Lamson Corner Cemetery
Resting upon a raised ridge of grassy land
and abutting the wooded hilly region above Whigville is Lamson Corner Cemetery. Claims of the sightings of a Civil War
soldier have been whispered down the lane and the burial site continues to stoke the interest of passers-by with its curiously
secluded location.
The History
This site is located at the junction of Milford
Street (Route 69) and Scoville Road in Burlington. To the direct north side of the ridge on which this cemetery is located
lies the Major Curtiss Bog, named for the military man who lived near its banks.
Many of the headstones are unreadable, the
earliest readable date being the late 1700's (Ruth Graves [born: March 1, 1781, died: August 20, 1783] only two
and a half years old. In addition to Ruth, there are an unusually high number of children buried here. In 2002,
vandals damaged many of the headstones here after which police searched for leads:
Near to this site, there is the rumor of
a small village that was completely wiped out by a small pox epidemic long ago. Stories of ghostly figures dressed in
Victorian-period clothing seen along Route 69 have been reported. Although its exact location has not yet been determined,
Creepy Connecticut staffers suspect that
the village may very well have been the neighborhood named Polkville, which was formerly located directly south of this cemetery. Behind
Lamson Corner Cemetery and slightly south is the neighborhood known as Whigville (after the Whig (obsolete term for Republican)
party. Whigville's residents were almost completely made up of Yankee Whigs whose stance regarding the abolition
of slavery and other volatile subjects raised the ire of many Democrats of the time. Some prominent
Democrats in the area took umbrage at the fact that there was a neighborhood so close to them that they opted to create a
neighborhood named after a Democratic president (James Polk). Polkville was the resulting settlement.
There is a question mark about this copper
mine community in that it appears to have disappeared off maps after the 1880s. Initially, we had some theories about
why this may have occurred, including a land-grab scheme by Bristol authorities at the time. However, as was later discovered,
Polkville's name was changed to Edgewood (a name that still appears on moder-day maps) and the original families were scattered.
But could Polkville's original founders have been struck down by a deadly epidemic?
Lamson Corner Cemetery may be the final resting
place for some of these people who succumbed to the epidemic. With all due respect to my esteemed and prestigious colleague
at the website of Shadowlands, there is now strong evidence to support the claim that some of the people buried here had succumbed to small pox.
This region is riddled with small pox cemeteries and the sites of former vaccination hospitals, so this is not an outrageous
assumption.
In addition to this site, we have learned of another site
not far from the cemetery, known as Hospital Rock. According to records, a Revolutionary-War era small pox
inocculation (or variolation) hospital was erected on Rattlesnake Mountain. Wealthier patients spent time there convalescing
after having the small pox virus introduced into their systems (typically done by inhaling infected scabs that were subsequently
crushed into dust). Sixty-six of the patients carved their names into a 60' expanse of bedrock. Although the hospital
no longer exists, the rock is still there. It is currently undergoing archeaological scrutiny and is being protected
by the townships in the area to guard against vandalism. To learn more about Hospital Rock, visit this website:
http://www.hogriver.org/issues/v02n02/hospital.htm
or read the thesis by Plainville Historical Society Anquarian
Authority, Mel Schneidermeyer, entitled "The King of Terrors: Smallpox & Hospital Rock in 1792-1794" published in 2004
by Executive Press in Plainville, Connecticut.
