From Grave To Cradle, The Circle Of Life

Colorful names from Western Maine’s past

by Peter Lenz

It all started sometime back when my daughter Aurora, now eighteen, was four years old. It was at this time that we literally walked into an unexpected and wonderfully enriching experience, and, eventually a publishing project. We’d been excited to hike on discontinued and abandoned roads after black fly season was over. One fine sunshiny day we found ourselves up on Young’s Hill in West Paris. At one time, a very long time back, a road went over the top of the hill and down to North Pond and the Milletville district of Norway.

At some point in our trudging along, one of us, I think it was “the baby,” noticed man-made objects in the brush. “Daddy, look!” Off to the side of the path, several partly-covered and hauntingly beautiful stones appeared in the tall grass, struggling, it seemed, to be noticed and not forever forgotten.

We had stumbled across a “lost,” very old, long abandoned graveyard. Taking no time to think about it, Aurora immediately began spelling out the letters of names. There, peeking out at us were several of unusual beauty, like precious gems: AURELIA, DULCE, NEWBEGIN, JERUSHA, SEABORN, CERCULE, and ELEANCE.

I don’t know about Aurora, but I had a sweet, poignant feeling about the forgotten souls there. A sad beauty, intensified by such lovely names, overtook my heart. I think it was as much to honor these cemetery folk as to save and hold onto such precious names, that I thought to list them on the few blank scraps of paper in my wallet. Then, before leaving, we removed much of the dead wood and weeds obstructing the headstones.

We learned later from a friend who is a history buff that the graveyard’s

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namesake, Nathaniel Young, was clerk to General George Washington! When we returned to our old farmhouse, I took out the scraps of paper and piled them over by the base of my desk lamp.

After visiting our two young musical friends, Heidi and Erica Keyser in North Waterford, I thought we could take a hike in the woods to scout for an old Indian trail. Behold! We found another cemetery! The overgrown headstones here yielded more old-time, lovely first names. We discovered: NOBLE, SELVINA, ROYAL, TRISTAM, DESIAH, and SOLSTICE. Again, out came the pen and wallet to scribble down these names. And again, the scraps were piled by the old jug lamp.

A year passed. A group of special education students and I had embarked on an oral history project of our own creation. We armed ourselves with audio and video recorders and went out to interview some of our area’s elders — living treasures — who welcomed us to hear their personal life stories. Several old-timers, such as Doris and Hal Thurston, Ruth Noble Greenleaf, Nester Taminen, and Norman Chew, mentioned the “wonderful old time roads,” they loved and missed. Discontinued, they did not exist anymore, except as overgrown forest trails and memories. To show some of their locations, the Thurstons took me out on several driving tours in their van. Norman Chew, a nonagenarian expert on the physicality of C.A. Stephens’ Old Squire Country (North Norway), took me out on guided tours as well. Aurora and I thus had additional places to hike and explore. And several of these old abandoned roads also had small companion graveyards. More scraps of paper, and for sure, more delightful names like SENECA, DESIRE, CENTA, TAMARA, JULIAN, COLUMBIA, SATIRIA, PERSIAN, SIBAE, and TAMSEN.

We searched out our new oral history friend Lettie Day Brooks’ family homestead. Our car was able to make it up an old road path to the Curtis Hill Cemetery. Here we found many graves marked only with jagged stones, a sign of either poverty or plague-like illness. Looking out over breathtaking mountain landscapes, we were treated to headstones with names like ANNAH, MARINER, RUHANNAH, and ALLETHRE.

Behind the old, now yellow meeting house in Oxford, Aurora insisted on cleaning out the illegible letter indentations filled with fungus on one particular stone. To accomplish this she found herself a firm little stick. After a time of patient work, she was rewarded with the name EXIBANNE. This “restoration” would become her new time-consuming practice.

On the old trail that goes over Patch Mountain in Greenwood, we met Kevin (cont. on page 30)

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and Dee Farr and their kids. Kevin was preparing to mow the grass and weeds, and clean the headstones in the historic cemetery where ancestors of the great Addison E. Verrill and Atherton B. Furlong were interred. We asked for and received a very thorough lesson in the care and cleaning of gravestones. Later, as a result of that lesson, we sometimes were able to repair some of the smaller, toppled stones we encountered.

By this time someone had given me a small computer. Aurora was making progress at reading and she wanted to practice typing. So, looking over at the heap of paper scraps on my desk, she grabbed some and began to type in the names we’d collected. Before long, nice alphabetized lists began to appear.

By then, she and I had discussed how trendy the practice of naming babies had become. Here, I’ll quote from Aurora’s introduction to the book that would eventually follow. She wrote, “I made this book so I could be with my dad and to help people find new beautiful names for their kids.” She went on to say, “There are about 10 Kellys I know. And Kelsey has been used so much. So have Ashley, and Megan, Chelsea, Erick, and Jason. But where are people with names like Destiny, Aura or Celestia?” Before you knew it she was working on alphabetizing the names that we would offer up as potential names for babies.

Inspired now with the noble mission of putting out lists of local, gorgeous and unusual first names to contribute to babydom, we increased the amount of time we spent visiting cemeteries. We found beautiful cemeteries in Otisfield, Buckfield, Waterford, Lovell, Stoneham, Woodstock and Hebron, and in districts still known by their old, folksy, more-localized names. Some of these included Hungry Hollow, Tuelltown, Scribner’s Mills, Panther Pond, Pugglyville, and Richardson Hollow.

We were finding not only beautiful first names but wildly creative and unique ones. One was STOPLION! Later we guessed that the poor fella’ beneath the headstone probably was always called by his nickname, “Stop Lyin’.” Not so great a name for a respectful burial or monument.

We also had discovered some pretty outrageous, if not horrid and ugly, names too, but wrote them down just the same. One was AZHOLE, another BIAL, and yet another, ZANITOSE. We could hardly believe it when we found NAUSEAS, FEAR, and VASECTEMA. And yes, there was even a VIAGRA! Yikes! In a small graveyard in downtown Norway, on a Saturday morning, we found the name TUBAL ... just weird. An hour later, in Oxford,

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we found its apparent companion, LIGATION. I kid you not!

We knew, of course, that the people and souls within and beyond these places should not be disparaged because of the awful names their parents had given them. There were others we really liked, however. Imaginative names like LETTICE, OMITTA, BIRDIE, GOTCHA, HASTY, AMAZIA, and PLEAMAN, although we didn’t expect people to borrow them for use today.

It seemed smart to us to also write down any nicknames that were mentioned on the placid old stones. Some of these, as Aurora used to say “had lots of pep!” AUNT SALLY POPPY, ELDERBERRY BERRY, LONG BILL, BUNGlE GERRY, WIMBLE BETTY, ROLLIN’ HOBBS, and CROOKED DICK.

At one little cemetery in Otisfield we fittingly found OTISSA. And among the Snow family plot on Menotomy Road, we found Ivory: IVORY SNOW, catchy. Little Erika L. came along with us when we visited the Ryerson neighborhood cemetery behind Paris Hill. When it started to rain she broke into lovely ballet steps. Dancing around and through the graveyard, she occasionally picked a flowering weed, without losing stride. When she finally stopped, it was in front of a headstone that read THULIE THULIE, where she lovingly placed the flowers. Later, when we got to our penny candy clubhouse, Minnie’s Restaurant in South Paris, and were relaying our amazing name finds, our old friend broke out with, “Oh, Thulie. I knew her well. A sad girl she was, thank you for the flowers.”

One of our high points was coming across the grave of Pedro Toovokan Parris. Pedro had, as a young African child, been stolen into slavery. At age ten, he was rescued by Maine Marshall Virgil D. Paths, and given a loving home atop Paris Hill. Later, as a brilliant young man, he tutored area children and then traveled about New England delivering anti-slavery lectures. When he died, more mourners than had ever before been recorded in western Maine attended his graveside funeral — over three thousand! Obviously, color and race made no difference to the people then and there. After kneeling down and “talking with him” softly a good while in the little cemetery out behind his home, Aurora laid her treasured purple Easter egg on his snowy grave. I was sad in the cemeteries at times, but I often felt inspired! It seemed that ethereal, inaudible voices were saying, advising, “Live, live ... don’t waste your life, live fully, purposefully, today!”

We gave the little book we were putting together a wicked-lengthy title: From Grave to Cradle: the Circle of (cont. on page 32)

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(cont. from page 31)

Life . . . Lovely, Luscious, Poetic, Creative, Old-Timey Names from western Maine Headstones... Honoring Those Who Have Come Before. Showing her ever-sweet innocence, Aurora wrote, “If you were or are the baby and got one of these names, and you are older now, and reading this, I hope you were given one of my very favorites: Wellcome, Electa, Kaisa, Lura, Angelia, Salucia, Renew, Hopestill, Sabra, Kyrie, Talia, Arria, Oriza, Ranah, Africa, Deliverance, Fidelia, Elestia, Garland, Lovica, or Dulcina.”

The Post Office in West Bethel. Item # LB2007.1.102918 from the Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Co. Collection and www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org