Last week’s post was devoted to America’s first Secretary of War, Henry Knox. He’s buried in Thomaston, Maine, the town where he and his wife moved to after he retired from his service in President George Washington’s cabinet.

When you visit Knox’ grave, it’s hard to tell which cemetery he’s buried in because Elm Grove is situated next to Thomaston Village Cemetery. Find a Grave has him listed at Elm Grove but when I looked at a map provided by the Thomaston city government’s web page, he’s actually in the Thomaston Village Cemetery.

This was further confirmed to me by an 1871 postcard I found of the Thomaston Village Cemetery that stated the land was donated to the town by Henry and Lucy Knox in 1802.

I was excited to see this postcard because among my photos I had this to compare it to now.

From what I can tell, Elm Grove came later in 1836. By 1857, the 39 lots on the northern side had been sold. In 1858, a group of 22 residents agreed to pay $200 for the unoccupied land in the cemetery with a strip extending across Dwight Street, belonging to the Sullivan Dwight Estate. Each of the proprietors was assessed $10 to pay expenses. The by-laws were drawn up and signed by Hezekiah Prince.

According to the agreement, there were 58 lots costing $25 each. You can tell that Elm Grove is the final resting place of the more well heeled Thomastonians by the large size of some of the monuments and the elaborateness of the design.

One of the plots in the Thomaston Village Cemetery that is impossible to miss is for the Cole family. When you see one large marker fronted by 14 individual small ones, you stop to take a look.

Born in 1791 in Virginia, William Cole came to Thomaston from Nashville, Tenn. to do business on the Mill River. His brother, John P. Cole, also left Nashville for Maine. Both married and started families there. William married Mary G. Dodge, daughter of Dr. Ezekiel and Susannah Winslow Dodge, in 1825. Mary was 24 at the time. William would eventually move his business to Rockland, Maine, where he died in April 1849 at the age of 59.

According to the books I found, William and Mary had 12 children but there are 13 names on the monument. Seven of them died in infancy/childhood. Three daughters died in early adulthood and the remaining three children married and lived long lives.

One puzzle amid the children is Willis, whose name appears on one of the small stones and on the family monument. Yet he appears in no genealogical records or in the actual cemetery records as having been buried there.

William built what would become known as the Cole House. It is now the administrative center of the Knox Museum/Montpelier. I didn’t know that when we visited but I saw it on the edge of the property.

Susan Winslow Cole, born in September 1831 (although the monument says 1832), married Capt. Artemus Watts, becoming his second wife. According to the 1880 Census, Artemus was a retired shipmaster by that time. Susan’s mother, Mary, was living with them. Susan died in 1915 and is actually buried in another part of the cemetery with her husband.

Brother William J. Cole spent the first years of his life in Thomaston but would eventually move to California where he worked as a commission merchant. He died of tuberculosis in Phoenix, Ariz. in 1904. His death records indicate his body was sent to Philadelphia, Pa. so it’s possible his inscription on the monument is a cenotaph.

Eveline Cole was born in 1837 and married George White in Santa Cruz, Calif. in 1865. She died in California in 1922 and is likely buried there since she doesn’t appear as actually having been buried at Thomaston in the cemetery’s burial records. So hers may be a cenotaph as well.

As you can see on this side of the monument, Winslow, Rebecca, Garnet, Henrietta and Willis are all listed as having died in infancy.

It wouldn’t be a Maine cemetery without a sailor lost at sea. That brings me to the story of Captain George Jordan. Thanks to Pat Higgins’ site, the Maine Story, I got the scoop on what happened to him on “the unfortunate Pacific” mentioned on his marker.

Born in 1813, Captain Jordan was married to Betsy Masters and had two children, Octavia and Newell (the first, George, died in infancy). In late 1855, he sailed to Coxhaven, England where he sold his ship. He then booked passage home to Maine on the steamship Pacific and it proved a fateful decision.

The Pacific was one of four wooden steam-powered ships built with government subsidies by the Collins Company of New York to compete with the British Cunard Line for transatlantic trade. Launched in 1849, it was driven by two paddle wheels on opposite sides of the ship and powered by side lever engines. It carried about 300 people in luxurious accommodations.

Pacific’s final voyage took place on January 23, 1856 in Liverpool, setting sail with 45 passengers (including George Jordan) and 141 crew members. Commanding the ship was Captain Asa Eldridge, a skillful mariner. The Pacific was never seen again.

The fate of the Pacific remained unknown until a message in a bottle was found about five years later on the coast of the Hebrides. It read:

On board the Pacific from Liverpool to N.Y. – Ship going down. Confusion on board – icebergs around us on every side. I know I cannot escape. I write the cause of our loss that friends may not live in suspense. The finder will please get it published. W.M. GRAHAM

One can’t help but think of a similar record-breaking ship that would encounter icebergs in 1912. It, too, would meet a disastrous fate.

I didn’t notice until later that Capt. Jordan is buried next to another marker for the Watts family. You’ll recall that Susan Cole married a Watts. Capt. Jordan’s name and “Infant George Jordan” are on the side.

But on the front are the names Betsy B. Watts and Captain James Watts. Widowed Besty Masters Jordan married Capt. Watts in November 1856 after Capt. Jordan was lost at sea. Capt. Watts already had two daughters of his own, Delia and Mary. Together, they had a son named James in 1862.

Capt. Watts died in 1878. Newell Jordan was living in San Francisco, Calif. at the time of Betsy’s death in 1906 while James Watts was in Portland, Ore., according to Betsy’s will. Octavia Jordan married Clarence Leighton and would stay in the Maine area for her entire life.

Next week, we’ll spend some time next door at Elm Grove Cemetery.

After leaving Colonial Pemaquid, we spent the night at the Spruce Point Inn near Boothbay Harbor. It reminded me very much of the old school resorts from the 1950s that I’d read about but never visited. A lovely place but we didn’t have time to linger.

The next day we left early to go on a puffin cruise leaving out of Port Clyde. I wish I could say I took some awesome photos but all I had was my trusty iPhone. The photos I am posting here were generously shared by a fellow passenger.

On the way to Port Clyde, we drove through the village of Thomaston. In doing my pre-trip research, I learned that Revolutionary War hero Henry Knox and his family retired to the area in 1796.

Henry Knox was the the first Secretary of War of the United States. This is the man for whom Knoxville, Tenn. was named, my husband’s hometown. There are actually two Fort Knox-es named for him, the more famous one in Kentucky that houses the U.S. Bullion Depository and another in Maine that we stopped to visit.

After our puffin cruise, we stopped at the Knox estate, Montpelier. Unfortunately, it was closed that day but we were able to ramble around outside before heading back into Thomaston to find the cemetery where the Knox family is buried.

Knox’s wife, Lucy, had inherited the Thomaston property and the couple built Montpelier after Henry resigned from being Secretary of War in 1795. The original mansion (which had fallen into much disrepair) was torn down in 1871 and replaced by the Knox and Lincoln railway. A replica of the home was built in 1929 and today serves as a museum to Knox’ life and contains some of the original furniture from the first home.

Henry and Lucy were originally buried on the grounds of Montpelier but their graves were moved to nearby Elm Grove Cemetery, which is located right beside the Thomaston Village Cemetery. There’s really nothing to indicate where one ends and the other began. So  I can’t honestly tell you which graves belong to which. Find a Grave claims that Thomaston Village Cemetery has about 6,000 burials while Elm Grove has around 400.

A native of Boston, Henry Knox’s father was a shipbuilder who died when he was 12. As the eldest son still living at home at the time, Henry went to work in a book shop. The owner was a father figure to him and allowed Henry to read as many books as he liked as time allowed. Later, Henry would open his own shop in Boston called the London Book Shop.

Interested in all things military in an era of growing unrest, Henry co-founded the Boston Grenadier Corps in 1772 and served as its second in command. He also supported the Sons of Liberty.

Against her parents, he married Lucy Flucker, daughter of well-to-do British Loyalists in June 1774. After Henry and Lucy fled Boston in 1775, Lucy remained essentially homeless until the British evacuated the city in March 1776.

Henry’s military career is too long to adequately share here. But he’s probably best known for coming up with the idea that cannons recently captured at the fall of Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point in upstate New York could be moved to help the colonists’ cause. With George Washington’s blessing, he began what was known as the “noble train of artillery” by hauling 60 tons of cannon and other armaments across an estimated 300 miles of ice-covered rivers and snow-topped Berkshire Mountains to the Boston siege camp.

Historian Victor Brooks called it “one of the most stupendous feats of logistics” of the entire war. Henry’s effort is commemorated by a series of plaques marking the Henry Knox Trail in New York and Massachusetts.

After the war, Congress appointed Knox the nation’s second Secretary at War in March 1785. The army was by then a fraction of its former size, and the new nation’s westward expansion was exacerbating frontier conflicts with Indian tribes. The War Department Knox took charge of had two civilian employees and a single small regiment. That same year, Congress authorized the establishment of a 700-man army.

Over the next 10 years, Henry would deal with a full plate of issues involving the new nation, from negotiating treaties to frontier friction. Eventually, he resigned his post in 1795 so he and Lucy could head for Thomaston to enjoy their later years.

Hardly “retired” in the traditional sense, Knox participated in many of the emerging businesses in the area. He shipped timber, quarried lime, made bricks, built a lock and canal system on the Georges River, helped establish a local church, and experimented with agriculture, shipbuilding, and land speculation.

Henry and Lucy had 13 children in the course of their marriage, but 10 of them passed away before the couple did. Their only son to live to adulthood, Henry Jackson Knox, is reported to have lived a life of much excess, from drinking heavily to squandering money. Just before he died in 1832, Henry Jackson requested that his remains not be interred with his family but placed in a common burial ground “with no stone to tell where.”

Henry Knox’s monument has his name on the front, while Lucy and some of their children’s names are inscribed on the sides. His son-in-law and granddaughter, Ebenezer Thatcher and Mary Thatcher Hyde, are to his left. Grandson James Swan Thatcher has a cenotaph to his right. James was the son of Ebenezer Thatcher and Henry’s oldest daughter, Lucy Knox Thatcher.

Unfortunately, while the front of the Knox monument is easy to read, the sides are not nearly as clear. I could make out Lucy’s name on one side but the rest is nearly impossible to read. It is my guess that Lucy Knox Thatcher is among the names listed.

The story of Henry’s death is an unfortunate one. While dining at the home of a close friend, Knox swallowed a chicken bone, which lodged in his throat and became infected. He died at home three days later on October 25, 1806. He was buried on the grounds of Montpelier with full military honors.

Lucy stayed on at Montpelier for 20 more years, gradually selling off parts of the estate to keep herself afloat. Youngest daughter Caroline took over the house after her mother died in 1826 since Henry Jackson Knox was too irresponsible to do so. Caroline managed to keep things going until her death in 1851, having survived two husbands. Oldest daughter Lucy Knox Thatcher took over until her death in 1854.

James Swan Thatcher’s death is similar to many young men buried in Maine seaside cemeteries. Born in 1815, James was the son of Lucy Knox Thacther and Ebenezer Thatcher. He joined the Navy and eventually sailed on the USS Grampus. She was the first U.S. Navy ship to be named for the sea animal Grampus griseus, also known as Risso’s Dolphin.

Grampus played had a small role in the Amistad trials. In late 1839, the U.S. government had Grampus standing by in New Haven Harbor so that in case the court ruled in favor of the slaves’ Spanish “owners,” they could deport the Africans to Cuba before they could appeal.

Because the district judge ruled that the Africans were illegally enslaved and must be returned to their home country, it was the government’s task to appeal on behalf of the slaveholders, and Grampus was not needed. The schooler continued her duties in the protection of shipping in the Caribbean Sea and in the South Atlantic Ocean.

Grampus was last heard of off St. Augustine, Fla. on March 15, 1843. She is presumed to have foundered in a gale off Charleston, S.C. with all hands aboard lost at sea.

Next week, I’ll be back at these two cemeteries to share some more stories from Thomaston, Maine.

Happy New Year! I took a little break during the holidays but I’m back with more from Maine. When I last wrote, I shared my visit to Colonial Pemaquid’s Old Burying Ground near Bristol.

I don’t often come in contact with the living while I’m meandering through a cemetery but I did here. A gentleman walking his dog came over and asked if I was hunting for family. I told him about my hobby and he confided that he liked visiting cemeteries as well!

Family obelisks can present some invaluable information for genealogists. Sometimes you can find the history of an entire generation on one big marker. Unfortunately, the dates and names may be all you find.

A good example of this is the obelisk for the Geyer family, with information for seven family members on it. The main couple were Captain Thomas Geyer (born around 1814 in Friendship, Maine) and his wife, Nancy (born around 1818, also in the Friendship area). They married around 1835 and settled in Bristol where they had several children.

The 1850 Census lists Thomas as a sailor living with Nancy and five children. Beyond that, I could find little about him. His marker shares that he died at the age of 39 on March 26, 1855 in “Aux Cayes”, which is now known as Les Cayes, a port city in Haiti. Whether he was lost at sea or died of illness is unknown. The Masonic symbol above his name indicates he was involved in that civic organization.

Nancy stayed on in Bristol with two of her younger children, Arthur and Edward. She died in 1878 at the age of 60. Arthur and Edward both lived long lives.

On another side are listed three of their children: Arthur, Hannah, and Sullivan. Arthur, born in 1850, died in 1927 at the age of 77. But Hannah and Sullivan both died in childhood. Hannah was nine at the time of her death while Sullivan was 10. Edward is buried in a different cemetery in Maine.

On the other side are two cenotaphs (meaning the person is not buried in the cemetery) for two of Thomas and Nancy’s daughters. Eliza Geyer Perkins died at sea at the age of 19 in 1856, the wife of J.W. Perkins. He is listed in the 1850 Census as a sailor and she was likely with him when she died.

Frances Geyer Fitch died in Chicago at the age of 29 in 1877. Her husband, Captain J.B. Fitch, served during the Civil War in Companies D and E, 20th Maine Infantry. He died in 1893 in Chicago and is buried in Graceland Cemetery. I’m guessing Frances is possibly buried there as well. They had three children. Son Joseph was a superior court judge in Chicago.

The Partridge monument only lists five names. But the family was a key one in the Bristol/Pemaquid area. Born around 1806, James W. Partridge farmed a few hundred acres. He married Sarah Erskine, daughter of sailor Ebenezer and Jane Saunders Erskine. It looks like they had eight children, seven of which lived to adulthood. James died in 1888 at the age of 72 while Sarah died at the age of 78 from “dibeatus” in 1900.

Henry, whose name appears by itself on one side of the monument, probably never married. Born in 1859, he is listed as single on the 1900 Census and is living with older brother James E. Partridge and his family. When he died at the age of 58 in 1919, the cause of death was listed as “cerebritis” with “melancholia” as a contributing factor. He may have suffered from lupus. In his father’s papers, in which James made certain his wife and children were all remembered, Henry is listed as the executor of his will.

Two names are listed on another side of the monument. Eben Howard Partridge, who may have been James and Sarah’s first child, was born in January 1844 and died in October 1846. Listed at the bottom is their second child, Jennie Partridge Lewis. Born just a few days before her brother Eben died in October 1846, Jennie was possibly Bristol’s postmistress at one time.

Jennie married Nathan Lewis in 1868 but it doesn’t appear they had any children. She died in 1895 of typhoid fever at the age of 48. Nathan, who is buried elsewhere, died in 1911 of a cerebral thrombosis.

There was one more surprise left at the Old Burying Ground. Many weeks after I had visited, I discovered there was someone famous buried there. It wasn’t until I pulled up Find a Grave that I found out. And somewhere amid all my photos, I had managed to get a picture of his marker (albeit off to the side).

Born in June 1909 as Sidney Kahn in Highland Falls, N.Y., Paul Reed was one of seven children born to Russian-Jewish immigrants. As a teenager who lost his father early in life, Paul had to work hard. While selling gum in vaudeville shows, he settled on an acting career and worked first as a radio singer. He took his first Broadway bow at age 31 in a 1940 revival of the musical operetta “The Gondoliers.” Paul had parts in the operettas “Trial by Jury” (1940) and “La Vie, Parisienne” (1942), as well as “Up in Central Park” (1945) and “Carnival in Flanders” (1953).

It was his participation in four Broadway musicals, “Guys and Dolls” (1950), “The Music Man” (1957), “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” (1961) and “Promises, Promises” (1968), that got him attention.

However, Paul is best known for his role as Police Captain Paul Brock in the hit TV show “Car 54, Where Are You?” during the 1950s and early 1960s. He was praised for his trademark “slow burn” in which he gradually went from slightly irritated to exploding with anger.

Although Reed retired from acting in the 1970s, he could still be seen in commercials well into the 1990s. He died in 2007 at the age of 97 in Greenwich, Conn. His wife, dancer June Reed, died seven weeks later and is buried beside him. They had one son, Paul Jr., a professional jazz and rock drummer who’s also written music for Broadway shows.

Next time, I’ll be further up the coast with more cemeteries from Maine. I hope you’ll come back to join me.