Silent Conversations

Evergreen Cemetery, Owego, New York

 Well, we have got what was coming to us, and here in this burial plot we lie: - We fourteen skeletons of Gibsons, Tinkhams, Drakes, Pixleys and Curtises, that once were clothed with flesh and lived and loved and laughed and danced and sang and suffered just like you till the God-created life transmitting spark that had been passed down to us from its beginning died.

 -- Captain Edward Tinkham Gibson, 1935

Epitaph in Evergreen Cemetery, Owego NY

At the top of a long, narrow drive that ascends the side of a ragged shale outcrop in Tioga County, New York, is a hamlet distinguished by a long history, picturesque landscaping, and exceptional works of art and architecture. Its residents – many distinguished, powerful, and/or wealthy, some less so – are universally well known for their quiet demeanor. Very quiet. In fact, they are all dead. 

Evergreen Cemetery sits on a scenic promontory overlooking the Susquehanna River and the Village of Owego.  A white marble obelisk perched on its summit is visible from miles away. Founded in 1851, this graveyard is a remarkably intact example of a rural or “garden cemetery” that first appeared in the United States in the first half of the Nineteenth Century. Landscaped with ornamental shrubs, trees, and other plantings casually arranged in an organic way, it reflected the new appreciation for nature and natural forms inspired by the American Transcendentalists. Although later in the Nineteenth Century, Fredrick Law Olmsted would refine the tenets of this philosophy into the art of landscape design, the rural cemeteries were the first examples of this approach to register in the public’s consciousness. 

The Notables

Evergreen Cemetery was established at a time when Owego was evolving from a frontier town into a town of substance and graceful civility. Among its inhabitants, the cemetery counts a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, numerous New York State Senators and Assemblymen, many of Owego’s Village Presidents and fire chiefs, business leaders, the editors of various publications, both local and national, and the scions of these and other prominent families.

There were also individuals credited with exceptional achievements. Among them was Helen Dean King, Ph.D., a professor who specialized in genetics research, who was honored in 1932 as one of two women recognized for highest achievement in scientific research in the world. And there is the grave of J. Alden Loring, renowned naturalist and author who traveled the world for the Smithsonian, the U. S. Department of Agriculture, and the Zoological Societies of the City of New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. Loring was one of three naturalists who accompanied President Teddy Roosevelt on his year-long African safari. We’re in heady company here.

 

Croke Family Monument.

The Artistry and Architecture

The imposing granite monuments found throughout the cemetery are fitting memorials to those buried at their bases. The topography requires them to be grouped in small clusters rather than laid out in straight rows. The cemetery is founded on a steep slope traversed by several ravines, brooks, and culverts that tumble down the hillside towards town. Those who staked their claim on various plots up and down the incline arranged their headstones on terraces. Typically, they had commissioned a large monument with the family name prominently embossed on it, surrounded by smaller stones, one for each individual buried there. 

The more affluent built mausoleums for their families. The snide among us might say this was due to a desire for exclusivity, even in death; but it might also have been due to a desire to conserve space on the steep slope. Some of the mausoleums, in particular, are architectural gems, including the Cheney crypt (1897) and the Curtis family crypt (built 1907). 

Curtis Family Mausoleum (1907), Evergreen Cemetery.

The Curtis crypt, designed by the McDonnell plant in Buffalo, NY and executed in granite from Barre, Vermont, is both masculine and elegant. It is also a masterful feat of engineering. The roof is made of a single slab of rusticated granite, chamfered at the edges and almost a foot thick at the center. According to a brochure published by the Owego Historical Society, the stone on the roof alone weighs some 18 tons. That slab is capped with a second monolith, shaped to form the ridgeline of the structure, that reportedly weighs over 8 tons. These sit on a yet a third monolithic slab that forms the upper seal of the chamber within. The walls are formed of huge rusticated blocks of granite. The only refinements found on this massive composition are the elegant bronze doors and the perfectly-turned, piston-like Doric columns that flank the entrance.

Cheney Family Crypt (1897), Evergreen Cemetery.

The Cheney mausoleum is much more “feminine” in design, if we’re assigning genders to structures. The crypt is made slender by a tall center pavilion with a steeply pitched roof, topped off with a bronze urn. Like the Curtis crypt, elegant bronze doors are ornamented with grillwork, albeit much more effusive than those of its neighbor. The entrance is flanked by two attenuated columns with stylized Composite capitals. A flat, pointed frontispiece embossed with “Cheney” follows the gable profile, emphasizing the height of the center bay. A trefoil intrados is an interesting ornamental refinement of the main entry, which is echoed in the vent in the upper gable. Two low side wings come off the main pavilion, looking for all the world like a bustle under a dress from that century. 

Among the headstones is the massive Croke family monument somewhat farther down the hill (photo above). At some time, one of its ancestors ran Croke’s Livery, a prominent Owego business in the 19^th Century.

The Birdsall monument is graced by a lovely flowering hydrangea; someone in the Birdsall family obviously took great pride in his or her membership in the Order of the Eastern Star, whose emblem is emblazoned on the face of the stone. 

The Birdsall Family Monument, Evergreen Cemetery.

The headstone of U.S. Congressman and Senator and all-around political king-maker Thomas C. (“Boss”) Platt (1833 – 1910) is reported to be found somewhere in the cemetery, although I missed seeing it on this visit. It was designed by the noted New York City architect Ernest Flagg (Singer Building and St. Luke’s Hospital, NYC; Corcoran Gallery, Washington DC).

In another area, the graves of Civil War soldiers of Tioga County now rest, the identical stones standing in orderly ranks, one after the other, as the soldiers did during their last deployment. The section was originally opened by the by the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) in 1865; it was restored in 2007 thanks to the Tioga County War Service Medal Commission.

Civil War Section, Evergreen Cemetery. Created 1865; Restored 2007.

The Stories

The artistry embodied in Evergreen’s monuments and mausoleums, however, was not the only thing that captivated me. Rather it was the sense that I was stepping into a set from Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town, where there seemed to be an eternal conversation taking place among the decedents. It was not only the expressive form of those artful headstones, but also the inscriptions that connect you with the people who rest under them. The sense of love, loss, disaster, honor – it’s all there. The emotions surrounding the events that brought those souls to this place still vibrate in the air, even on a still, languid summer afternoon like the one I was enjoying that day.

My car climbed the hill to the first stop along my tour: the white obelisk on the promontory. I wondered as I approached it, “Is a war memorial? The grave of a U.S. Senator, or maybe even a U.S. President?” Not at all. It turned out to be the grave of a young Native American woman who died in a train wreck in a town some miles away. It was erected by the people of Owego from private donations.

The epitaph reads: 

In memory of Sa-Sa-Na Loft, an Indian Maiden of Mohawk-Woods, Canada West, who lost her life in the railroad disaster at Deposit, N.Y., February 18, 1852, Aged 21 years. 

By birth a daughter of the forest, by adoption a child of God.

This, of course, intrigued me. It was the first story I researched when I returned to my office. The accounts revealed that Sa Sa Na Loft did not live in Owego. She had no relatives here at all. Reportedly, she was a direct descendant of Joseph Brant, a Mohawk leader prominent in the Revolutionary War. Brant’s second wife was named Susanna, which suggests that she may have been Sa Sa Na's namesake.

Sa Sa Na had traveled to Owego from Canada with her brother and sister on a mission to raise funds for the education of Mohawk children. For two days in February 1852, she and her siblings stayed with the family of Judge Avery, a prominent local citizen. She reportedly gave two concerts, during which the people of Owego thrilled at her beautiful singing voice. Then, the three siblings boarded the train for the little town of Deposit, New York, where they were going to spend the night. A freight train, which had left the station just a few minutes before, lost traction on a steep and icy grade just a mile outside of town. It raced uncontrollably down the slope backwards, slamming into the passenger train where Sa Sa Na sat. The lives of her brother and sister were spared, thanks only to happenstance.

After receiving news of her death, Judge Avery immediately sought permission from her family to bury her in Evergreen Cemetery as one of their own -- a request her family granted. Donations were collected for the marble memorial, which was erected some two years later on the promontory above the town. And there, after that brief two-day encounter, she has remained for almost 160 years, overlooking the Susquehanna River, a daughter of the Village of Owego. Today, some might wonder if Sa Sa Na would have preferred to take her final rest near her beloved Mohawk children in the forests of her native Canada, in spite of the great kindness shown her here. But we’ll never know, of course.

Epitaph of Cornil Bloodgood (d. 1876)

Another heartbreaking story unfolds on a stone along “Summit Road,” one of the drives in the cemetery. There, the Bloodgood family gravestone is marked by rustic stone cross of carved tree trunks that adorns the top of the monument. The cross is entwined with limestone leaves and roses that cascade down around its sides and encircle the main inscription on the front. But another inscription, located on the side of the headstone, near its base, was most intriguing. It was for “Cornil,” a 30-year old daughter of one of the Bloodgoods (although where she fits in the family tree, I am still at a loss to figure out), who died in the “Ashtabula disaster” on December 29, 1876. Of course, I had to look that one up, too. 

The Ashtabula train disaster was caused by the failure of an iron Howe truss bridge, which dumped an entire trainload of holiday travelers 60 feet into a ravine on a snowy Ohio night, just minutes away from the station. Those who weren’t killed by the impact were burned to death in the fire that immediately engulfed the wreck - a fire caused by lanterns and the coal burners that warmed the passengers on that freezing night. So here lay poor Cornil, 135 years later, at the base of this aged stone bouquet. I hope she was pleased to make it back to Owego and the relatives with whom she now shares the plot. 

Wood engraving of the Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster, published in Harper's Weekly, January 20, 1877.

Tragedy also visited the prominent Cheney family, whose mausoleum was completed in 1897.  Alfred C. Cheney was a self-made businessman, who ultimately became president of the Garfield National Bank and Safe Deposit Company in New York. He was also Treasurer of the Republican State Committee for a period and was one of the leading proponents of the Nicaragua Canal, a plan abandoned in the early 20^th Century in favor of the Panama Canal. Alfred surprised everyone when he died in 1893 while vacationing in Lake George. I suspect the Cheney crypt we see today was built for him. On a rainy summer’s morning exactly 10 years and 4 days after her husband’s death, Adeline Hull Chaney, beset with “nervousness,” jumped fully clothed into the waters of the Susquehanna River at Owego while visiting her sisters. After her body was recovered floating near the steamboat Dewey (who knew that there were steamboats on the Susquehanna?), she was interred in the Cheney crypt, too. For the Hull sisters, that sad procession up the long drive to the crypt at the top of the hill must have seemed interminable. Let’s hope that, for more than a century now, Adeline and Alfred have enjoyed the lovely view of the valley together.

View of the Susquehanna River valley from the summit of Evergreen Cemetery.

As my car returned down the hill and exited through the main gates of Evergreen Cemetery, I felt I had just attended some kind of social gathering, even though I had not seen a single person while I was there. Although it’s true that many of the stories of the dead only became clear after I had done a bit of research, the conversations the stones offer to the living can be very enlightening, if we stop to listen.

Evergreen Cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.

Resources:

“Alfred C. Cheney.” Obituary. New York Times. 15 July 1893.

“Ashtabula Train Disaster of 1876.” Ohio History Central. Website. Columbus OH: Ohio Historical Society. URL: http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=466 accessed 25 July 2011.

 “Do not Stand by my Grave and Cry... A monument to a loved one, a tribute to a community.” Treasures of the Tier: A Monthly Column on Historic Structures of New York's Southern Tier. Website URL http://nyslandmarks.com/treasures/08aug.htmaccessed July 25, 2011.

“The Erie Railroad Accident at Deposit – Verdict of Coroner’s Jury.” New York Times. 21 February 1852.  c

“Railroad Smashing – ‘Crowner’s Quest.’” New York Times. 23 February 1852: 2. Courtesy of Proquest, Historical New York Times.

R. M. “The Erie Railroad Disaster.” Letter to the Editor.  New York Times. 27 February 1852:1. Courtesy of Proquest, Historical New York Times.

Sedore, Emma M., Tioga County Historian. Walking Tour: Evergreen Cemetery, Owego, New York. Brochure. Funded in part by a Preserve America grant. Owego NY:  Village of Owego, 2010.

Sedore, Emma, and Anthony Opalka. Evergreen Cemetery, Owego, Tioga County, New York. Nomination form for the National Register of Historic Places. Listed on the New York and National Registers of Historic Places, 2002. Courtesy of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Database and Document Imaging. Website URL: http://nysparks.state.ny.us/shpo/online-tools  accessed 25 July 2011.

“Suicide of Mrs. Cheney: Widow of Alfred C. Cheney Drowns Herself at Owego.” New York Times. 20 July 1903: 2. Courtesy of Proquest, Historical New York Times.

Taylor, Troy. “Horror for the Holidays: Ghosts of the Ashtabula Bridge Disaster.”  2003. Prairie Ghosts. Website. URL: http://www.prairieghosts.com/rr_disaster.html  accessed 25 July 2011.

Weiser, Kathy, ed. and comp. “Railroad Tales: Ashtabula, Ohio, Train Wreck – Historic Accounts.” Legends of America. Website. Updated 2010. URL: http://www.legendsofamerica.com/rr-ashtabula.html  accessed 25 July 2011.

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