Revolutionary War veteran's grave is sinking into oblivion in Greece

In 1779, as war raged between the British and freedom-seeking American colonists, Jonathan Wilkinson answered the Continental Army's call.

And now, the only solid memorial of his life is slowly sinking into oblivion.

In an overgrown field next to a shady oak tree — marked only by a weather-worn wooden box of long-dead flowers and a small American Legion medallion — the Revolutionary War veteran's fading, mildew-stained white gravestone is being swallowed by the earth. 

And his isn't the only one. At least eight of the graveyard's stones have disappeared since the site was cataloged in 1931 by the Daughters of the American Revolution.

"This is such a shame," said Scott Banker of Greece, an amateur cemetery restoration expert who's taken an interest in the weedy field that was once the North Greece Cemetery. Over the past few years, Banker has documented all of the headstones still visible there and tried in vain to persuade town officials to let him restore some of the gravestones, or at the very least, clear them of the encroaching earth.

But town officials, leery of making the site attractive to vandals by uprighting the stones or making it more apparent that the plot is hallowed ground, have been resistant.

Town Supervisor Bill Reilich has said he worries efforts to preserve the stones could cause more harm than good, and that making the site more obviously a cemetery would attract vandals.

Those concerns may not be unfounded. At least two other pioneer-era cemeteries in Greece that were restored in recent decades were beset by hooligans — the Frisbee Cemetery off Frisbee Hill Road and the Lowden Family cemetery off Lowden Point, said Thomas E. Burger, owner of the Thomas E. Burger Funeral home in Parma. He is the former Parma historian, and actively involved in restoration of Parma-area cemeteries, including portions of Parma Union Cemetery on Parma Corners Road.

Burger said Frisbee Hill was restored in 1976 for the nation's bicentennial, and "no sooner did they get the stones fixed than vandals came and knocked them over," he said. Then, a chain link fence was erected around the Lowden cemetery, and "it wasn't long before people cut through the fence and tipped the stones again."

Taxpayer liability

Still, the North Greece Cemetery is emblematic of a growing problem in New York: one of cemetery associations running short of funds, giving up their caretaking responsibilities and leaving taxpayers to shoulder the costs. Or, perhaps, to not shoulder the costs and instead end up losing some of the nation's oldest burial grounds in the process.

"The issue of abandoned cemeteries is being recognized as one of the biggest taxpayer liabilities across, especially, upstate New York," said David Fleming, legislative director for the New York State Cemetery Association in Albany. "In the era of the tax cap, it's a matter of how little money municipalities have available to them, and taking over even a three-acre cemetery can be a significant burden, especially for a very small town that doesn't have a parks department.

"The best thing municipalities can do is prevent these from becoming abandoned in the first place."

Just last year, the state Association of Towns lobbied hard for new laws that would let towns help struggling nonprofit cemetery associations stay in operation by offering in-kind services for things such as bookkeeping or mowing.

Nonetheless, recent legislative efforts that allow towns to offer existing cemetery associations help in order to stave off dissolution don't matter when it comes to long-abandoned burial grounds.

"There's tons of abandoned cemeteries in Monroe County that are forgotten, overgrown and neglected," said Banker, whose Facebook page, The Cemeteries of Western New York Project, includes information about cemetery projects nationwide plus his own efforts to explore some of this area's forgotten burial grounds. "The money's just not there in the towns, and the state has financial issues too and they just want to put their money elsewhere. I guess that's understandable, but they do spend a lot of money on things that just don't work out."

Unclear history

Origins of the North Greece Cemetery have been lost to time: It might have been affiliated with the Methodist Protestant Church of Greece formed in 1841. The earliest recorded burial there was in 1831, of Lucretia Gamble, wife of William, who died Feb. 5 in the 21st year of her age.

The last was of Isaac Smith, who died Sept. 6, 1870 "aged 33y."

Back in 1931, Mary T. Douglas and Myrtle R. Haynes of the Irondequoit Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution copied the inscriptions from 26 grave markers in the North Greece Cemetery. Even then, the stones were showing age and neglect. 

By 2005, at least eight of those stones were no longer visible. 

As far back as 1964, plots of land owned by the North Greece Cemetery turned up in a newspaper's list of parcels being sold for nonpayment of Monroe County taxes. What is unclear is why these cemetery parcels would have been taxed in the first place.

Although the exact reasons why the cemetery was abandoned are hazy, the 1-acre plot where Wilkinson's and other headstones lie has been in the care of the town of Greece for possibly as long as a half-century. Rumor has it that the headstones may have been initially toppled not by vandals, but by town workers many years ago to make it easier for maintenance crews to whip through the site on their lawnmowers.

State law requires towns to take over care for abandoned not-for-profit cemeteries, but for pioneer cemeteries like North Greece, that care can be pretty minimal — the only requirement is that the grass must be cut at least two times a year.

The New York State Association of Cemeteries doesn't have current statistics regarding how many abandoned graveyards there are in New York and how many are being cared for by towns. But a state Department of State report from the early 1990s said there are about 1,800 regulated nonprofit cemeteries in the state then. And of those, 74 percent of large cemeteries were underfunded and 66 percent of small cemeteries were underfunded.

Since 1990, more than 150 regulated cemeteries have failed, according to the association.

In testimony to the state legislature earlier this year, Gerry Geist, executive director of the Association of Towns, said the cost of caring for these resources can be "overwhelming for small towns and challenging for larger towns."

The average cost to town taxpayers when a cemetery fails is $2,500 per year per acre of cemetery, Geist said.

Artificers

The few records that reflect Jonathan Wilkinson's life show he was born around 1748 in New Milford in the colony of Connecticut. 

He joined Col. Jeduthan Baldwin's Regiment of Artificers — artisans and mechanics who kept equipment in good repair — on Feb. 16, 1779, serving in a company commanded by Capt. Daniel Pendelton. He left the service in 1781, apparently not having been in any battles, according to pension paperwork.

He married a woman named Elizabeth Wordon in Connecticut in 1785, and lived in Saratoga County, and then Cayuga County. 

Elizabeth died some time later, and Wilkinson married a woman named Lucy, whose maiden name is unknown, in 1810. The couple moved to what was then the town of Gates in Genesee County in 1820. Monroe County was formed in 1821, and the town of Greece was formed from a portion of Gates in 1820.

Wilkinson is among nearly 100 Revolutionary War veterans buried within Monroe County, according to a 1931 article documenting attempts then by the Civil War veterans group The Grand Army of the Republic to ensure the local graves of all soldiers in all wars were in good condition; as part of the program for the following year's bicentennial celebration of George Washington's birth. The group, with assistance from the American Legion and others, assembled military records and mapped out the graves of each soldier, sailor and marine they could find. They also placed new stones at graves where the existing ones had become worn down by time or had gone missing.

According to the story, the law regarding the bicentennial celebration also provided that "abandoned burial grounds containing the graves of soldiers of any war shall be cleaned up, the graves properly marked and the plot fenced at the expense of the town in which the burial plot is located."

Grim graveyards

Even at the turn of the 20th century, conditions were grim at some area gravesites. For example, the Wagner Farm on Long Pond Road had a half-acre burial patch which, as the 1931 story says, "time has turned into a wilderness of wild cherry, sumac, wild apple and other trees and bushes of various kind, with the ground thickly carpeted with myrtle."

To make way for the construction of Park Ridge Hospital (now Unity Hospital), the Wagner cemetery — and the grave of Revolutionary War soldier Capt. Charles Norton — was moved to Falls Cemetery at Latona and West Ridge roads.

And some cemeteries — who knows how many? — are already lost, such as the Campion-Wright Cemetery in Spencerport. According to GenWeb Monroe County, a website for genealogical research, that site — which had graves dating back to the early 1800s — was bulldozed in 1955 to make way for a Page Appliances store. 

But others have found happier fates. Last year, restoration began in earnest at Rapids Cemetery in Rochester, which holds the remains of veterans from four wars, including the Revolutionary War. Volunteers with the Veterans Memorial Executive Council/United Veterans of Rochester and Monroe County, the city of Rochester and the History and Archives Committee of the 19th Ward Community Association worked to find out who was buried there and reclaim the sinking grave markers.

More:Pioneer Rochester cemetery finally being restored

In Parma, there are six small pioneer cemeteries and efforts to restore them have been underway since before the town's bicentennial celebrations in 2008 and 2009. Five of the six have so far been renovated, with the fallen or lopsided stones straightened, buried stones unearthed and put in their proper place. Work began in 2013 by the Hilton Parma Historical Society on the remaining site, the Smith-Dunbar Cemetery off of Lake Avenue.

Scott Banker, a cemetery photographer, documenter and preservationist has done work locally and in other states on cemetery preservation projects, including Parma Union Cemetery in Parma. 

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/TheCemeteriesOfWesternNewYorkProject/

Restoration efforts

Down in the Southern Tier, Amanda Brainard, record keeper for the town of Leon cemetery in Cattaraugus County, has founded the Northeastern Coalition for Cemetery Studies with the goal of helping communities preserve their rural cemeteries. 

That preservation, she said, will likely take concerted grass-roots efforts and a push to get more town officials to see cemeteries as a priority.

"The best thing you can do is lobby the town board," she said. "If you have to, get a couple of members to go to the site so you can show them what's going on."

These old burial grounds still have important historical value and are worth being saved

"A lot of times there are still descendants of people buried in these cemeteries still living in the towns," said Brainard. "And our history is something that does get lost. We have issues with our cultural consciousness and our cultural memory."

Isaac Smith, buried in the North Greece Cemetery, is Barbara Palmer's great-great-grandfather. A genealogy buff, she'd tracked down enough information about him to know he'd emigrated from England with a Scottish wife and the couple had nine children, some born in Canada, before they settled in Greece. But she didn't know where he'd been buried until Banker reached out to her.

"There really is no other evidence remaining of his life," said Palmer, brushing a tangle of grass from Smith's sunken headstone. "I hope in another 150 years I'm not in some cemetery that ends up like this."

MCDERMOT@Gannett.com