Town of Chichester, NH
Cemetery Trustees meeting
July 4, 2022
The Cemetery Trustees, Ruth Hammen, Fred Shaw and Brenda Boswak met at 9:15 a.m. at the Historical Society building.
Old Business
Fred attended the Municipal Trustees’ Training Workshop on June 9, 2022. June 20, 2022, Fred, Ruth, and Brenda worked at Perkins-Maxfield Cemetery photographing the gravestones. Ruth created plot description data sheets for each gravestone. Fred and Brenda worked on sketching the location of each gravesite and will work on creating a diagram of the layout of the gravesites. Fred has contacted Bob Perry from Tophographix LLC in Hudson, NH to schedule him to visit Perkins-Maxfield Cemetery, Knowlton-Edgerly Cemetery, and True Cemetery to use his ground-penetrating radar to scan some open areas in these cemeteries. This will help us to be able to give more accurate and definitive answers to Chichester residents requesting burial lots in these cemeteries. Firefighters’ flags are presently not displayed in the cemeteries due to the absence of the required ‘temporary flag display application’. Ruthie and Fred continue research on locating accurate deeds for each cemetery in town. At this time, we have located deeds for; Batchelder Cemetery, Brown Cemetery, Burying Yard, Edmunds-Stanyan Cemetery, Fellows-Webster Cemetery, Griffin Cemetery, Knowlton-Edgerly Cemetery, Leavitt Cemetery, Page Cemetery, Perkins-Maxfield Cemetery, Plausawa Cemetery, and Pineground Cemetery. Town residents and neighbors abutting the cemeteries have been helpful in providing information they have.
New business
We reviewed the modified cemetery deed that Fred worked on. We have added ‘designee’ lines if owners of the lot wish to designate who is allowed to be interred in the lot they own. We changed the wording to “transfer/sell” the lot. We have been able to accommodate a few town residents to purchase lot in Knowlton-Edgerly Cemetery. These requests were made quite some time ago, and we made the decision to use the open walkway/pathway area for these few requests. We will have more information to offer other residents interested in purchasing a lot here, after the ground-penetrating radar service is completed at Knowlton-Edgerly Cemetery. We staked the lots and completed the sales for five lots. Cornerstones have been ordered from Perry Bros. Monuments. Perry Bros. price has increased significantly for cornerstones. We will get some estimates from other vendors. Currently, we collect the funds for the cornerstones and order them for the purchaser of the lot. Possibly this courtesy will need to be reconsidered and require the purchaser of the lot to buy the cornerstones directly and have them set within a specified period. Ruthie has been contacted by several people requesting help to stake their burial lot for placement of stones/ interments. Ruthie spent time teaching Brenda and Fred the paperwork process for selling a lot. Fred has created a new website for the Chichester Cemetery Trustees. www.chicemcom.org This will allow us to manage our information directly. We will continue to post information on the Chichester town website, also.
Meeting adjourned @ 12:15 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Brenda Boswak, Cemetery Trustee, Secretary