The Grave

I took my students to the Old Burial Ground in the center of Rutland today. Its part of my Historical Fiction unit. We walk from the school up to the cemetery... about a ten minute hike from school. My students pick one of the graves and record all the information that they find. They then try to research all of the facts they can find online. Meanwhile, they research a ton about early colonial life in places like rutland and deerfield and learn about how they lived. Its pretty awesome. I have learned an amazing amount about the history of rutland, and even the land that my house sits on.

The graveyard itself is kind of amazing. The stones range from 1700 to 1850: before we were a country. They are in various stages of decay, some have faired better than others. Moss and lichen abounds. Many are sunk half into the ground. I tell my students, without becoming overly morose... well, maybe it is overly morose, that they are literally walking on the early inhabitants of Rutland, and that the land here hasn't really been altered since the indians were attackin the center. They were by the way. Rutland had a fort built in the center to provide shelter from their attacks.

The stones themselves are beautiful. They have really intricate designs carved all over them. Hand carved of course. There are these faces that stare out. Effigies. They aren't supposed to be images of the buried exactly, but certainly representations of them. They are hollow. Sometimes frowning. Sometimes peacefull. But they all....stare. Just stare at you as you walk through the place. It is eerie. Nno doubt about it. I snapped pictures of many of them today to kind of give you the feel of what it was like to be there.

  

There are reasons to love this place though. Stories abound. One stone tells of how a man, Daniel Campbell, was murdered on his farm. Another that he was shot. Yet another that he was drowned. There are stones erected for those who were killed in indian raids. Plagues like dystemper swept through and killed many of the town's children. There are those that were loved and those that sadly weren't. Even the names are mysterious and provoking. "Submit" "Beneficience" and my favorite "Skelton Felton."

It is a walk through our history, the hard stuff that made us. I love sharing it with the children of this town and seeing them find it for the first time. They were excited, if not a bit creeped out today.