They extended the perimeter of the no-mow area that was in place around where the plant has been found by around 20 feet or so,” Bowns said. “But we made sure that graves were still respected.”

Bowns said he intends to keep helping to preserve graves until he can’t do it anymore.

Ed Zack of Branford has spent the last three years contacting the archdiocese, cemetery manager and officials at St. John Bosco Parish, which oversees St. Agnes Cemetery, in hopes of conditions improving there.

Grave markers of veterans are in many cases unidentifiable due to leaves and weeds clinging to the stones.

In some instances, grave markers peek through weeds and grass obscuring details about the person resting below.

“It’s a disgrace,” Zack said. “These are veterans. They should be treated better.”

Zack and other volunteers said they take it upon themselves to clear and maintain those markers. The situation makes it difficult to to identify veterans’ graves so flags cannot be placed near Veterans Day or Memorial Day to honor their service, he said.

Zack performs maintenance of 15 graves, something that began 12 years ago with the marker for his father, World War II Cpl. Edward John Zack Sr. The number grew to include his father’s brothers’ markers and those of family friends.

“I’ve heard nothing,” Zack said. “Every time I try to contact the parish I get no response.”

The conditions of the cemetery have driven Zack to contact state officials, including the state Department of Health, and lawmakers, and he hopes to continue to bring attention to the problems.

Zack said that he has been told there is not enough help at the cemetery to do full perpetual care.

“I feel bad,” Zack said. “These people died thinking their gravestones would be taken care of.”

State law defines a “neglected cemetery” as a burial place with more than six graves that is not under the control or management of any currently functioning cemetery association and which has been neglected “and allowed to grow up to weeds, briars and bushes, or about which the fences have become broken, decayed or dilapidated.”

In some graveyards, the grass is mowed, but the time-consuming and expensive work of righting, repairing and cleaning stones is left undone. Nature has overtaken some small cemeteries, gradually lost in the woods.

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State law says cemeteries can be “acquired, owned, managed and controlled” by religious entities, cemetery associations or by towns, but that law does not require that towns perform cemetery maintenance.

In 2014, the state established the Neglected Cemetery Account, authorizing the Office of Policy and Management to make grants available on a first-come, first-served basis for cities and towns needing help covering the costs of clearing weeds and brush, mowing and fixing fences, walls and gravestones. The grant money comes from fees collected from death certificates.

For the past six years, municipalities have fully tapped the neglected cemeteries fund. Revenue comes from death certificate fees and is dependent each year on the number of certificates requested, OPM spokesman Chris McClure said. The money can be used to mow grass, clear weeds, briars and bushes, repair fences and walls and straighten gravestones.

Ruth Shapleigh-Brown of the Connecticut Gravestone Network said that the state needs to clean up outdated, contradictory and unenforced laws governing cemeteries.

“In the past 20-plus years of being involved with burying ground history and preservation,” she wrote in written testimony for a 2014 bill establishing the fund for neglected cemeteries, “I’ve constantly seen our state statutes concerning cemetery maintenance being ignored and abused with no accountability or concern expressed at any legal level.”

Stephen Underwood can be reached at sunderwood@courant.com.