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| Valley Cemetery, photo from the Manchester Historic Association Archives |
Can you believe that there is a local cemetery I have NOT
yet explored in Manchester, New Hampshire?
Well, I was avoiding the Valley Cemetery for years, but just last week I
jumped at the chance to go on an informal tour. Why was I avoiding it? What changed my mind?
Valley Cemetery covers 20 acres and 10 city blocks in
downtown Manchester. It is located only one block east of Elm Street, and near
the SNHU arena. This large piece of land was donated in 1841 to the city by the
Amoskeag Manufacturing Corporation. It
was considered a “garden cemetery” and a public park for pedestrians and picnicking. The
first person buried here was Mary J. Baldwin in 1841. Members of the Stark family (brother,
sister-in-law and niece of Revolutionary War hero General John Stark) had their
old fashioned headstones removed to Valley cemetery when the Christian’s Brook
Cemetery was bought for redevelopment in the 1850s.
Valley Cemetery’s most interesting feature is a long valley
running diagonally through the area.
This valley used to have a water feature, but the creek is now diverted
under Elm Street through a culvert. This water feature had a carriage road, with two foot bridges for visitors. There were once benches and
two gazebos located along the creek. Impressive
mausoleums and artistic monuments of all sizes could be seen from the bottom of
the valley. Stone staircases led from
the lawns above down to the valley.
Valley Cemetery contains the grave sites of mill workers and
also the mausoleums of the families who owned the mills and industries that
made Manchester a great city in the 1800s. Among the wealthy gravesites are also the mass
graves from two cholera epidemics in the 1800s.
People from all races and ethnicities are buried here including Samanta
Plantin (d. 1899) an African American washerwoman who left a large bequest to
Tuskegee Institute.
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| Valley Cemetery Chapel - now boarded up |
The cemetery chapel was built in 1932 by Manchester architect and MIT
graduate, Chase R. Whitcher for $12,000. There is a receiving tomb built in
1888 for $4,000, and it can hold 75 coffins during the winter. There are 13
mausoleums, the most impressive is the Blood mausoleum near the Pine Street
gate, which was built in 1897 for $40,000.
The Frederick Smyth Mausoleum was built in 1885 of white marble and can
be seen on the edge of the valley above a steep precipice.
There is one known Revolutionary War veteran buried here –
Archibald Gamble who died in 1844. There
are 65 Civil War veterans including 12 officers including Medal of Honor recipient
Lt. Henry F. W. Little, Brevet Brigadier General Joseph Carter Abbott, and
Captain John M. Caswell. I saw several
graves of veterans from other wars on my tour, but I have no idea how many are
buried here.
[UPDATE July 6, 2017 11:30am - Manchester Historian Pat Van Den Berghe says there are 120 Civil War veterans buried here.]
Martha Bouton Cilley Clarke was buried here in 1926. She was the founder of the Molly Stark DAR
(Daughters of the American Revolution) chapter here in Manchester. In 1932 the DAR placed a bronze plaque in her
honor near her gravesite. Another famous
Manchester resident, Samuel Blodgett, died in 1807 and was buried at Christian
Brook Cemetery, and reinterred at Valley.
He was the original engineer of the Amoskeag Falls canal, and Derryfield
was renamed Manchester, New Hampshire in his honor in 1810.
Valley Cemetery survived the devastating Hurricane of 1938
which uprooted many trees. By 1953 the
cemetery brook was diverted to a culvert and the gazebos were removed. Since that time the cemetery has been
overgrown and forgotten, a place of vandalism and a residence for the
homeless. In 2001 a group called “Friends
of Valley Cemetery” was formed to restore the cemetery, but this effort seems
to have been abandoned. The “Friends”
was instrumental in getting the Valley Cemetery listed on the National Register
of Historic Places, and the cast iron fence around the perimeter was restored, but
not much else was renovated or cleaned up.
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| Valley Cemetery volunteers Mike Drelick and Michelle Caron |
Recently, via social media, a new group of volunteers has
formed to clean up the Valley Cemetery.
Headed by Manchester resident Mike Drelick and Michelle Caron, this
group meets up at Valley several times a week to cut brush, pull weeds, and
pick up trash. They have done an amazing
job this summer of uncovering long lost family plots, and clearing paths long
forgotten. They also meet up to just
walk the cemetery, hoping that their presence will drive out the unwanted
elements of vandals and drug dealers.
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| Griffin Family Plot, nearly completely obscured by brush |
According to Mike Drelick, he hopes that these volunteer efforts
will spur the city into taking more care of this property so that people will
return to Valley Cemetery for walking, bird watching and visiting. The cemetery has a resident flock of turkeys,
wildlife, and lots of birds to watch from songbirds to birds of prey. Art lovers can enjoy the layout of the
artistic paths, mausoleums and historic monuments and tombstones. Nature lovers
can enjoy the specimen trees (all labeled) and plantings.
Please join Mike one day for a tour, or check out the amazing photos on
his Facebook page “Save Valley Cemetery”.
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More graves covered by brush and rendered inaccessible
right next to the stone steps going down to the valley |
I think Mike’s plan is already showing progress. Since he has started organizing the cleanup
days, the city has come by daily to pick up the dozens of trash bags and brush
collected by the volunteers. A wood
chipper was seen yesterday in the cemetery, with two city workers chopping branches
and brush. Carol Robidoux from
Manchester Ink Link website has written
up a feature article on Mike’s volunteer effort, and this has caused more
people to volunteer.
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Compare the condition of these stone steps in 2017 to the
antique photo of the valley at the top of this blog post |
Mike grew up nearby the cemetery. He’s seen it through its
worst phase and has confidence that Valley Cemetery can again become an asset to
Manchester, instead of an eyesore. He described
to me how he could envision people visiting the site again for cookouts and
concerts, walking tours and picnics. He wants to work together with the parks
department to remove brush. He describes
the cemetery as “beautiful” and wonders why the DAR doesn’t place flags on the
graves of veterans, and why no one comes to place flowers on the graves here.
I’m hoping that some genealogists, descendants and family
members will see the overgrown family plots and be moved to complain to the
city, or turn out for volunteer cleanups.
The graves decorated with Masonic symbols and veteran’s gravestones
should be adopted by their fraternity and military brothers as community
service. The DAR should turn out to
restore the home of their founder’s grave, like they did with Stark Park
several years ago. I also believe that the Manchester mounted police should patrol the paths and old carriage roads here. The only police presence I saw during my tour was a cruiser who entered at the Pine Street gate, parked by the chapel for 2 minutes, and left. People walking would feel safer knowing the mounted police were including the cemetery as part of their beat, and it would drive out the troublemakers.
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Obvious and deliberate vandalism,
there are many toppled stones here, and graffiti |
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| I hope these are not your ancestors |
If you are at all curious about saving this historic garden
cemetery, look at the facts and links below:
Nine Manchester mayors are buried here:
Jacob F. James
Warren L. Lane
Frederick Smyth
Alonzo Smith
David A. Bunton
Darwin J. Daniels
Joseph B. Clark
David B. Varney
William C. Clarke
Two US Senators:
James Underwood Parker
Daniel Clark
Three New Hampshire Governors:
Frederick Smyth
Moody Currier
Ezekiel Straw
There are 13 private mausoleums:
Aretas Blood
E. W. Harrington
Frederick Smyth
Amos and Mary (Ayer) Gale
Nathan Parker
R. H. Ayer
J. W. Fellows and J. A. Moore
Josiah Crosby
Charles A. Gillis
F. Tenny & J. A. Chamberlain
R. J. Parker
George W. Bailey
W. D. Buck
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The Artemas Blood mausoleum, now behind
a chain link fence barrier |
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| The Smyth mausoleum 2017 (volunteers cut back the brush) |
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The Smyth mausoleum (white marble above the valley)
can be seen in this vintage photo courtesy of the
Manchester Historic Association |
Photos of Phase I of the Valley Cemetery Restoration Project
sign, which has the names of several men who are still aldermen or mayor of
Manchester. What happened to this
project? Was there a Phase II in the planning?
Save Valley Cemetery Facebook page:
Carol Robidoux, “Saving Valley Cemetery”, Manchester Ink
Link, June 23, 2017
City of Manchester, New Hampshire Valley Cemetery Page:
United States Department of the Interior, National Park
Service
National Register of Historic Places Registration Form for
Valley Cemetery dated 2004:
Another volunteer effort “Taking Back Valley Cemetery” headed up by Tanya Frazier, with website and
online volunteer registration page at this link:
Other sources of information on Valley Cemetery:
The History of Manchester, by C. E. Potter, 1856
Manchester on the Merrimack, by Grace Holbrook Blood,
Manchester Historic Association, 1975
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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Historic Valley Cemetery, Manchester, New Hampshire", Nutfield Genealogy, posted Jul 6, 2017, (https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2017/07/historic-valley-cemetery-manchester-new.html: accessed [access date])/
