Day 21... The Cemetery under Petco

Tomorrow, my special pot goes in the kiln for the first firing. If all goes well, I can make a cast of it next week. I have been teaching classes, throwing pots to sell this summer and working on my weaving. 





This weeks knitting group, where very little actual knitting gets done, what with all the quilting, sewing and weaving going on, friends brought up the subject of our Walmart shopping center across the street, over the river (well, brook) and through the woods in front of my house and the cemetery that used to be there. The top of that hill is the main intersection of the old highway running through Wolcottville (now Torrington) in the west and Bakerville (or is it Bakersville?) in the east. The north and south highway, Torringford Street, actually ran through the center of the village past the schools, church, blacksmith, taverns, stores and cemetery.   

On the the four corners of the intersection were: Griswolds Tavern, a brick farmhouse like mine, a school and the Bissell homestead. Benjamin Bissell came to Torringford in 1748 making a total of 7 settlers in town.

When I was small, indeed until Walmart was built a few years ago, there was a small family cemetery under the area that is now Petco.



The Bissell monument at the Torringford Cemetery

The tall spire of an 1800s monument rose high above the pastures on Torringford Street. The stone marks only six Bissells buried there, but there may have been more graves on that spot. I knew the families on that property, descendants of Benjamin, but do not remember what the cemetery looked like other than the tall monument.  Benjamins house had already been torn down years before the property was bought for a shopping center. There were a house that contained a post office, another house of the same era, around 1900?, a package store and a 1960s house that were all torn down for parking spaces. Along the road was an area that the family would flood in the winter and we kids would go up there to skate, the area now under McDonalds.  There are still a few apple trees and run away flowers from gardens off into the woods east of the shopping center. 

 Much of the good farm topsoil was removed from the hill around the cemetery and sold off at the time of development. The cemetery was supposedly moved to the Torringford cemetery about  1/2 mile up the road behind the new solar United Congregational Church. 

I met one of the men who helped move the cemetery not too long ago and he said there was not much remaining in the ground under the monument but a bit of wood from the caskets, which were moved to the old cemetery.  How much remained, how much were moved and how much was scattered around the area? There are bones of people and animals that make up the soil of these old farm communities. And there may still be fragments under the new shopping mall.




Birge family graves just to the left of the Bissell monument

 

My grampa had a retired race horse when he first moved here in 1927.  I don't remember the horses name or anything else about him other than he is buried out back near the stone wall. Which is now someones back yard. Bulldozers must have moved bone remains and scattered the fragments.  I have found horse or cow teeth in jawbones in my vegetable garden. The circle of life. The land around a farm as old as this one, over 200 years, must have a few cow and horse bones as part of the soil. But there are no human bones that I know of in my yard. The Birges are all buried in the Torringford cemetery up the road behind the Church.

Want me to send you an email notice of my next post?  Sign up right here:
Subscribe to I saved a homestead by Email