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'They're just fading away': One Alton historian works to find, honor veteran graves

 Martin Cornelissen of Alton has identified over 600 veteran gravesites in the town’s 115 cemeteries.
Catherine McLaughlin
/
Laconia Daily Sun

This story was originally produced by The Laconia Daily Sun. NHPR is republishing it in partnership with the Granite State News Collaborative.

Like its history itself, there are cemeteries scattered across the town. For every small one visible from a stretch of road, there are dozens more.

For a decade, Alton historian Martin Cornelissen has tried to locate and visit all of them, learn about those laid to rest inside, and collate and preserve their history. Of the 115 burial grounds in town that he knows of to date, he’s been to 112. Though he has since expanded to all graves, Cornelissen began the work in search of each of the veterans buried in the town — nearly 600 that he's found so far.

Cornelissen finds passion in unlocking the history behind each person he researches, but also believes in preserving local ties to the past. History is destroyed — by nature, time, or carelessness — just as it is made. On Memorial Day in particular, Cornelissen described, having local veterans to remember and honor ensures citizens remain moored to the lessons of history.

“It needs to be passed on. People need to understand how this country was built,” Cornelissen said. “They’re just fading away.”

The roots of Memorial Day are in local veterans’ remembrance ceremonies and the decoration of fallen soldiers’ graves. Decoration Day, an early iteration of the holiday, was first widely observed in 1868, reflecting on the toll wrought by the Civil War, and by the end of the century many states had made it an official state holiday, starting with New York in 1873. It became more nationally honored in the wake of World War I and expanded to honor deaths of American soldiers in all wars.

Cornelissen, an active member of the New Hampshire Old Graveyard Association and former president of the Alton Historical Society, first attended a workshop of the latter group in 2009. By 2014, he had undertaken surveys of the town's large cemeteries.

For leads on potential sites, Cornelissen refers to local history books, town records of death certificates stretching back to 1770, the county registry of deeds, genealogical services and websites and word of mouth, including everyone from friends and neighbors to local hunters.

Getting a lead on a new potential grave, though, is the easy part.

Many of these burial grounds can be largely unmarked or hidden by overgrowth on 100-acre properties. Of the stones that are marked, many are in disrepair or vandalized. Some are atop mountains or, more likely, on or only accessible via private property. Many of the oldest graves, toppled by years of frost or by vandalism, have been swallowed by the forest floor.

Connecting a lead to a physical location, Cornelissen said, takes “leg work.”

Once he does find a headstone, Cornelissen photographs it and attempts to read it — for older ones, use of a mirror to reflect light at a side angle can help accentuate weathered engraving.

He has stacks of binders full of veterans he has located and researched. The largest share, more than 200, are Civil War veterans.

There are standouts: like Charles Estes, the Civil War soldier who was on site when President Abraham Lincoln was shot and helped transport him away from Ford’s Theatre, or Maj. George Savage, who succeeded in getting his horse Old Tom — who outlived him — buried beside him.

“There is a seriously huge amount of history,” with each person buried in the town, veteran or otherwise, Cornelissen said.

While the endeavor began with veterans — Cornelissen’s father was a World War II U.S. Marine — it has expanded to all of the towns burial sites. His binders full of soldiers join binders full of diagrams of each of the 112 cemeteries he’s visited.

Preserving cemeteries also preserves land: they are protected from being moved or developed, but only as long a relative can assert they wish their ancestor to remain in place. Historians do the work of identifying and notifying relatives.

Just as he uses books and records kept by the local historians ahead of him, Cornelissen’s records can be used by historians that follow him, getting more specific over time.

“That’s what it’s all about, really,” he said.

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