Saving Evergreen for posterity
By Julia Purdy
When the Vermont General Assembly approved the bylaws for the then Pine Hill Cemetery in Center Rutland, the bylaws allowed lot owners to hold meetings if warned 15 days ahead. That was in 1860. That right was exercised 164 years later, on May 22, 2024, when 75 current lot owners responded to a public notice and met outside Evergreen Cemetery’s empty gatehouse office on West Street.
The prior board of trustees had announced plans to close the cemetery as of June 29.
“They threw up a white flag,” said Don Adams, president of the new board. “It was a shock to everyone.”
The convened lot owners passed motions to dissolve the original group and select provisional officers.
Adams, who has family buried there and is active in civic projects, attended some side meetings of the new trustees. At the final meeting at Aldous Funeral Home, he told the Mountain Times, the feeling was, “We need to step up.” Next, “Does anyone have any time?” Volunteers raised their hands.
As Adams put it, he is “thrilled to be with a group of people that are so motivated and all focused on the success of righting the ship. Failure is not an option.”
Today, the new board numbers seven unpaid trustees, all of whom have made donations. Two employees have stayed to do the grounds work on the 44 acres carved out of Pine Hill’s south-facing slopes.
Graves will continue to be dug by hand. Mike Cavakas is superintendent with 45 years of service. Cavakas explained that earth-moving equipment cannot work in the small spaces without disturbing adjacent plots.
Jack Facey, an attorney with Facey Goss & McPhee, has offered pro bono legal services. Facey will update the original bylaws, which did not include incorporation, and he has refiled the cemetery under the Secretary of State, said Adams. He has also established the cemetery’s nonprofit tax status, 501(c)(13), reserved only for cemeteries, thus making monetary donations tax-deductible.
Adams explained that one of the first “hurdles” was getting in touch with families and lot owners, many of whom are scattered across the U.S. and abroad. Cemetery lots are in fact real estate, with deeds. Lot owners probably remember that records were kept by hand in card files and folders. The new board now enjoys the use of donated office equipment including a computer and fax. Wifi has made a website and a Facebook group, Friendsofevergreencemetery, possible.
Adams said the board plans to kick off a capital campaign by the fall, making presentations to potential donors. In the meantime, the board is developing an interim and a longterm business plan.
Many have stepped up with contributions and labor, even people with no connection to the cemetery. People living locally have been mowing and working on their sites. The first-in-the-nation chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America, founded in Rutland in 1980, has made a donation, Adams said.
Tom Giffin, a new trustee, wears several hats. He is cemetery commissioner for the city of Rutland and president of the Vermont Old Cemetery association (VOCA). Giffin’s role is maintaining cemetery monuments, along with VOCA volunteers, the GE Veterans network, high-schoolers, football teams, and Rotary.
In an interview last week, Giffin sounded very positive about the new direction for Evergreen Cemetery. “It’s a gradual process,” he said, but there’s a “lot of energy on the board,” and he is optimistic that “in time justice will be done to Evergreen’s importance in the community.”
The importance of Evergreen as not only a community treasure but a historically important landmark can’t be underestimated, even though its present condition may suggest otherwise.
Dawn Hance, author of “The History of Rutland, Vermont, 1761-1861,” writes that by the mid-1850s, Rutland’s two publicly owned burial grounds were running out of space. Although Rutland City did not yet exist, it was a time in Rutland of prosperity, industry was booming and the “new man of business” had arrived on the scene with energy and optimism.
Center Rutland, a.k.a. Mill Village, was the manufacturing hub of the area, with the natural falls at Otter Creek supplying power for an early saw- and gristmill, a paper mill, and eventually marble finishing shops. By the early 1850s two rail lines traversed Center Rutland.
Center Rutland had also been a major crossroads from earliest times, linking the growing village of Rutland on the hill with the quarries of West Rutland and the educational center of Castleton to the west, the marble works at the falls in present-day Proctor to the north, and – much earlier – the Crown Point Military Road to the fortification at Crown Point on the lake.
Such a vibrant community of course met social needs also. Small as it was, Center Rutland had stores, taverns and a Methodist chapel with its associated burying ground. (The reading room at the Rutland Free Library features an original painting of a bird’s-eye view of Center Rutland at about that time by James Hope).
The movers and shakers of early Rutland raised families, socialized, and supported the closeknit community. They became interested in the cemetery dilemma.
One was William Gookin, owner of a mill complex at the falls in Center Rutland, whose elegant Georgian style house still stands by the southwest corner of Evergreen Cemetery. Another was railroad builder H. H. Baxter (later Adjutant General of the Vermont Militia during the Civil War), whose mansion stood where the Rutland Intermediate School now is.
In 1860 Gookin decided to sell the house on West Street and 31 acres of the rocky, wooded hill behind it to his associates, to be named “Pine Hill Cemetery.”
It should be mentioned that “pine hill” denoted the plot designated by the 1761 Wentworth charter to preserve the tall pines for the royal navy.
At this time, new concepts in landscape architecture were being applied to rural cemeteries as well as private estates. In the large metropolises, the dearth of greenspace inspired the rethinking of cemeteries as lovely park-like respites away from urban hustle and bustle.
The trend was not lost on the community leaders, who were individuals of cultivated taste. Evergreen would not be just another “graveyard” full of crumbling markers but a sacred grove. Quite likely they took The Country Gentleman magazine, which in 1857 offered a new vision of the “burying yard” as “a pleasant, cultivated scene … enclosed with fences and hedges or belts of trees, to give them an air of security and seclusion … and to make them appear to be a suitable restingplace and home for the dead.”
That year, the Legislature approved the formation of the Pine Hill Cemetery Association, with a president/superintendent, secretary, and treasurer.
The project moved apace, with Baxter, marble executive William Young Ripley (poet Julia Dorr’s father) and others carrying out the surveying and fencing of the new cemetery.
The name was changed to Evergreen Cemetery in 1861, with the gateway complex we see today constructed under the supervision of Chief Engineer J.J.R. Randall. The dedication ceremony was held October 16, 1861. Julia Dorr wrote a hymn for the event and her husband, businessman and banker Seneca Dorr, presented the title deed.
Although they were one and all most likely devoted churchgoers – they did not put a denominational stamp on Evergreen. Pine Hill’s wild, rocky knoll would have excited the romantic imagination so prevalent in that era. The winding carriage roads that disappeared amid wooded recesses, the whisperings of the column-like tall pines, the association of wild Nature as the guardian of eternal sleep, complemented the spiritualist temperament of the mid-19th century. Certainly the marble or granite obelisks that punctuate the view may have evoked classical antiquity, as did much architecture of the time. Gone were the stark headstones of the past. Floral motifs utilized the language of flowers, while lifelike statues of mourning female figures gave outward expression to grief.
The plan for Evergreen shows carriage roads following the natural rise and fall of the terrain in a swirling, organic pattern of loops and arabesques encircling the high points. A new perspective or view greets the visitor at every turn. From the once-open hilltops of the cemetery, the sight of Pico Peak must have offered both drama and reassurance in the permanence of the mountains that outlive human affairs. It was conceived as a place to fill one’s lungs with clean, fragrant air, find uplift in the blend of nature and sculpture, and preserve memories.
