August 7, 1991
People often characterize Greenwich as a place for landed gentry, a town of palatial estates and wealth and influence of people. Yet there are many who do not make headlines who have been part of the history of the town.
Greenwich has among its cemeteries a burying ground dedicated solely to interring the destitute and poor. This is the Town Farm or Potter's Field Cemetery, located off Parsonage Road behind the Parsonage Cottage and the Nathaniel Witherell Nursing Home.
In my work with the Historical Society on cemeteries, I did not discover the existence of this hallowed ground until 1988, when I received a phone call from a resident of that part of town. She told me that her afternoon walks took her by the cemetery from time to time. High grass and tall weeds, like at so many burying grounds around town, were the status quo at this site, and a request was made for me to visit the site and perhaps find some young volunteers to clean up this place.
That Spring three boys in search of a confirmation project came to the rescue. Brian and Sean Joyce, with Mr. Joyce on hand with Brian Caruso did wonderful job, and additionally took down names and dates of those interred here. We did not find usual headstones, but each of the 108 people buried here between 1917 and 1969 had a block of stone with a small metal plaque attached with just the names and dates that each lived.
Not long ago, I heard that young people of the Youth Conservation Corps cleaned up the side. Our thanks should go for their hard work and worthwhile efforts.
Who are these people buried in this mysterious place? What stories behind the humble stones are yet to be told? A search of obituaries at Greenwich Library yielded little for most of these people. As I walked around the humble plot I wondered what perspectives on the history of the town they must have had.
There were people buried here with names like John Sirachuk, an immigrant from the USSR who died in 1968 at the Nathaniel Witherell Nursing Home at 80 years of age.
Nearby is Adolph Meier, who lived from 1867 to 1941. A native of Switzerland, he spent his years as a gardener at the Kent House, the famous resort where so many of Belle Haven's first modern-day residents became acquainted with the town -which sadly was demolished to make way for I-95.
I found a small headstone of Ella Rice who died in 1944 at age 75. A native of Hackensack, New Jersey, she came to Greenwich in 1909 and served for many years as a governess in the household of Mr. and Mrs. Elbert Lockwood. They lived over on Mead Avenue in Cos Cob.
Ethel Walker was another one that I found -she died in 1969 after reportedly living in town for 40 years, but like many here not much is known about her.
A retired headwaiter at the Waldorf Astoria in New York named Henry Mahrs is buried here. He came from Hamburg, Germany, and died in 1968 and age 93. Nearby is Ralph Swanson, a worker at TriColor Stables on Taconic Road who died in 1964.
Joseph Waldney, buried here too, was another immigrant from Czechoslovakia. Mr. Waldney worked at the Abendroth Foundry in East Port Chester, where stoves, coal and gas ranges, hot water and steam heaters other items were manufactured earlier in this century.
A Norwegian named Inglof Knutsen, a sporting goods salesman, is interred here.
One of the more interesting people I researched was Arvid Leatz, a Swede who lived in the last 20 years of his life here in America. He belonged to an organization I have never heard of -the Abraham Lincoln Co. #2, Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. I wonder how?
In my search I found the most interesting man buried here was Thomas "Shortstop" Gleason –his passing also received front page coverage in the local press when he died in 1934.
He was found slumped in a chair in a one room shack he lived in off Cedar Street in the East Port Chester section of Byram. According to the news account, he had been dead for several days -as well as a pet cat found at his feet. Two local women apparently discovered Mr. Gleason meant upon making a chance glance in the direction of his humble abode. The official cause of his death (and that of the cat, I assume) was carbon dioxide poisoning attributed to a sooty oil stove and the fact that the windows on his shack were tightly shut.
According to the written account of the time, he came from South Hampton, Long Island, and survived in a hermit-like existence by fishing, clamming, oystering and doing odd jobs – and he was also on the town relief rolls. He had been employed at the Interstate Lumber Company but was laid off in 1932 due to the Depression. "Shortstop" Gleason was characterized as being the man of "quiet, unassuming nature and well-liked by those who knew him."
In the spring of 1941, a ceremony was held up by spiritual leaders of the Jewish, Catholic and Protestant faiths to consecrate the burying ground. It was attended by staff members of the then-Welfare Department "inmates" at the Parsonage Cottage and others on a day apparently pleasant. Prayers and hymns were sung to officially hallow the cemetery.
This cemetery -simple, humble and unassuming- is one of the many such sites in Greenwich that remain as fixtures in our continuing history in the present and as portals to the past. In this small way I hope, after years of neglect and attention, that I have given the degree of overdue dignity to those who lie interred forever in this placid spot set among the hills and trees of our town.
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