Grave Matters, 1730-1900
Permission to use text or images from the Boothbay Region Historical
Society website is required for any purpose beyond personal use. Uses requiring permission: publication, display, advertising, or posting
elsewhere on the Internet.
Appeared in September 9, 1999 Boothbay
Register
A lot of people travel to the Boothbay region to investigate their
ancestral families. The least experienced arrive without much preparation and
wander around aimlessly looking for historical information in improbable
places, at the churches, the library, the newspaper office, and the funeral
home. They make stops at any local graveyard they see along the way to scout
around for their missing ancestors. If they stumble on the right places, such
as town offices or historical societies, they usually arrive when those
buildings are shut and information unobtainable. They often go away frustrated
and sometimes angry.
Those who are more experienced usually know that historical societies
and town clerks are the destinations of choice. They also generally check
ahead and figure out when people can help them. But whether old hands or
amateurs at research, they almost all share one belief and goal. They believe
that their ancestors are in a region graveyard under a marked stone; and they
want to go there and see the grave and make some sort of a connection with
that long-gone person at that spot.
It seems a little odd to me, because if I wanted to feel connected with
my ancestors, I'd go where they were when they were alive. I'd journey to
their land and house, and see the view they saw every morning. I'd go to their
workplaces and to the roads and rivers they traveled. A graveyard is exactly
the one spot that you can be very sure your ancestors weren't. But graveyards
are quiet, peaceful, and conducive to contemplative thoughts, and people
certainly flock to the Vietnam memorial. There is a definite pull, and when
people are pulled here, they feel they've had a successful search for their
roots if they get some snapshots of family gravestones. If the stones are
leaning a little and have a patina of lichen, well . . . all the more
picturesque to signify the passage of time.
Why Marked
Graves are Uncommon
However, most people, experienced or not, who come here to find family
graves are disappointed. I've explained innumerable times to surprised
searchers that most of the people who died in Boothbay before 1900 are not in
findable graves. It's difficult for people to wipe out of their minds their
twentieth-century standards and reality and put themselves back in a different
time.
Boothbay was a relatively poor town, with many of its inhabitants
unable to afford the luxury of a chiseled gravestone or the purchase of a
graveyard lot. People were also used to doing for themselves: they largely
made their clothes and food at home, heated and lighted the home themselves,
were born at home, died at home, and were usually buried at home too. Most
people were buried on the family place with sometimes a wooden marker, but
probably more often a fieldstone on end. A number of graveyards with marked
stones also have uncarved fieldstone graves, while some still-discernible
extended family graveyards have only fieldstones.
Counting the
Dead and Buried
I thought it would be interesting to try to get a very rough idea of:
1) how many people died in Boothbay between 1730 and 1900, and 2) how many are
in marked graves, meaning graves with stones identifying who is there. I could
then give searchers more concrete information about the likelihood of
ancestors being findable in typical towns before 1900.
Census Records
The Lincoln County courthouse has copies of many of the 1850, 1860, and
1870 Lincoln County town censuses. In the censuses each town ordinarily
provided the names and ages of those who died within the year, as well as the
cause of death. I checked the 1850 records for Boothbay, Southport, Westport,
Bristol, Damariscotta, and Edgecomb; and Boothbay in 1860 and 1870. I threw
out Edgecomb's highest death rate of nineteen deaths in a population of 1,149
(one in 60). Odd—such a high number—since the Edgecomb census taker
bragged that its superior climate kept the death rate low. I threw out the
lowest death rate, Boothbay's one in 156. The other figures gave an average of
one in 90 as the "normal" annual death rate in a population.
Next, I tried to arrive at the rough population of Boothbay at certain
times. It's simple from 1790 on up since there were national census counts
taken every decade. Simple to find the arbitrary figure, that is; its accuracy
is something else. Lincoln County was full of anti-authoritarian Scotch-Irish
people who avoided any form of government intrusion whenever possible,
including being counted. Between the permanent settlement date of 1730 and the
town's incorporation date of 1764, I used personal estimates from my reading
and thinking about local conditions. Between 1764 and 1790, I relied on tax
records, multiplying each taxpayer by four or five to arrive at a typical
family size, as later census figures indicated was proper. The "Estimated
Boothbay Population" table shows the results of my estimates and census
figures. Gaps between years were filled with averages between the upper and
lower figures.
Always in an earlier time in my mind, I think of Boothbay as it was
formerly, when it included Southport and Boothbay Harbor. Southport went off
on its own in 1842 and the Harbor did the same in 1889. Their
post-independence census figures are added to Boothbay's total up to 1900.
Muriel Howard
and Faith Meyer
We have the work of Muriel Greenleaf Howard, a local woman interested
in genealogy who died in the 1980s. She did an enormous amount of research on
local families. Among the papers given to us by her daughters, we have lists
Muriel made of all the people known to be buried or memorialized in all the
region graveyards. Many men, lost at sea, are represented on stones in
graveyards.
Faith Meyer, a society trustee and volunteer who works in collections
regularly, helped me out by going through every one of Muriel's local
graveyard lists and counting the number of identifiable people who were buried
in them before 1900. Faith went over thirty-eight lists: eleven on Southport,
nine in Boothbay, six in East Boothbay, one on Sawyers Island, nine on Barters
Island, and two in the Harbor. She divided the deaths into three categories:
1730 to 1800, 1800 to 1850, and 1850 to 1900.
The Final
Figures
The combined estimated annual population figures between 1730 and 1800
demanded that about 315 people died in Boothbay during those seventy years.
However, Faith found there are only thirty-five marked graves in local
graveyards dating to that period. Those stones are in Boothbay's Old Burying
Ground at the Center and Pear Street in the Harbor, but no marked stone
predates 1770. Between 1730 and 1770, of about 130 dead people, none are in
marked graves. Between 1770 and 1800, 35 of the 185 dead people are in marked
graves, one in five. Only about one in nine people who died between 1770 and
1800 are in marked graves.
Between 1801 and 1850, the combined annualized population of greater
Boothbay demanded 1,285 deaths. Only 372 are in marked graves, about one in
three or four people. Between 1851 and 1900 about 2,200 people should have
died in our towns; 1,187 are in marked graves, about one in two.
Of about 3,800 Boothbay people who died up to 1900, about 1,600 are
findable. Except for maybe 100 lost at sea and not memorialized, the rest are
here somewhere, under our roads, in our yards, out under that growth of trees,
or scattered by dozers, loaders, and dump trucks. This exercise in death and
math is a very inexact, but I think interesting, guide to the state of grave
matters here, and probably in like communities, in earlier centuries.
Boothbay Deaths and Graves
1730-1800
315
35
1801-1850
1,285
372
1851-1900
2,200
1,187
The estimated number of
deaths in the Boothbay region in three periods between 1730 and 1900.
The graves column shows
the number of people in marked graves.
Estimated Boothbay Population
1730
250
1750
175
1764
375
1771
840
1774
850
1781
895
1783
865
1786
865
1788
1045
1790
997
1800
1246
1810
1582
1815
1745
1820
1950
1830
2286
1840
2631
Spt
Total
1850
2504
543
3047
1860
2857
708
3565
1870
3200
684
3884
1880
3576
679
Hbr
4255
1890
1718
533
1699
3950
1900
1766
527
1926
4219
Population figures for
Boothbay, Southport, and Boothbay Harbor between 1730 and 1900.
BOOTHBAY Population
Projected Estimated Deaths—last column, totals for time
between upper + lower numbers
1730
250
3
1750
175
2
50
1764
375
4
42
1771
840
9
49
1774
850
9
27
1781
895
10
60
1783
865
9
19
1786
865
9
27
1788
1045
11
20
1790
997
10
21
1800
1246
12
110
1810
1582
16
140
1815
1745
20
90
1820
1950
21
105
1830
2286
25
230
1840
2631 SPT
Total
29
270
1850
2504 543
3047
27
340
1860
2857 708
3565
3
400
1870
3200 684
3884
430
1880
3576 679
HBR 4255
470
1890
1718 533
1699 3950
430
1900
1766 527
1926 4219
470