Center’s cemetary behind the Lenna residence in Bowdoinham is one of more than 50 cemeteries in town that resident Albert Stehle aims to resurrect. Stehle encourages volunteers to join a townwide cemetery cleanup Saturday morning. Call him at 666-3494. (Courtesy of Albert Stehle)
Behind the effort is resident Albert Stehle, who said a cemetery inventory has not been done since 1970. Last summer, he photographed every cemetery in town, inventoried them and developed a “wish list” for each.
Stehle also enlisted town committees and groups to volunteer to focus on a specific cemetery. Saturday’s cleaning will happen rain or shine.
Stehle said Bowdoinham can officially claim 52 cemeteries, although he believes the total to be closer to 60 because no records exist for some small cemeteries.
Some are on private property and others he’s come across while exploring Bowdoinham. People have called to tell him of others.
There are four village cemeteries, and the rest are family cemeteries. The oldest village cemetery in east Bowdoinham is on the Abagadasset River, because that’s how people reached it before there were roads, Stehle said.
“So what I wanted to do was what they used to do in Bowdoinham,” Stehle said.
Members of one of the organizations in town — possibly the Masons or Knights Templar — would gather once a year to clean the cemeteries, and then meet back to eat lunch. Stehle wants to revive the tradition.
“What I’m trying to do is, the night before, if you make your signature casserole or dessert, and then you bring it to the fire station Saturday morning, and then you pick up your work orders of where you’re going to go and how to get there, and the only thing that you’re required to bring is a rake,” Stehle said. “There will be gloves, tarps. I’ve done everything to the point where (the cemeteries) just need to be raked.”
Stehle said he has been cleaning cemeteries in town since the 1970s and has done a significant amount of preparation work for Saturday. He has no family members buried in any of the cemeteries.
Asked about his commitment to keep them maintained, he said “There’s a lot of history in them. … There are cemeteries in Bowdoinham that have Revolutionary soldiers. There are countless Civil War ( soldiers). And then, of course, there’s the cemetery on Ridge Road where there’s a man buried who lived in three centuries. He was born in 1799 and died in 1901.”
“There’s a famous Civil War nurse, not to mention the political diplomats … numerous sea captains,” Stehle continued.
Stehle called the work planned for Saturday an effort to help town government re-establish respect for Bowdoinham’s cemeteries.
“If we go out, one year and can clean and find and make them recognizable in just one year, that means next year or even this year, I can start restanding stones, redoing the foundations of some of the larger stones that have toppled over,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to take place instead of having to do the raking.”
The work crews will have a list of what was in their cemetery in 1970, and will try to locate those stones.
“A lot of these cemeteries, when ( volunteers) rake, they’re going to start finding stones that are tipped over on the ground,” Stehle said. “We’re not trying to stand the stones, we’re not trying to rebuild the stones. All I want to do this year is get them recognizable. There’s no heavy lifting involved. Any branches will be in lengths that (can be carried) — I’ve been out with the chain saw. I want to try to do it so it can all be done in about three-and-a-half hours.”
After three-and-a-half hours, “everyone will all be coming back at the same time to a nice lunch,” he said.
“There would be no better 250th birthday present than to see all residents come together to help clean 60 cemeteries all at the same time,” Stehle wrote in the January municipal newsletter.
Stehle hopes the cemetery cleaning day will become an annual event. He also hopes the state historian can come to Bowdoinham in the future to give a lecture about proper gravestone maintenance before that more advanced work starts.
Participants in the cleanup should drop off their food and pick up their work orders (with directions to the cemetery) at the fire station on Post Road between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. Saturday.
To help with planning, Stehle asks volunteers to call him in advance at 666-3493.
dmoore@timesrecord.com
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