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For a different outdoor activity last August, my husband and I went digging up family history in Essex, Massachusetts. Actually, we went looking for ancestors in an old New England graveyard.
When my husband’s English ancestor arrived in the Colonies, he settled in the Ipswich/Essex area. He had twelve children from whom most American Clevelands are descended, including President Grover Cleveland. Another descendent was John Cleaveland, who became a minister of some renown in the 1700’s. In fact, we found a book written about him, The World of John Cleaveland. An archive of his sermons are housed at Yale University Library.
Digging Up Family History – Finding An Ancestor by Accident
Years ago, when our two boys were probably 5 and 7, we decided to go for a drive through the Ipswich area and up to Gloucester. As we often went to Cape Cod, New Hampshire, or Maine, we decided it was time to explore more of Massachusetts on a day trip.
As we were driving through Essex, we spotted an antiques shop, The Elephant’s Trunk. I used to have an antiques shop and wrote articles for antiques publications. The kids liked the elephant statue outside so they and I were happy that my husband pulled over so we could visit the shop.
As he parked the car, a little voice in the backseat said “Look, there’s my name!” My husband and I just looked at each other and asked “Where?”
Right where we pulled over there was a sign on a gate of a graveyard with the names of some of the people buried there. And yes, one of them was John Cleaveland, my son’s name. (Along the years, the first “a” in the name was dropped by many in the family.) Whew! Of all the places to pull over, and there we were unknowingly finding an ancestor. My husband knew he had ancestors in the area, but we weren’t looking for them.
Once we left the car we went into the graveyard, known as the Old Burial Ground, and wandered around looking for Rev. John Cleaveland’s grave. We found it, along with the graves of his two wives. After exploring the graveyard and taking some pictures, we headed for the antiques store. I can’t remember much about the shop, but I often told our story about stumbling across a family ancestor.
Digging Up Family History in Essex – 20 Odd Years Later
In the years since finding John Cleveland, my husband has worked on his family tree and connected with some relatives. I happened to meet a distant relative of his right in our home town who has also been working on the family tree. The relative bears a strong resemblance to one of my husband’s cousins and a slight resemblance to my husband. The genes are telling. Sometime I hope that we can get together so that they can pool their knowledge about the Cleaveland/Cleveland family tree.
So, as COVID limited our activities last summer, we hit upon revisiting Essex, and the Old Burial Ground to look for the John Cleaveland grave again. Cemeteries are one place that we can visit without worrying about social distancing.
Well, The Elephant’s Trunk is an antique shop under another name now and closed due to COVID, but we still found the graveyard easily. There’s an updated sign with the same wording as our first visit. The difference is that they left out the first “a” in Cleaveland.
Digging Up Family History in Essex: Exploring an old New England Graveyard
Peering through the gate to the Old Burial Ground, we could see a vault on the right, and a building marked “Hearse House.” The Hearse House is believed to be only one of three left in America.
We stepped through the narrow opening next to the gate and set off to find the Rev. John Cleaveland’s grave. I thought I remembered that it was one of the those with a flat bronze type plaque over it, but it is of slate and upright. It looked clean and was still readable and there was a flag signaling that he was a veteran. He was a chaplain in the Revolutionary War. Both stones had the names on the back as well as the front. Not all the stones have that.
Next to Rev. Cleaveland was a double headstone of his two wives, both named Mary. Maybe a Cleveland thing, as my husband’s grandfather’s two wives had the same name. Both remarried after the first wife passed away.
The Burial Ground was well kept and it looked as though several of the stones had been cleaned.
Back in the Colonial Era, men often married several times, as wives often died in childbirth, or perhaps worn out from caring for family and house and frequent childbearing. The gravestone above is for the three wives of John Burnham. From the dates, he seemed to remarry fairly quickly after losing a spouse. This could be beneficial to both parties, as the husband had someone to care for his motherless children, and the often widow needed a husband to provide for her and any children she might have. Women by and large didn’t own property or have resources or safety nets like there are today.
Here are some more photos of the graveyard:
Digging Up Family History in Essex: Historic Essex Walking Tour
Outside of the Old Burial Ground is a descriptive plaque, which is part of the Historic Essex Walking Tour. It includes a QR code linked to a website with more information about the history of Essex. One of the other notable things about the graveyard, not mentioned on the sign with John Cleaveland’s name, is that is the site of grave robberies in 1818. A local doctor, studying anatomy, was caught and fined for robbing eight graves. It’s said that the empty caskets were buried under the Hearse House.
But wait, there’s more:
We picked up a walking tour brochure and walked to some of the other sites close by, but all were closed, due to the Pandemic. But, you can always explore online. A website that I’ve found very helpful in learning about our ancestors is genealogy.com.
To find out more about Historic Essex and the Old Burial Ground, visit EssexWalkingTour.com and VisitEssexMA.com.
To learn more about what you can learn in graveyards and cemeteries, check out the Gravestone Girls. They give lectures and tours in New England. I attended one at the Morse Library in Natick, Mass. a couple of years ago and it was great.
This trip we were looking for Cleveland ancestors. In another blog post, I talk about looking for my Dahlquist ancestors in Cambridge, Mass.
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