Posted on 05/04/2008 10:13:39 AM PDT by rarestia
HARTLAND, Vt. (AP) -- The 130-acre property was exactly what Michel Guite and his family wanted: an old Vermont farm with mountain views, rolling hills and meadows.
There was, however, one wrinkle: The property included a small family cemetery _ with the grave of a War of 1812 veteran _ surrounded by a fence on a scenic knoll.
His proposal to move the graveyard so he can build a house and barn has set off protests. The town has passed a resolution aimed at blocking the move, a descendant of one occupant of the graveyard is trying to fight him in probate court and opponents including military veterans have asked the town to take over the cemetery and keep it where it is.
(Excerpt) Read more at baynews9.com ...
This comment is just wrong:
Among other things, he doesn't want the graves around his three young children. "I feel that it's improper to have a reminder of the sadness of life so near where children are playing," he said in February.
But it's somehow ok to disinter people who've been there since before your ancestors were born? Moral relativism ping!
Then those”kids” had better not watch Bambi.
You can’t take that comment seriously. He just wants a house there and that’s all there is to it. He figures the scenery is being wasted on the dead and he wants to move them so he can enjoy the scenery himself. And he can’t build his house right next to the graveyard because that would hurt his property value.
I have a cousin in MS, that was dirt poor until they discovered gas on land that his grandfather sold but had kept the mineral rights. Tommy got Beverly Hillbilly rich real fast and bought a thousand acre soybean farm. In the middle of one of the fields was a stand of scrubby trees and brush and he decided to remove it to make plowing easier. He found an old abandoned family cemetary there. Rather than view it as a negative, he cleared the trees and restored the stones and fence around it. He saw it as one more blessing to have something to give back.
Dug up only the facts about the life of the soldier in the grave so I could have them on hand if anybody asked.
Only one solution to this. Sell the property and go somewhere else. He has poisoned his relations with the town before he has even moved in, and in a small town, that is fatal.
A small town is a community, in which newcomers may be offered hospitality if they show some respect and neighborly feelings.
This calls to mind a recent interesting article I read in First Things, suggesting that the very essence of a community is coming together to pray for and bury their dead. Once that custom has been put aside, the community will grow vague and dissolve, as it has in any modern suburb.
“Old cemetery poses grave dilemma for buyers of Vt. farm”
Best....Headline....Ever.
Maybe it would be a good idea for him to pass on buying the property and find another place that is more suitable for him.
I hope the town stands firm. Let this jerk find a "scenic knoll" somewhere else for his house.
But it’s somehow ok to disinter people who’ve been there since before your ancestors were born?
Hint; not people any longer.
He’s just lucky it isn’t an Indian graveyard.
‘grave dilemma’ ? sounds series.
Idiot. This could be a great place to introduce the kids to history...
That’s up there with “N.J. Devils wait for Satan to arrive”.
He knew the cemetery was on the property when he bought the land so if it was going to be such a problem why didn’t he just look elsewhere?
I would keep it, I think it’s a lovely thing to do, but he doesn’t. If he owned the property with rights to do this, I’d say he has the right, but he hasn’t bought the land, so he should not. Let it go, this isn’t the place for you Mister.
He’s shallow, but he’s allowed to be. He probably wants to build some (what I call) Monument to Self. A 6000+ sf home for a small family.
I considered burying my family members ashes on our property, but ultimately didn’t because we won’t be here for years.
Among the men folk in our small community, three times a year they mow, and clean up our local cements. The old timers kind of supervise while the younger men do the mowing
We women, get together and make sure everyone that served in the military buried there has a flag and flower on their grave for Decorations Day (Memorial Day)
We have veterans from every war buried there.
I take special care to see one woman gets a flag on her grave although she did not serve.
The inscription on her tombstone tells of her 3 sons and her husband who died when their ship was sunk during the Revolution.
On Decorations Day, you will find just about every person from our community there for the services.
Who takes care of the cemetary now?
Who keeps that neat white fence painted?
Who pays for those big trees to be trimmed?
Who does all the weeding necessary in the cemetary?
Is there a right of way across the land to get to the cemetary? Will the new owner be responsible if anyone gets injured on his property because they tripped over a stone on their way to the cemetary?
And who wants strangers tramping over his land, and kids who may use the cemetary for illegal purposes? If this man buys the land he’ll probably get arrested for allowing people to use illegal drugs on his land.
For gosh sakes, build a monument to the 1812 war vet and put it in the town square.
Adjacent to my dad’s farm (in Bama), there was a 40-acre site where in the middle...was the graves of the husband and wife who came there and settled in the mid-1800’s. The graves sat there for all those years. Sometime in the 1980s, the property got sold to some local farmer, who quietly went out there one night and removed the gravestones. The next spring....he plowed the entire field...including the 6 foot by 6 foot section where the couple was buried. No one noticed this much...the grave was a good 400 off the paved road, and you had to stretch to see the stone anyway. It was a year or two later before anyone noticed this and mentioned this to the farmer. He didn’t care, and most folks just looked the other way. My dad didn’t have much positive to say about the guy...but admitted later that at least a hundred graves in the local area were like that in the 1950s, and almost all of them have had the stones removed in the past forty years.
These small cemeteries litter the South. I’ve come across a few in the backwoods of Ft Campbell and Ft Polk, probably long since forgotten.
We have a very old very cemetery. The headstones exist but have worn down to just about nothing. About 20 people rest there. I had proposed moving them to a brighter spot but the rest of the family didn’t think too highly of my idea.
God bless that soybean farmer! I have many ancestors buried in Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. I hope no one tries to desecrate their burial grounds.
My own grave site has a fantastic view of Mt. Hood. I certainly hope moving this Vwemonr graveyard does not become a precedent!
Ooops! VERMONT graveyard,
Mark
What do you think of digging up old Indian graves or maybe Neanderthals or “Hobbits”?
The deed provided for a right of way across the surrounding farmland. We eventually made a trip down there, not sure if the cemetery would be there anymore. We spent some time looking around for but finally there it was, entirely surrounded by a plowed field.
The cemetery was not large and was surrounded by an iron fence. It looked like no one had tended it for many decades. Tall cedar tress, a species I have never liked, had grown in the plot and their roots had upset many of the stones.
It must have been a pain for the farmer to plow around this small piece of land. Next time I go there I won't be surprised if everything has disappeared., although I expect there are still some distant relatives living in the area.
I suppose if he’d bought the property, quietly just taken down the fence, built over it and gone on, no one would have noticed. You think?
One thing I did find odd was that people think it’s ok to move graves for roads, but not for houses. Why are public roads ok but homes are not?!
He knew about it.
FTA:
Guite, 62, of Greenwich, Conn., signed an option to buy the land in December _ contingent on being able to move the graves.
130 acres and only one suitable homesite. Hard to imagine, isn’t it?
What a bunch of socialists hang out here on a conservative thread. Property rights are the basis of freedom and without them we have NO freedom. This is an issue of property rights and to he** with the town and relatives that should have taken care of his remains long ago. If the cemetery is separate and not part of this guy's purchase then he is out of luck, if it is part of his property he should be able to move it.
Note to prospective buyer from CT: Never seen Poltergeist, eh?
Why are public roads ok but homes are not?!
I would think that public roads fall under the criteria for eminent domain, i. e. for the common good.
A private home doesn’t fit that criteria.
As a child, I went to a Baptist camp. My kids also went there. One of the activities the kids would do was “rubbings” on old gravestones in a tiny cemetery right near the center of the camp. As far as I know, no one ever suffered any trauma because of it.
Cemeteries are very often beautiful, peaceful places. We love to visit them.
“For Guite, its about property rights”.
I dont think the original property owners ever consented to anything that would have had them dug up from the eternal resting place “for the sake of the children”.
What a POS.
LOL
Totally off-topic. My dad had a brother that died shortly after birth. I don’t even know his name. He was older than my dad. My dad’s family had owned a small farm outside Whitney, Texas for years. His mother sold it, and years later my dad bought it back. Most of it was mesquite brush and used for cattle. My dad used to go out with me and we walked every square foot of that land many times looking for his brother’s grave, but we never found it.
The town should buy the property and make it a landmark with access. They could use the rest for parks or something.
Sounds like he hasn't actually bought it yet.
And if the seller is a member of the community, I'm sure his local stock has bottomed.
If I were the owner, I would have been writing a covenent in the deed protecting the cemetery; not writing contingent contracts to move it.
I know whereof I speak; we have a suspected grave site at a fallen in homestead on our property. One of these days, well have the it investigated by by a qualified archaeologist, and find out for sure.
I personally know of two similar situations in Georgia.
Two old cemeteries that while no one was looking had the stones removed and the graveyard was just plowed up into the rest of the surrounding corn field.
That's going to stand as the best for a cultural generation or two.
Still, not as long as the cemetery that guy wants to move/get rid of.
I read in a book, not too long ago, that the average American cemetery lasts for about 200 years, and after that no one seems to care. And so it is. No one hardly cares about this land. The land was sold with the people preferring to sell the land rather than to be near a grave site. Man would like to last forever here on earth, but they do not. Get real.
“....but admitted later that at least a hundred graves in the local area were like that in the 1950s, and almost all of them have had the stones removed in the past forty years.”
.....that’s what happened in our family’s farming community in the late 30s, 40s, 50s...the new owner would throw the stones down the outhouse shaft and plow straight over the graves....this was the era when everybody was switching over to tractors and bigger equipment....the small family graveyards were a nuisance....they were a throwback to the age when your people buried you right “on the place” and had to get you in the ground quick...
.....the guy in this story needs to move on....even if he bought the property and built elsewhere.....cemetaries are messy...plastic flowers blow all over the place...people leave potted plants on the grave which die; then they fling the pots into the nearest bushes....kids slip in at night to party....I know...I’ve served on a cemetery board before.
The land is for sale. If the town wants it ...buy it. The owner should always be able to do what they want with their land. Whether they should or not is a different story though. America needs a history.
I read in a book, not too long ago, that the average American cemetery lasts for about 200 years, and after that no one seems to care. And so it is. No one hardly cares about this land. The land was sold with the people preferring to sell the land rather than to be near a grave site. Man would like to last forever here on earth, but they do not. Get real.
62 years old with three young children. Sounds like the trophey farrowed.
Exactly what right does the town have in the matter? In Illinois there is a definite distinction between town and rural property. The town has no say over country and vice versa. I don’t get where the town has a horse even on the grounds let alone in the race.
The people concerned can raise the money, pay the asking price and donate the land. I’m not talking about taxes or ED. (shrug)
This site is worth a peek.
http://www.bragg.army.mil/culturalresources/cemetery_&_oral_history.htm
About the graves around the Ft Bragg area.
Many states have laws that protect family cemeteries. They make it illegal to plow or build over graves and give the descendants a right to sue if their ancestors graves are demolished.
That article in First Things dealt specifically with San Francisco, which banished cemeteries about 100 years ago—i.e., last Thursday.
And look how San Francisco has held on to the The Important Values! They certainly know all about the meaning of Life and Death, don’t they?
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