Volunteers clean up town's historic cemeteries

A few weeks ago some local Girl Scouts cleaned an historic cemetery on Shippeetown Road. A Boy Scout is preparing to clean a cemetery for his Eagle Scout project. The East Greenwich Republican Town Committee has adopted to maintain a large walled cemetery in Stone Ridge. Several individuals are maintaining cemeteries near where they live. And last Monday evening, a quiet country graveyard on Division Road was invaded by a group of Cub Scouts who raked up about 18 plastic barrels of oak leaves and carted them off into the woods as part of their "Leave No Trace" program. Briars and other mean, nasty plants along the  inside the walls were also removed and carted off. Within two hours, everything within the walls was neat and tidy.

This is the sort of activity that has given me hope that we can eventually get all of East Greenwich's 60 some odd historic cemeteries presently beneath briars, dead tree limbs, and overgrowth back under control. There are 91 of them in town including the large church and corporation-operated cemeteries. Around 30 are routinely cleaned and mowed by volunteers, adopters, paid groundskeepers, and arrangement have been made with the town to take care of a few. That leaves the 60 I mentioned. It is not the town government's responsibility to keep these places open and neat. For most of the 200 plus years these graveyards have existed, they were tended to by the families whose ancestors are buried in them. But now the old farms and lots have been broken up and houses have popped up all around them. One little six-grave lot is right outside the back door of a new house. Several cemeteries are in people's front yards. One man I spoke to didn't know that he had a cemetery on his property, stuck off back in the woods. One cemetery is hidden by rows of low hedges.

What is a homeowner to do? There are several possibilities. If I had one on my property, I would fence it in and keep it clean. I would upright the stones, clean them, and in that way honor the people who were here before me. But that's me. Not everyone wants to go that far and not every cemetery can facilitate that plan. Every cemetery has to be treated separately. Some cemeteries have only to be kept clean within their walls. Some have no walls and are not protected. Some of those can be fenced in as part of the yard's landscaping.

I will happily call out volunteers to get one under control if someone will promise to keep it that way. I have advice about the proper way to clean gravestones and how NOT to repair them. I'm not recommending anyone do any of this, but if you are willing to keep a cemetery clean, I will get the stones fixed and cleaned. Once cleaned and grass has replaced briars and dried oakleaves, the average graveyard can be cleaned in a couple hours three-four times a summer. Most people spend much more than that on their own lawns.

As the local representative of the R. I. Advisory Commission on Historic Cemeteries, I will work with anyone interested in finding out more about these places and what can and can not be done with them. If you have an historic cemetery on your property or nearby and want more information on dealing with them, give me a call at 663-6442.  We can meet at the cemetery and discuss the matter. Honor those who were here before us — they all have a story to tell and often they are very interesting.