Gilman Road Cemetery Gets a Facelift
45 volunteers showed up to work on a hot August day to repair, straighten and clean stones in a 19th Century Hinesburg graveyard.
By Mary Jo Brace
The Record Staff
On a beautiful Saturday morning, Aug. 16, 45 volunteers from Hinesburg and members of the Vermont Old Cemetery Association from all over the state, worked for over four hours repairing, straightening and cleaning headstones at the Gilman Road Cemetery. The throng included college students and young children, burly 20-somethings and enthusiastic 70-year-olds.
(Eavesdrop as the crew rebuilds enormous graver marker in digital story below:)
The The Hinesburg Cemetery Association supplied snacks and beverages, cleaning tools and sprays, shovels and bars and VOCA brought stone saws, expoxy and clamps and a whole lot of knowledge.
In all 75 stones were repaired and/or straightened and 150 stones were cleaned, exposing to view the names and histories of the ancestors who reside there. The first person buried at cemetery — which is no longer in use — was CPT Isaac Bostwick, born 1730 in Connecticut and died 1808 in Hinesburg. A total of 175 people are buried there and only four in the 1900s. Forty-two of those buried were under the age of 18.
Another Bostwick buried in the cemetery is Erastus Bostwick, who, with his two brothers walked from New Milford, CT, on 24 May 1790 and arrived in Hinesburg on June 1, covering a distance of 200 miles. Erastus served the town of Hinesburg in multiple capacities, as town representative, postmaster, justice of the peace, town clerk and town treasurer.
We want to thank everyone who helped out, particularly Thomas Giffin, president of VOCA, who brought a whole crew with him from the Rutland area.
The video is of the final work on the final headstone of the day — a multiple piece, 5’ high marker that had been pushed over.
(Mary Jo, The Record’s bookkeeper and chair of the Hinesburg Cemetery Association took most of these photos. Others were by Geoffrey Gevalt and Heather Simmons.)