OXFORD — Trustees of the Fore Street Cemetery have requested to transfer ownership, management and maintenance of its one-and-a-quarter acre property to Oxford.
With the decision to accept up to voters, the Select Board has placed the issue as Article 36 on the warrant for Oxford’s Annual Town Meeting, which will be held June 7 at the town office.
The cemetery was founded back in 1872. According to Roger Twitchell, one of the association’s trustees. It was expanded at least twice – once after trustees voted in 1892 to buy abutting property to facilitate moving stone, and again during the 20th century.
Board officers are Arnold Twitchell, clerk and David Knightly, treasurer. Other trustees are David and Danny Witham.
Town Clerk Kathleen Dillingham informed the Select Board that the association currently holds about $3,000 in assets to manage the cemetery. If Oxford residents vote to make the cemetery town property, the assets would be turned over with the property transfer.
There are 270 lots available for purchase, with 45 for cremation only.
Neither she nor Twitchell were able to confirm exactly how many graves exist, but 34 are marked as being for veterans.
“There are slightly more than 50 in what I call the old cemetery,” Twitchell said in an email statement. “There are in excess of 100 in the 1940’s expansion, and a very few lots in the latest expansion. The association obtained land behind the current cemetery and there is plenty of room for more lots.”
Oxford’s Highway Department has been doing seasonal mowing and general upkeep there for 12 or more years.
A longtime resident of the Fore Street neighborhood, Twitchell also shared with the Advertiser Democrat memories of the cemetery going back to the 1940s.
“I have a faint memory of a lot of people getting together to clear what is now the southern part of the cemetery,” he wrote. “They cut trees, burned brush and left it clear. The older part of the cemetery had a cut stone wall around it. I have always wondered if the stone came from the quarry that is across from the old Fore Street School.
“I went to the Fore Street School for sub primary thru 2nd grade and remember walking home from school and seeing Al Twitchell and his son-in-law Bill Chouinard removing the southern wall to combine the two sections.
The level of the ground in the expansion was somewhat lower than that of the older section. My father hired a contractor to haul sand from a pit on my property in the late 1960’s to raise the level of the land.
“As we sold lots, we used the money to buy loam. We would have a workday to spread the loam and seed the area. We repeated this a few times until the expansion was all seeded. Most of this work was done by volunteers.
“Danny Witham has dug a lot of graves in the cemetery and says that he will go through a layer of loam, a layer of sand, and another layer of loam. Some of us put up the post and chain fence around the expansion, painted the gates and the chain and the posts.
“We hired the work done on the final expansion behind the current yard. As time went on, fewer and fewer people were involved.”
