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Six Gravesites of Military Heroes

Military heroes who sacrificed for their country certainly deserve to be remembered on Memorial Day weekend. Some people remember them with parades and speeches, others with flowers on their graves.

The New England Historical Society honors them with this story about the place where each state’s greatest military heroes rest, we hope, in peace.

Wooster Cemetery

David Wooster

Connecticut produced many military heroes, including Benedict Arnold, a hero at least for a while.

Nathan Hale is the first among all Connecticut’s military heroes, having given his life for his country. But no one ever found his body.

And you might get into an argument if you called Revolutionary War Gen. Israel Putnam a hero.

But Gen. David Wooster definitely qualifies as a military hero from Connecticut, albeit a largely forgotten one. He gave his life for his country in the Battle of Ridgefield, chasing British troops back to New York after they burned Danbury.

As Wooster lay dying, he said, “I am dying, but with a strong hope and persuasion that my country will gain her independence.”

He was buried in Wooster Cemetery on Mount Moriah in Danbury. And yes, Wooster Square in New Haven was named for him.

Monument to David Wooster in Wooster Cemetery.

Wooster Cemetery, Ellsworth Ave., Danbury, Conn.

Pine Grove Cemetery

Of all of Maine’s military heroes, Joshua Chamberlain stands as the greatest.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, by Matthew Brady

When the Civil War broke out, Chamberlain left his job as a Bowdoin College professor to command the storied 20^th Maine Regiment.

On the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the 20th Maine held off three savage charges by Confederate regiments. By evening, the 20th Maine ran low on ammunition. He could either hold the hill and face certain destruction, or retreat and allow the Confederates to overrun the Army of the Potomac.

Instead, the men fixed their bayonets and charged down the hill. The shocked rebels broke and ran.

Chamberlain suffered grievous wounds during the Second Battle of Petersburg. He then received a promotion to brigadier general on what was thought to be his deathbed. He lived to the age of 85 and received the Medal of Honor for his gallantry at Gettysburg.

A simple headstone marks Joshua Chamberlain’s grave in historic Pine Grove Cemetery near Bowdoin College, where he returned after the war.

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Pine Grove Cemetery, image courtesy Google Maps

Pine Grove Cemetery, Brunswick, Maine

Old Burial Hill

The Americans might have lost the Revolution if it weren’t for one of Massachusetts’ great military heroes, John Glover.

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John Glover

Glover raised a regiment of Marblehead fishermen and sailors known for their discipline and teamwork. The regiment, which, included African-Americans and Indians, ferried George Washington and 2,400 men across the Delaware on Christmas night in 1776.

The Battle of Trenton, which followed, gave the American cause a boost in morale when it badly needed one.

Glover had already saved Washington’s Army. When the British defeated the Continental Army on Long Island, Washington ordered Glover’s Regiment to evacuate the troops to Manhattan. They safely landed 9,500 men, along with all their baggage, nearly all their artillery, stores, horses and provisions. Had the evacuation failed, Washington’s army—and probably the war—would have been lost.

John Glover is buried in Marblehead in the picturesque Old Burial Hill cemetery.

Old Burial Hill

Marblehead, Mass.

Stark Cemetery

John Stark

John Stark, , the most famous of New Hampshire’s military heroes, was also a quote machine. During the Battle of Bennington, Stark rallied his men with the words:

There are your enemies, the Red Coats and the Tories. They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow!

Stark’s performance earned him the nickname Hero of the Battle of Bennington:

He may have been the one who said, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes!” at the Battle of Bunker Hill. And he most certainly coined New Hampshire’s motto, Live Free or Die.

Stark fought with distinction during the entire war, then went back to his farm in New Hampshire. He is buried with his wife in Stark Cemetery in Manchester, N.H. It’s in the back of Stark Park.

Stark Cemetery

Stark Cemetery, River Road, Manchester, N.H.

Common Burying Ground

You would expect Rhode Island’s greatest military heroes to be mariners and you would be correct.

But Rhode Island’s Oliver Hazard Perry wasn’t just a military hero. He defeated a British squadron in the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812. His victory turned the tide of the war in the West, and he became a national hero as well as a military hero.

Perry didn’t have long to enjoy his fame. He died of yellow fever in 1819 at the age of 34.

Perry joins many of Newport’s most prominent citizens at the Common Burying Ground in Newport. His neighbors include Ida Lewis, Ann Smith Franklin and William Ellery.

The Common Burying Ground has a large number of colonial era headstones, including the largest number of colonial African American headstones in the United States.

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The Common Burying Ground

Farewell St & Warner Street, Newport, R.I.

St. Joseph’s Cemetery

Capt. John Lonergan

John Lonergan realized his men were under heavy fire from a house in front of them. Lonergan ordered his men to charge it. They surrounded the house and Lonergan knocked in the front door, bellowing, ‘’Surrender! Fall out here, every damned one of you!’ The Confederates tumbled out of the house, and Lonergan’s company took 83 of them captive.

Lonergan later headed the Vermont branch of the Fenian Brotherhood and organized two failed raids into Canada from St. Albans. His aim was to pressure Britain to leave Ireland. He died in 1902. In 2013 his great-granddaughter unveiled a memorial marker to honor him in Burlington’s City Hall Park. He is buried, however, in St. Joseph Cemetery in Burlington.

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St. Joseph’s Cemetery

206 Auburn St. Burlington, Vt.

End Notes

Images: David Wooster’s monument, By Kensphotos – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4064498. Common Burying Ground By Swampyank at en.wikipedia, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17984252. Oliver Hazard Perry, By Gilbert Stuart(Life time: 1755-1828) – Original publication: Portrait by Gilbert Stuart Immediate source: http://www.toledomuseum.org/2013/08/08/artwork-of-the-week-august-9/, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40572296. Stark Cemetery By AlexiusHoratius – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26455478. Google images by Google Maps. Image of Oliver Hazard Perry courtesy Toledo Museum of Art.Old Burial Hill By Newenglandhistory1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114115853.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Johnny Appleseed, The Real Reason He Wandered

Johnny Appleseed wasn’t quite a New England version of St. Francis, wandering the countryside in rags, scattering apple seeds and befriending woodland creatures.

Oh he did wear rags, he did love animals and he did bring apples to thousands of people. And he certainly roamed the newly settled frontier.

But he did it to make money selling apples for hard cider.

And Johnny Appleseed died a wealthy man.

John Chapman birthplace in Leominster, Mass.

Johnny Appleseed

Johnny Appleseed was born John Chapman in Leominster, Mass., on Sept. 26, 1774. You can hardly miss him if you visit the city. His birthplace has a granite marker and a billboard, streets and schools bear his name and a wooden statue of him stands in City Hall.

He only lived in Leominster a few years, though. His mother died when he was very young, and his father moved to Longmeadow, Mass., and remarried. Along came 10 half-siblings, and Johnny and a half-brother left the crowded house around 1796.

At that time, New England farmers began to head west in great number, looking for better soil and bigger farms. Life on the frontier wasn’t easy, and often farmers only had hard cider to quench their thirst for an alcoholic beverage.

Photograph of John Chapman in the 1840s.

Johnny Appleseed saw his opportunity. He had a knack for predicting where the next wave of settlement would go, and he began to plant apple trees in anticipation of the next settlers.

He didn’t scatter seeds for orchards, but planted nurseries — in western Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. Johnny Appleseed eventually traveled as far as Ontario, Illinois and West Virginia.

Once he planted his nurseries, he built fences around them. Then he hired someone to take care of them and returned every year or two to check on his trees. The caretaker sold seeds and saplings.

He wandered because he had to to buy up inexpensive land before the next group of customers settled the frontier.

Apples

The apple industry created the myth that Johnny Appleseed brought a healthful, delicious fruit to pioneer farmers.

Johnny Appleseed

In truth, his apples had one purpose, and it wasn’t to make pies and crumbles. Farmers could only make hard cider from them.

Johnny Appleseed’s apples didn’t come from grafted trees, but from seedlings. Henry David Thoreau once wrote that apples from seeds were “sour enough to set a squirrel’s teeth on edge and make a jay scream.”

Eight years before he died, the financial panic of 1837 took a toll on his wealth. Nevertheless, Johnny Appleseed died a rich man, owning more than 1,200 acres of prime real estate.

Bit of a Loon

Parts of the Johnny Appleseed myth do have elements of truth to them, though. He did dress in rags, sometimes even in old coffee sacks with holes cut in them for his head and arms.

Stamp.

He did it because he followed the Swedenborgian religion, and believed that the more he suffered in this world the more happiness he would experience in the hereafter. According to his obituary, he ‘submitted to every privation with cheerfulness and content, believing that in so doing he was securing snug quarters hereafter.’

Johnny Appleseed often stopped in frontier cabins to spread ‘some fresh news from Heaven.’

According to Harper’s magazine, he once lingered to hear a longwinded preacher speak to a crowd of people from a stump he used as a lectern.

The preacher urged his listeners to give up extravagance.

“Where now is there a man who, like the primitive Christians, is traveling to heaven barefooted and clad in coarse raiment?” the preacher asked

Exasperated, Johnny Appleseed put his bare foot on the stump and said, “Here’s your primitive Christian!”

Folk Hero

Johnny Appleseed shared his trees with Native Americans during his travels, and converted some of them to his religion. They in turn taught him how to heal with herbs and plants, and even hostile tribes left him alone.

He had some other eccentric beliefs, which at least one biographer attributes to a kick on the head from a horse. For example, he thought it cruel to ride a horse or chop down a tree.

Gravesite of John Chapman.

He also liked to give ribbons to small girls and entertain small boys by walking on hot coals.

Eventually his travels brought him a reputation as a healer and a folk saint.

Johnny Appleseed died around 1845, though the exact date of his death is disputed. He left his valuable nurseries to his sister.

Today, an annual Johnny Appleseed Festival draws an average of 10,000 people – held in the fall, of course, around the time of the apple harvest.

Read more surprising apple history along with historic apple recipes in the New England Historical Society’s e-book, 29 Historic New England Apple Recipes. Available now for only $2.99 from Amazon.

With thanks to MassMoments. Image of Johnny Appleseed gravesite, By Rochelle Karp – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21439692; Apples by By Leslie Seaton from Seattle, WA, USA – Newtown pippins, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33880381. This story was updated in 2023.

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Six Breathtaking National Natural Landmarks

New England can claim 57 National Natural Landmarks of the 599 listed throughout the country. The six-state region has a wealth of beautiful conservation land that contains fossilized dinosaur tracks, quaking bogs, old growth forests, rhododendron stands and a spectacular rocky gorge.

The National Park Service administers the National Natural Landmarks Program to encourage conservation of sites with outstanding biological or geological features.

We selected the most breathtaking of the National Natural Landmarks in each of five New England states. Because tiny Rhode Island has only one, we didn’t have much choice.

If you know of any National Natural Landmarks worthy of note, please include them in the comments section.

Connecticut Dinosaur Trackway

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The Dinosaur Trackway.

In 1802, a Massachusetts farm boy named Pliny Moody came across dinosaur tracks in Holyoke, Mass. He made the first of many such discoveries in the Connecticut River Valley’s sandstone.

On Aug. 23, 1966, Edward McCarthy was bulldozing a path for I-91 in Rocky Hill, Conn., when he overturned a block of sandstone imprinted with six three-toed footprints. It turned out he was disturbing a former lakebed riddled with dinosaur tracks, the largest in North America.

Scientists confirmed the importance of the Rocky Hill dinosaur tracks, each about a foot long.

Engineers rerouted the highway, and the state designated the lake bed a Connecticut state park. Scientists subsequently found about 2,000 of the three-toed tracks, linked to the Jurassic-era Dilophosauris.

The seven-acre Dinosaur State Park abuts an arboretum that has about two miles of hiking trails. The exhibit center opens Thursday through Saturday from 9 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. The park opens every day but Sunday and Monday.

Dinosaur State Park, 400 West St., Rocky Hill, Conn.

Gulf Hagas

Of Maine’s 12 National Natural Landmarks, Gulf Hagas is easily the wildest and most remote.

Gulf Hagas earned the name ‘Grand Canyon of the East’ for the three-mile slate gorge carved by the West Branch of the Pleasant River in Central Maine. The river drops 370 feet through the gorge, creating waterfalls that only the most experienced kayaker can manage. a gorge in central Maine. The West Branch of the Pleasant River creates a three-mile slate gorge with many waterfalls. Gulf Hagas belongs to the Appalachian Trail Corridor, following it through the Hundred-Mile Wilderness. Many view it as the most remote and difficult part of the Appalachian Trail.

Most people reach Gulf Hagas by driving through the Katahdin Iron Works, a historic site where iron ore was once smelted. Loggers used to drive logs for those smelting operations through the gorge, as narrow as eight feet wide in some places. .

Archaeologists have found gravesites belonging to the Red Paint People in the area.

The Gulf Hagas Rim Trail goes through The Hermitage, a rare stand of virgin old growth forest. Giant eastern white pine trees, once used for the British Royal Navy, grow as tall as 150 feet and as thick as 10 feet in diameter.

One eight-mile-long hike along the canyon rim takes as long as eight hours. An easier trail takes hikers four miles through The Hermitage and Gulf Hagas Brook.

Katahdin Iron Works Road, Bowdoin College Grant East Townswhip, Maine

Bartholomew’s Cobble

The John Ashley Hose sits near Bartholomew’s Cobble, one of Massachusetts’ 11 National Natural Landmarks.

Col. John Ashley, a Connecticut River God, settled the 329 acres of Bartholomew’s Cobble before the American Revolution. Ashley enslaved an African American woman named Elizabeth Mum Bett Freeman, who won a place in history by suing for her freedom and helping to end slavery in Massachusetts.

Bartholomew’s Cobble

The Trustees of Reservations took ownership of Bartholomew’s Cobble in 1946 and gradually added to it over the years. The trustees also manage the John Ashley home site.

Bartholomew’s Cobble sits right on the border of the northern and southern limits of a number of species, giving it tremendous diversity of plants, especially ferns. It also sits on the crossroads of the marble valley lowlands of the Berkshires and the Taconic uplands.

You can snowshoe, canoe, picnic, birdwatch, climb Hurlburt Hill to catch the sunset. The five miles of trails take you along the Housatonic River, up through the geological cobble formations, meadows and farmland full of wildflowers, ferns, mosses and ground-nesting bobolinks.

105 Weatogue Rd., Sheffield, Mass.

Rhododendron State Park

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The Old Patch Place, one of New Hampshire’s National Natural Landmarks and part of Rhododendron State Park.

Rhododendron State Park in Fitzwilliam, N.H., has the largest of 19 native Rhododendron maximum stands in central and northern New England. The 15-acre park, near Little Monadnock Mountain, once had another name: Old Patch Place.

Samuel Patch built the Old Patch Place sometime between 1790 and 1816. The Patch family sold the house and land around 1841. Subsequent owners sold it several times before Stephen Follansbee bought it in 1885. Follansbee did a thriving business selling rhododendron blooms for 5 cents a bunch, 10 cents a tub or 25 cents a buggyful. Follansbee also sold the medicinal waters of Monadnock Mineral Spring.

Levi Fuller bought the Old Patch Place and planned to lumber it off in 1901. A philanthropist named Mary Lee Ware, however, bought the land from Fuller and gave it to the Appalachian Mountain Club in 1903. The gift came with several conditions: that it be open to the public forever, that no rhododendron would ever be picked and that no ax ever be used. The AMC breached the contract once, after the Great Hurricane of 1938 required downed trees to be clear.

Hikers used the Old Patch Place as a hostel until 1947, when the New Hampshire Division of Parks and Recreation took over.

The National Register of Historic Places added the house to its list in 1980. Two years later the National Park Service named the rhododendron lot one of its national Natural Landmarks. According to the National Register of Historic Places, it represents ‘an early achievement of the conservation movement in New Hampshire to protect endangered natural resources.’

424 Rockwood Pond Rd, Fitzwilliam, N.H.

Ell Pond

The kettle hole known as Ell Pond in Hopkinton, R.I.

Ell Pond, Rhode Island’s only entry on the list of National Natural Landmarks, is a kettle hole surrounded by a quaking bog. The bog in turn is encircled by a cedar bog and rock formations. The surrounding woodlands are dense with rhododendron and mountain laurel, which bloom in mid-June.

The 50-acre preserve has trails that offer some of the most beautiful hikes in Rhode Island. Visitors say they go to the uncrowded preserve to find some peace.

The preserve abuts lands owned by The Audubon Society of Rhode Island and the state. In 1972, The Nature Conservancy bought Ell Pond to add a link to the web of contiguous protected lands in Rhode Island.

433-,445 Old Rockville Rd, Hopkinton, R.I.

Camels Hump

Camels Hump, one of a dozen of Vermont’s National Natural Landmarks

You’ve seen the Camels Hump of Vermont, if only on the back of the state quarter. Its distinctive profile makes it Vermont’s most recognized mountain.

The Camels Hump has had no less than a dozen names since Samuel de Champlain sailed down the lake that bears his name. De Champlain called it ‘Le Lion Couchant,’ meaning ‘the Resting Lion.’ Ira Allen called it the ‘Camel’s Rump.’ The Abenaki Indians called it ‘tahwahbodeay wadso.’

A forest preserve encloses the mountain, the summit of which philanthropist Joseph Battell donated to the state in 1905. By 1912, the Green Mountain Club built a trail between the mountain and Sterling Pond. Today the trail is a high point on the Long Trail system. The Green Mountain Club now pays a caretaker to make sure hikers respect the mountain’s fragile alpine tundra.

The Camels Hump has a number of trails, popular with hikers. On a clear day the view from the summit takes in Mount Washington in New Hampshire, Mount Marcy in New York and Mount Mansfield in Vermont.

Camels Hump is one of 12 National Natural Landmarks in Vermont, which include pristine freswhater marshes, a biologically diverse fossil reef, virgin forests and alpine tundra.

Camels Hump Road, Huntington, Vt.

Images: Dinosaur Trackway By Daderot – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2105435; Col. John Ashley House, By I, Daderot, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2523950; Gulf Hagas By Tcpx36 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17590021; Old Patch Place Cottage By User:Magicpiano – Own work, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22023191

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The Gravesites of Six Revolutionary Heroines

The gravesites of such revolutionary heroes as Paul Revere and John Adams are well known and well marked, but where are the revolutionary heroines buried? The New England Historical Society searched for the stories of courageous women willing to sacrifice for the patriot cause, and then for the their graves.

In each state, we found at least one (and often more) heroine and her resting place. Each found a way to support the American Revolution, whether by spying, nursing, publishing and even fighting.

Here, then, are six revolutionary heroines and their gravesites. If you know of another, please include it in the comments section at the end of this story.

Hannah Bunce Watson

Hannah Bunce Watson stepped in to run the pro-patriot Courant newspaper when her husband died suddenly of smallpox.

The Courant was crucial to maintaining popular support in New England for the American Revolution, as the British had shut down all the newspapers in Boston. Plus, New York’s Loyalist newspapers printed nothing but pro-British news. Only the Courant could provide reliable news to patriots in the Northeast.

Hannah already had plenty to do, with five small fatherless children. She knew little about printing but kept the presses running, even after Loyalists burned down the mill that supplied her paper. The British wouldn’t export paper to the colonies so Hannah persuaded the Connecticut Legislature to lend her money to rebuild the mill.

For two years Hannah steered the Courant, publishing stories about battles, local news, analyses of colonial politics and criticisms of the British Parliament.

Hannah Bunce Watson died in 1807 and is buried next to her third husband, Barzillai Hudson in the Old South Burying Ground in Hartford. The name on her gravestone is Hannah Hudson.

Lucy Knox

Of all the revolutionary heroines, Lucy Knox sacrificed the most for her husband. She defied her rich Loyalist parents in 1774 to marry Henry Knox, a mere bookseller. After the Battles of Concord and Lexington, she never saw or heard from her family again.

Henry taught himself about war from his books. He famously brought artillery from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston and forced the British to evacuate. He served as the second commander of the Continental Army, first secretary of War and founder of West Point.

When Henry left for war, Lucy Knox begged to let her join him. He finally relented, and she stayed with him until he retired in 1794.

Lucy was often pregnant, and only three of her 13 children survived to adulthood. She stayed with Henry during the brutal winter at Valley Forge. She cheered the cold and hungry officers with food, wine and sometimes dancing. Lucy and Martha Washington sewed socks and clothing for the soldiers. The two revolutionary heroines also tended to them when they took sick.

Lucy and Henry Knox lived in borrowed or rented homes for the first 20 years of their marriage, finally settling in their own house, Montpelier, in Thomaston, Maine.

Lucy Knox died in 1824 and is buried along with her husband in Elm Grove Cemetery in Thomaston.

Deborah Sampson

At five-foot-seven, Deborah Sampson was tall enough to pass as a boy in 1782. That was an advantage for a girl like Deborah who wanted to join the Continental Army and fight in the war for independence.

Sampson’s father abandoned her after her birth in Plympton, Mass., in 1760. She grew up in indentured servitude. As a young woman, she taught school in Middleborough, Mass.

Her first attempt at enlisting ended as a joke. She disguised herself, joined up and then apparently thought better of it after spending some of her enlistment pay on a drunken bender.

In 1782 she tried again. Again disguised, she signed up for service in Uxbridge in the Massachusetts 4^th Regiment as Robert Shurtlieff Sampson, her dead brother’s name.

Sampson’s undercover act held, for the most part, throughout her 17-month service. She had a close call during a skirmish in Tarrytown, N.Y., when musket fire struck her head and legs. Fellow soldiers brought her to the hospital. Though she let a hospital doctor dress her head wound, she left the hospital before he treated her leg was treated. Fearing discovery, she removed one piece of shrapnel, but she couldn’t retrieve a second. It stayed with her for life.

After a cold winter in which she suffered frostbite, Sampson received a promotion to serve as a waiter to General John Paterson in April of 1783. When she came down with a fever that summer, her doctor discovered her secret. But he kept it. His wife and daughters nursed Sampson back to health.

With the war ended, Gen. Henry Knox honorably discharged her at West Point in October 1783.

Upon returning to Massachusetts, she married Benjamin Gannett of Stoughton and raised four children.

Sampson lectured about her adventures and sold a book about her experiences. But she did struggle financially, and didn’t get her military pension until 1816. After that, she lived comfortably until her death in 1827.

Deborah Sampson Gannett is buried in Rock Ridge Cemetery in Sharon, Mass.

Molly Stark

Molly Stark is the best known of the revolutionary heroines because of the war cry uttered by her husband, Gen. John Stark. During the Battle of Bennington, Stark told his men:

There are your enemies, the Red Coats and the Tories. They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow!

But Molly Stark made her own contribution to the revolutionary cause. Born Elizabeth Page on Feb. 16, 1737, she had been married for 17 years to Stark when the American Revolution broke out. They had 11 children.

When her husband was camped near Fort Ticonderoga, smallpox broke out among his men. They were cold, hungry and disheartened. Molly Start sent a message to bring the sick home to her. She cared for some 20 patients, including her own children. She saved every patient, but she came down with the disease, which disfigured her for life.

Elizabeth (Molly) Stark is buried in Stark Cemetery in Manchester, N.H. A brass cannon captured at the Battle of Bennington – called ‘Old Molly’ – is fired every year in New Boston, N.H. in her honor.

Lucretia Allen

Lucretia Allen, born in 1770, was easily the youngest of the revolutionary heroines. The oldest child of Judge John and Mary Allen, she lived in North Kingstown, R.I.

Judge Allen staunchly supported the revolution and refused to help the British when they occupied Newport in 1776. He gave the patriots livestock and provisions, and wouldn’t let a Loyalist neighbor use his skiff to bring supplies to the British fleet.

One cold morning in May 1779, the British came ashore to take care of Judge Allen. They drove off his livestock and marched him at the point of a bayonet to their vessels. Then they set his house on fire.

Eight-year-old Lucretia, her mother and siblings fled in their nightclothes to a neighbor’s house. The children were shivering, so Lucretia ran back to her house as the British ransacked it. She faced them and asked for a blanket. A soldier tossed her a quilt.

The British released Judge Allen, and he rebuilt his home.

Lucretia Allen married Silas Allen and had three children. She died in 1810 and is buried in the Deacon George Allen Lot in North Kingstown (also known as Rhode Island Historic Cemetery North Kingstown #81). The cemetery is off Fletcher Road, deep in the woods behind the old Allen homestead at 415 Fletcher Road.

Ann Story

Ann Story’s heroics during the Revolutionary War earned her the sobriquet ‘Mother of the Green Mountain Boys.’

Newly widowed, Ann Story moved to West Salisbury, Vt., in 1775 with her five children. Tall and strong, she could handle an ax as well as a musket.

When the Revolution broke out, Vermont got dangerous because Loyalists and their Indian allies harassed the patriots.

Many Vermonters left their farms. Ann Story not only stayed, but offered to spy for the Green Mountain Boys.

In one harrowing incident, Story and her children fled in a canoe while Indians burned their house. To hide from future attacks, the Story family dug a cave in the banks of the Otter Creek.

One day, one of her sons discovered a pregnant woman lost in the woods. Indians had captured the woman, but left her behind when she couldn’t keep up. Ann Story took the woman in. Later, the newborn baby’s crying drew the attention of a Loyalist scout, Ezekiel Jenny. He demanded to know the hiding place of the Green Mountain Boys’ supporters.

Story defied him. “I had no fears of being shot by so consummate a coward as he,” she recalled. Jenny continued on his way, and Story told the patriots the Loyalists were afoot. Local patriots tracked down Jenny and his scouting party, captured them and hauled them to Fort Ticonderoga.

Ann Story later married Capt. Stephen Goodrich. She is buried at the Farmingdale Cemetery in Middlebury. Her headstone bears the name Hannah Goodrich. A second memorial marks her home site on Shard Villa Road, West Salisbury. It’s next to the Shard Villa Nursing Home, once the home of lawyer Columbus Smith.

End Notes on Revolutionary Heroines

Thanks to: History of Salisbury, Vermont by A.H. Copeland. You can read more about Ann Story here.

To find the grave of Lucretia Allen: According to findagrave.com, the easiest access can be made through Chimney Rock Drive, with permission of the owner at 150. A pipe rail and granite post fence enclose the lot.

Images: Stark Cemetery By AlexiusHoratius – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26455478; Lucretia Allen and Ann Story, artists’ conceptions.

This story about the gravesites of revolutionary heroines was updated in 2018.

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6 Hollywood Stars Buried in New England

New England may be associated more with summer stock theatre than the silver screen, but it didn’t take much to find 6 Hollywood stars buried in 6 New England states.

Plenty of films have been shot in the region, many of them classics. That’s not why our stars were laid to rest here. Each had a profound attachment to the place. Some were born and raised here, others fell in love with the mountains or seashore.

Here, then, are 6 Hollywood stars buried in New England.

Katharine Hepburn

The Academy Award winning actress was born in Hartford, Conn., into a privileged and liberal family. Her mother, Katharine Houghton Hepburn, brought her daughter to women’s rights protests and demonstrations.

In 1928, she graduated from Bryn Mawr College, where she got interested in the theater. After graduation she struggled on stage, including a summer in Ivoryton, Conn., at the Ivoryton Playhouse. Her breakthrough role came in The Warrior’s Husband, which led to her first film, Bill of Divorcement, directed by George Cukor.

She appeared in 10 more Cukor films, including such classics as Holiday, The Philadelphia Story, Adam’s Rib and Pat and Mike. In the last two films, she starred with her secret lover of 26 years, Spencer Tracy.

She won an Oscar for Best Actress in Morning Glory, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Lion in Winter and On Golden Pond.

Hepburn always kept close ties to Connecticut, frequently visiting her family’s summer home in the Fenwick section of Old Saybrook. When the 1938 hurricane washed the house away, she dug the family silver out of the sand and rebuilt it. She used a set of building blocks from FAO Schwartz to design the new house.

In 1965 she narrated a documentary about pollution of the Connecticut River, called The Long Tidal River.

She spent her last years at the Fenwick home, taking a daily swim regardless of the weather. Hepburn died there in 2003 at the age of 96. She was buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery, designed by Jacob Weidenmann, who also designed Bushnell Park. A simple gravestone reads ‘Katharine Houghton Hepburn, 1907-2003.’

Plenty of other movie stars rest in peace in Connecticut, including Jason Robards, Jr., Art Carney, Mary Tyler Moore, Patricia Neal, Frederick March, Raymond Massey and Gilda Radner, to name a few.

Rudy Vallee

His parents named him Hubert Prior Vallee when he was born on July 28, 1901 in Island Pond, Vt. He kept the Vallee, but swapped out Hubert to become Rudy, the name of a popular saxophone player.

Rudy Vallee was raised in Westbrook, Maine, where his father worked as a pharmacist. After an aborted attempt to enlist in the Navy during World War I – he was sent home because he was only 15 – Vallee went on to college at the University of Maine and then transferred to Yale.

He signed a recording contract in 1928, and his career took him from a crooning teen idol in the 1920s to a character actor on a campy television series in the 1960s. Vallee launched his film career with Vagabond Lover in 1929.

He claimed to have slept with more than 145 women, and he married four of them. He was a tyrant to work with, starting fistfights with people he didn’t like. Few who worked for him could stand him, and he had few friendships in the entertainment business.

In 1961, he finally took his talents to Broadway. He conquered the Great White Way in the hit musical, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and he played Lord Marmaduke Ffogg in the show Batman.

A bit of Vallee always remained in Maine. Though he lived in California, he maintained a summer home at Kezar Lake. He also composed the University of Maine fight song, the Stein Song.

Rudy Vallee is buried in Saint Hyacinth Catholic Cemetery in Westbrook, Maine. His family had to replace his gravestone after someone stole it.

Gary Moore and Garry Merrill are also buried in Maine.

John Belushi

In 1974, John Belushi and Judith Jacklin, his high-school sweetheart from suburban Chicago, visited Martha’s Vineyard for the first time. Still in his early 20s, he had a part in National Lampoon’s off-Broadway revue Lemmings in New York. He and Judith drove up to New England for a vacation.

They fell in love with Martha’s Vineyard. One year after that first visit, he rocketed to fame on NBC’s Saturday Night Live. His wild comic characters included Bluto Blutarski, in Animal House, Blues Brother Joliet Jake Blues, Samurai Futaba, Pete, the counter guy at the Olympia Café (‘Cheezborger, Cheezborger’), Joe Cocker and the Killer Bee.

In the summers of 1977 and 1978, the Belushis rented houses on the Vineyard. Then they bought a house in Chilmark from former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. “This is where I like being me,” John Belushi once said.

He died of a drug overdose in Los Angeles in 1982 at the age of 33 and buried in Abel’s Hill Cemetery on the Vineyard. He wanted a Viking funeral, but his mother wouldn’t allow it.

His gravestone reads, “I may be gone, but Rock and Roll lives on.” After his fans trashed the gravesite, Judith had his body be moved to an unmarked grave some distance from the tombstone.

Also buried in Massachusetts: Thelma Todd and Anne Revere.

Claude Rains

Claude Rains, one of the great character actors of Hollywood’s golden age, was laid to rest next to the last of his six wives, Rosemary Clark Schrode.

They are buried in Red Hill Cemetery in Moultonborough, a small town on the north shore of Lake Winnipesaukee.

He was born in London, England, in 1889, the son of a stage actor. He first appeared on stage at age 11, and continued his acting career in New York in 1913.

Eventually he made his way to Hollywood. He was nominated four times for an Academy Award, but never won. Rains played the title role in The Invisible Man, the corrupt police chief in Casablanca, a spy in Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious. He failed his screen test, though, for Katharine Hepburn’s first film, Bill of Divorcement.

Claude Rains spent his last years in a country house in Sandwich, N.H., a big white place with columns in front. He was introduced to the area when he and his fourth wife brought their daughter to summer camp in New Hampshire.

Rains already had a house in Pennsylvania, but after regular visits to friends at Squam Lake he bought the Sandwich house in 1963. Rosemary died soon after. Rains died of an an abdominal hemorrhage in Laconia on 30 May 1967, aged 77. He designed his own tombstone in Red Hill Cemetery in Moultonborough. It reads, “”All things once are things forever, Soul, once living, lives forever.”

Also buried in New Hampshire: Tammy Grimes.

Anthony Quinn

Quinn in Attila

Anthony Quinn was born in 1915 in Mexico and grew up in East Los Angeles. He fathered 13 children and starred in 100 feature films, including the Bedouin leader in Lawrence of Arabia in 1962 and the title role in the 1964 film Zorba the Greek.

Quinn won two Oscars, one for his performance the 1952 film Viva Zapata! and another for the 1956 drama Lust for Life. He was nominated for two more, Wild is the Wind and Alex Zorbas.

Quinn fathered 13 children and lived around the world, but spent his last years in Bristol, R.I. He bought a 10-acre compound on Poppasquash Neck with views of Narragansett and Mt. Hope Bays. He and his family lived on the estate from 1995 until 2001.

Quinn explained in an interview with Larry King why he moved to Rhode Island: “I went up there because — in New York, it was very difficult for me to live, and New York is a very competitive town, and I got tired of competition.”

He died in 2001 of throat cancer. His funeral service was held at the First Baptist Church in America in Providence. His widow asked the Town of Bristol for permission to bury him on his property. Her wish was granted.

Charles Bronson

Charles Bronson was born Charles Dennis Buchinsky in 1921 in Pennsylvania coal country north of Johnstown. He was the 11^th of 15 children in a family of Lithuanian coal miners.

Bronson followed his family into the mines until World War II, when he enlisted in the Army Air Force. He served as a tail gunner on B-29 bombers in the Pacific, flying 25 missions, and getting wounded in action.

After the war, Bronson went to art school on the GI Bill in Philadelphia. He decided he wanted to act after working as a set designer, and moved to Pasadena, Calif. He appeared in bit parts as a tough guy, gangster or Indian, until his breakthrough film, The Magnificent Seven.

Bronson then appeared in The Great Escape and The Dirty Dozen, next to Elvis Presley in Kid Galahad and in television roles. He made his most famous film, Death Wish, in 1974.

Charles Bronson starred in 14 films with his second wife, Jill Ireland, who died of breast cancer in 1990. They had seven children, who traveled with them to film locations. The family also vacationed at their colonial farmhouse in West Windsor, Vt., called Zuleika Farm. Ireland raised horses there and trained them for their daughter, Zuleika.

Bronson then married Kim Weeks, and stayed married from 1998 to his death from Alzheimer’s and pneumonia in 2003. He is buried in Brownsville Cemetery in West Windsor.

Engraved on his tombstone is the poem Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep by Mary Elizabeth Frye.

Photos: Katharine Hepburn gravestone, By Bunkosquad – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16637740; John Belushi, By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43755377. This story was updated in 2023. Brownsville Cemetery (Charles Bronson superimposed) By Djmaschek – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80171222.

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