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PLYMOUTH — If you find Henry Sobolewski, of Plymouth, trimming grass at the Shawnee Cemetery, don’t be surprised. It’s a never-ending task for several months each year and the 78-year-old retiree volunteers his time just about every day.
“The people here, they don’t complain,” he said, explaining with a gentle chuckle why he donates so much of his time to helping the place look tidy. “I could do the job wrong, and they wouldn’t say a word.”
Just who are these un-complaining people in the old graveyard?
Tombstones and markers will give you some hints. There’s a baby who died the same day he was born in 1916, the woman whose epitaph explains she was “loved more than the tongue can tell,” and military veterans who served during the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and the War of 1812.
If you’re curious about the more than 15,000 people buried in this history-rich cemetery, members of the Shawnee Cemetery Preservation Association invite you to join them from 1 to 4 p.m. Oct. 8, at the 13.5-acre site, located on Mountain Road, for a tour. Admission is $10 for ages 13 to adult; free for ages 12 and younger.
Tom and Ruth Jesso, of Orange, who are president and treasurer of the association, expect to be on hand with other members, wearing historical garb and sharing stories about people laid to rest at Shawnee — from the itinerant man who was asphyxiated when he sought shelter in a colliery boiler room to the victims of the 1885 typhoid fever epidemic and 1902 small pox epidemic.
“Do you know what a squib is?” Tom said, explaining about a dozen young women in their teens and early 20s lost their lives in an 1889 explosion at the Powell Squib Factory, where their jobs involved making small paper tubes filled with black powder for the mining industry.
Several of the young women, and a man who also worked at the factory, are buried side-by-side in the Shawnee Cemetery. Workers who died in the fiery Avondale Mine Disaster of 1869 and in the collapse of the Gaylord Colliery in 1894 are buried here as well.
The cemetery dates back to 1873, when the first burial permit was issued for a boy named William, child of Joseph Shock, but you’ll find graves of people who died in the 1700s as well.
Some of those older graves were removed from other cemeteries that were becoming crowded, and transferred to the Shawnee Cemetery, Tom said as he walked past the gravestone of one Olive Ransom, who died in 1793 at age 33.
Olive’s husband, George Ransom, had served in General George Washington’s army as a young man and, Jesso noted, later achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
“There’s so much history here,” he said, leading the way past areas devoted to Civil War veterans and to individual families.
In the early days of the cemetery, people weren’t buried in vaults, only in caskets. When the caskets would decay, the earth above them would collapse, Jesso said, pointing out the occasional sunken area.
Sobolewski and the Jessos agree that the cemetery is a peaceful place, and Tom said he’s been familiar with it since he was a boy, sent by his family to tend his great-grandparents’ graves.
“I lived just over the hill,” he said.
Ruth said when she and Tom were courting more than 40 years ago, she’d accompany him to the cemetery and wait for him to tend the graves before they’d go on a date.
“I just wanted to be with him,” she said, admitting it took her awhile to share his interest in the cemetery, but she eventually did.
For Tom, who is a disabled veteran, tending the family graves became a matter of honor.
“I was keeping a promise,” he said.
When other people asked him to tend their family graves, he would. And if they died or moved away or otherwise were unable to pay him, he continued to tend graves for free.
“One older man was cutting grass with scissors,” Ruth said. “Tom felt sorry for him and told him he’d take care of it.”
Nowadays Tom cleans and repairs tombstones, sometimes using a hoist and tripod to lift them out of the earth that has piled up around them. Caring for the place is a labor of love, he said.
“Somehow, I was guided to do this.”
