Ownership quandary complicates Wendell smallpox cemetery preservation push

WENDELL — A Montague man has volunteered to restore and maintain the old smallpox cemetery at the end of Morse Village Road. The only question is, who owns it?

Sylvia Wetherby, who chairs the Wendell Cemetery Commission, said the assessor’s map indicates the cemetery near the New Salem town line is located inside the Whetstone Wildlife Sanctuary, which Mass Audubon owns and manages. But Aaron Gouveia, the conservation organization’s public relations director, said his agency owns only the road leading up to the cemetery, not the land itself.

“I’m very confused,” Wetherby told the Recorder when informed of what Gouveia said.

This issue arose when David Detmold appeared before the Selectboard on July 15 to discuss reestablishing access to the smallpox cemetery. He volunteered to use his chainsaw to cut down 14 or 15 birch trees that are looming over the brittle headstones. Detmold would then lay down the wood to create a corduroy road, or wooden pathway, that he would cover with cedar boughs as a type of mat. He said the work would take him about six hours.

Wetherby said she had always believed the cemetery is on land owned by the Sawyer family. That surname appears on at least three headstones there. But Detmold said it was never a private burial ground, despite what he called a common narrative in town.

“I don’t think the Sawyer family chose this as their family plot. I think it was chosen because it was out of the way, because they didn’t want the smallpox to spread. They didn’t have good … sanitary procedures in those days,” he explained.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, smallpox was an infectious disease caused by the variola virus. Once claiming hundreds of millions of lives over centuries, it has since been eradicated, with no cases occurring since 1977.

Smallpox cemeteries were common ways to bury victims so the public would not get contaminated. According to the CDC, smallpox was contagious after death because the virus remained active in the fluid and scabs of the skin rash.

At least five people are buried in the cemetery in Wendell, with headstones bearing the names of Jabez Sawyer, Jemima Carruth Sawyer, Lydia Carruth Sawyer, Patty Carruth Hager and Otis Holbrook. Jean Forward, who chairs the Wendell Historical Commission, recounted that it appears Holbrook was a 29-year-old traveling salesman from western New York who brought the virus into town and infected at least three of the victims who rest beneath the soil. It is possible one of the women buried fell ill while trying to nurse Holbrook back to health.

A 1978 Greenfield Recorder article mentions the smallpox cemetery and Mormon Hollow as two sites the town might choose to record as part of a historical inventory project that was set to be discussed. The society was working on the inventory as one town in the Arts Council of Franklin County’s Historical Inventory Project.

To add to town officials’ confusion, Forward said it is a town cemetery that was developed to isolate people who had died of smallpox. However, Wetherby said the land has never been maintained by the town, to her recollection.

A 1965 article in the Recorder describes the cemetery as well-maintained, with beautifully engraved slate headstones, shortly after fear of the contagion had passed.

On the question of ownership, Gouveia shared with the Recorder a deed of easement that refers to “a discontinued and abandoned portion of a county road known as ‘Morse Village Road’ located between” the New Salem town line and the smallpox cemetery.

“This easement is granted to the inhabitants of the Town of Wendell for passage by the public on foot and by use of automobile for the purpose of visiting said Small Pox Cemetery in its current location only and for no other purpose,” the document reads. “The use of automobile is hereby limited to that portion of Morse Village Road lying between the New Salem Town Line and the Small Pox Cemetery, and is hereby available only from the first day of May until the last day of November in each calendar year, between sunrise and sunset, road conditions permitting.”

Gouveia said this language led to Mass Audubon officials’ initial belief that the cemetery is owned by the town.

The deed of easement also states that Wendell residents have the right and obligation to maintain this right-of-way. However, the right-of-way may never be cleared or improved to be more than a gravel surface pathway that is 8 feet in width; the adjacent tree canopy cannot be cut more than 15 feet in height; and there can be no maintenance on the roadway between Dec. 1 and April 30.

“If the road is further improved, this easement will terminate,” it reads.

Detmold, who said he is a Montague Tree Advisory Committee member and trained in safe chainsaw use, told the Recorder that this restoration and maintenance effort was inspired by an issue in Montague in which a family denied people access to a public cemetery that members believed was at least partially on private land.

He also cited a state statute that allows any town to take charge of and maintain an abandoned or neglected burying ground within its limits. The statute authorizes towns to appropriate money for upkeep but strictly prohibits property rights violations, body disinterment or the destruction of historical structures.

“People are related to these people and deserve to visit their remains,” Detmold said, “or to do genealogical research.”