Say what you will, the Chamber of Commerce lists the Hillside Cemetery as a thing for visitors to do here.
This one is newer, meaning mostly 1800s and Victorian, when the town thrived. Yet many of the inscriptions, in softer stone, have weathered to illegibility.
Yet I keep going back, often reading between the lines.
Many of the men and women died young, along with a large percentage of children.
Many of the stones tell of birth origins elsewhere in Maine or even New Hampshire and Massachusetts, as well as a few defiantly proclaiming “born in Ireland.”
Many of the names begin with “Capt.,” sometimes followed with “lost at sea,” which is also found on other stones of first mates or sailors. Others tell of falling in Civil War action – many New England towns suffered heavy tolls.
Some of these markers were erected as memorials, with no bodies buried below.
Fittingly, in places as I walk, views of the ocean and islands in the distance open below me.
Jnana's Red Barn 