A Tale of Two Cemeteries

     

Entrance to Saint Anne's in Palmyra, NY

     Thursday afternoon the Rochester, New York area broke the record with a daytime temperature of 65 balmy degrees!  It's doubtful we'll see that sort of warmth again for a very long time, so I took advantage of the day to visit the Catholic cemetery in Palmyra.  Besides being good exercise, it's enjoyable to get out of the house and visit some old, (deceased), relatives.  I recently read a blog by Irish genealogist John Grenholm in which he observed, in speaking of the Irish, "Apparently we find it very hard to let go. Maybe that’s the reason we have such a thing about graveyards. Because we certainly do have a thing about graveyards".  If I'm any yardstick, that is an indisputable truism. 

     Being such a nice day, I was loathe to leave after making my usual rounds so I decided to take a stroll through the much larger village cemetery that abuts Saint Anne's as well.  The village cemetery has some very old and unique graves while Saint Anne's cemetery, being created sometime after 1850, lacks really old burials.  Come take a walk with me...

   

     Entering Saint Anne's, one is greeted by a life-sized angel.  The gravestone behind her left wing is that of my 2nd great-aunt Ellen Power from County Waterford and her husband Thomas Mahoney born in County Kerry. 

     The shot below is no man's land, the road dividing the Catholics from everyone else. Saint Anne's is on the left.

     As I left Saint Anne's and walked on into the village cemetery, I saw on a rise what looked from a distance to be palm trees on the side of a large monument.  That was odd, palm trees are definitely not native to New York but there they were.  On viewing the front of the marker, the explanation for the presence of palm trees became clear.  It read, "Dr. Henry Pebbine born Brooklyn 1797 Killed by the Seminole Indians at the massacre of Indian Key Fla. Aug 7 1840 Aged 43".  I had never heard of this massacre nor the doctor before, and I was somewhat doubtful he had been brought from Florida to New York for burial, (in August yet), so I googled it.  One website that came up contained an article written in 1912 that described the terrible events of that summer's day and mentioned a Dr. Henry, but his last name was Perrine.  A closer look at the picture I had taken of the stone showed it was indeed Perrine, not Pebbine as I had first thought.  The article concluded by noting Dr. Perrine's remains were recovered from Florida many years after the tragedy and interred in the family plot at Palmyra.  Another site claims the doctor's remains could not be located in Florida, making the monument in Palmyra a cenotaph.  I tend to believe the second site.

     In the photo below is one of the several zinc markers that dot the village cemetery.  Erected in 1886 this monument looks as though it could have been put up yesterday, the inscription is that clear.  I wish all my ancestor's markers were made of this blueish grey metal.  Their production began in 1875 and being hollow, they were actually an inexpensive option.  Unfortunately, they never gained in popularity with some cemeteries banning zinc markers on the grounds maintaining them would be costly and they might not hold up... the opposite has proven true.

     

Charles H. Kingman M.D.

     

     The marker on the right below is exactly what it looks like, a boulder set on a base memorializing the Chase family.  The other is erected entirely from cobblestones for the De Chard family.

Left, De Chard - Albert 1842-1933 and Cordelia 1842-1923

     The small oval stone below struck me as unusual, I haven't seen many of these but there are a few in the village cemetery; none are found in Saint Anne's. This one was placed in remembrance of Little Cornelia who passed away in 1836 at the age of three.

 

     While Saint Anne's Cemetery is all on level ground, the village cemetery behind it contains both level and hilly sections. One prominence is pictured below.  There are some uneven, timeworn steps placed at intervals on the hillside, but it's still steeper than it appears in the photo.  From the top it does offer a panoramic view of the two cemeteries though...

     

     Looking down from the top of the hill, Saint Anne's cemetery is the farthest section seen in the above photo.

     Three hours have slipped by, the temperature is beginning to drop now and the clouds are lowering; rain is expected before sunset.  It's time to get back to my car parked at the end of that far road.  I hope you enjoyed this brief look at Palmyra where I spend a good deal of my free time.  To be continued...  

(In May)