After leaving Rhode Island, we continued north to Salem, Massachusetts. I already shared that my mom had Quaker ancestors on her father’s father’s side who were persecuted. Even though the cemetery isn’t open to the public, we decided to visit the Quaker Cemetery in Salem.
I know there’s one remaining stone from a Southwick relative in there, but I assume there are more stones that have been lost.
From there, we went to the 1692 Witch Museum. If you want more history, HERE is a great video from the Smithsonian.
Salem really was not good to my mom’s ancestors. On her mother’s mother’s side, she is descended from Sarah Pease, who was arrested as a witch in May of 1692.
Proctor’s Ledge, the site of the hangings of 19 accused witches.
Luckily, she was released in May of the following year. But I’m sure it was a brutal winter in a jail not made for long-term housing of prisoners.
We found Sarah’s name on a wall listing the accused.
I’m sure it was also a hardship on the family (they were weavers–probably working class) to have to pay the bills incurred for feeding her in prison. Yes, even though acquitted, they remained in prison until the bills were paid. What amazes me is that she and her husband remained in Salem and continued to live in the community where she was persecuted.
After leaving Salem, we headed north to Vermont. We found the Maple Hill Cemetery at Dorset.
In this cemetery is the farthest back we can go on my mom’s dad’s side. We just hit a dead end there, but we were very happy to see where they lived and these two are buried.
Deac. John Manley (and his wife, Mary Arnold Manley was beside him, but her stone can’t be read).
It was also nice to see the cemetery being so well-preserved. There were two workers who were digging and then resetting some of the stones that were tipping. When they finished, the stones were perfectly stable again.
Fixing cemetery stones.
The next morning, we were off to find more cemeteries. I’m not going to go into detail, but let’s just skip straight to Maple Grove Cemetery just south of Otselic, New York.
This is the final resting place for my fourth great-grandparents, Jonathan and Esther (Moon) Brown.
Esther Moon Brown
Johnathan Brown
After a much needed night’s rest, we were off again. This would be the last of the cemeteries. We found Pioneer Burying Ground in Pittsford, New York.
It took a bit of work to find the stones we were looking for. Luckily, I had the pictures from findagrave.com pulled up, so I knew the shape. Unfortunately, they have really deteriorated since the pictures were posted. The one on the left that is broken belong to my 6th great-grandmother, Rachel (Ide) Perin. I don’t know who the middle one belongs to (and I can’t read it). The one on the right is Rachel’s son (my 5th great-uncle), Glover.
I do hope someone can work on fixing many of the broken stones in this cemetery before it’s too late to save them.
Teresa
Eden Hills 