Town of Chichester, New Hampshire
Cemetery Trustees' meeting
April 4, 2022
The Cemetery Trustees, Ruth Hammen, Fred Shaw, and Brenda Boswak met at 9:00 a.m. at the Historical Society building.
Old business
The removal of remembrance wreaths from the veterans’ gravesites has been completed.
Ruth has contacted the Road Agent about the possibility of removing trees along the roadside of Knowlton-Edgerly Cemetery, where the Road Agent has already tagged other trees for removal. Craig Sykes will contact Ruth when he has a definite answer. Ruth will contact Hodgins Painting & Maintenance for a current certificate of insurance.
We are still working on a plan for removal of the large, dead Ash trees in the Burying Yard. Fred Shaw and Scott Tepper have additional knowledge on the surrounding field area for possible access for the tree company. We will resume this discussion in early summer.
New business
Brenda has picked up the new American flags that Ruth purchased for placement on the veterans’ gravesites. Ruth and Brenda will contact the volunteers that have assisted with placement in the past. We will begin the placement the last week of May. This year there are white flag holders being placed in the ground for those gravesites without a metal flag holder. Hopefully, this will steady and secure the flags from touching the ground and/or blowing out of the ground.
We inspected the Brown Cemetery on Ring Road, Perkins-Maxfield Cemetery on Pleasant Street, Page Cemetery, True Cemetery and Bachelder Cemetery on Bear Hill Road. Brenda has submitted a request to Perry Brothers Monument for an estimate for repairs on Dr. Amas Kelley’s gravestone.
Ruth will contact Gordon Jones to coordinate a time for a possible workday at Perkins-Maxfield Cemetery. Hook Cemetery on Route 4, a private
Ruth has contact information and will once again suggest the willingness of the town to take over responsibility for the care and maintenance of Hook Cemetery. During removal of the wreaths, we inspected Pineground Cemetery, Griffin Cemetery, Knowlton-Edgerly Cemetery, Hook Cemetery, Locke Burial Ground, Langley/Watson Cemetery, Leavitt Cemetery. A usual amount of landscape cleanup that will need to be done. We did not find any stone damage from the winter weather. We have posted a reminder on the town webpage for removal of winter decoration in coordination with spring cleanup.
Fred is continuing to work with Tim Mayville on accurate deeds for the cemeteries in town.
He also is overseeing the accuracy of the cemetery trusts.
We talked again about the possibility of changing from deeds to ‘rights of interment’. Fred will gather some more information on this process.
Meeting adjourned 12:30 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Brenda Boswak, Cemetery Trustee, Secretary.