Volunteers help record gravestones in Roxbury

Sep. 14—Fourteen volunteers helped members of the Roxbury Cemetery Association record names on gravestones on Saturday, Sept. 10.

Volunteers recorded the name or names and inscription on the grave marker; the date of birth, if shown; date of death and age, if given; any symbols on the stone; the stone's condition; whether the person was a veteran and any information on an additional VA marker; and what is carved on any footstone near the marker. Some symbols included lambs to signify a child buried in the cemetery and Masonic and other organizational emblems.

Roxbury Cemetery Association President Mary Jean Scudder said Wednesday, the team of volunteers "got a good start" on the inventory of the stones Saturday, and the hope is to have the whole cemetery inventoried before winter. Scudder said she has been president of the association for two years. Other members of the association are Lucci Kelly, Cathy Cammer, Dawn Shultis and Lynette Liberatore, she said.

In addition to volunteers, six seniors from Roxbury Central School will spend one day helping to record the names on the stones for community service hours, she said. There are very familiar names known to the Roxbury community in the cemetery, including Hinkley and More, and she told students last year they would come across names they knew in the cemetery. Scudder said she has several ancestors buried in the cemetery, including her fourth-great-grandparents, John and Betty More. John and Betty More originally settled in the town of Harpersfield before the Revolutionary War and moved to Grand Gorge, which was named Moresville after them, before settling in Roxbury, she said.

"He carved his wife's and his own gravestones," Scudder said. "His wife died before him and has a death date, but his does not. They had eight children and many are buried here." In addition to the carved stones on the ground, there is an obelisk honoring the two in the front of the cemetery. One of their descendants, Charles Church More, also has a mausoleum near the entrance of the cemetery. "No one knows where the key is," she said. The last person buried in the mausoleum was buried in 1967, she said.

Scudder said the association has large maps of the cemetery and the information gained by the inventory will help the association make any corrections to the maps. "It is not up-to-date," she said.

Another reason for the inventory is to see which stones need repair in the hope to alert descendants of the person that the stone needs repairing. A walk around the cemetery revealed some broken stones and a finial that had been knocked off its stone by a falling tree. She said the cemetery association has a "limited budget" for repairs and expansion as the cemetery "is running out of space."

The cemetery was the original site of the Dutch Reformed Church, and there are several stones that were part of the church's graveyard in a section of the cemetery.

"The church blew down several times," she said. "Jay Gould then had the stone church built."

Several stones in the cemetery are hard to read due to fading and "that will be a challenge," to the volunteers she said. Volunteers were encouraged to work in pairs Saturday, she said, because looking at a stone from a different angle or in a different light allowed one person to see what was written on the stone while the other couldn't read the stone.

The stones that were too faded to be read were still able to be inventoried using aluminum foil and a sock, she said. When the foil is placed on the stone and is rubbed by a person with the sock on their hand, the engraved portion of the stone appears in the foil, she said.

In the past, people would take a piece of paper and a crayon to do a rubbing of the stone, but Diane Galusha of the Historical Society of Middletown suggested using the aluminum foil and sock method, Scudder said.

Once the inventory is complete, the names will be alphabetized and put in a database and posted on the Delaware County NY Genealogy website, so people doing genealogy research can find their ancestors buried in the cemetery. The inventory will also be a help to town Historian Anthony Libertore and the association for when they receive inquiries from people looking for ancestors that might be buried in the cemetery, she said.

Vicky Klukkert, staff writer, can be reached at vklukkert@thedailystar.com or 607-441-7221.

Vicky Klukkert, staff writer, can be reached at vklukkert@thedailystar.com or 607-441-7221.