WESTERLO — Westerlo Rural Cemetery is called “rural” not because of its setting but because it was created to be a new kind of burial place — a restful place for the living as well as for the deceased. The Rural  or Garden Cemetery Movement in the mid-19th Century — says town resident and part-time cemetery historian and preservationist, Eric Peterman — reimagined cemeteries as “attractive places to retreat to, with garden-like beauty.”

He speculates that the earliest burials in the cemetery, located along Route 143 north of the hamlet, occurred when  “a good-hearted farmer perhaps gave up a couple of acres for the purpose.”  Until the advent of such community burial grounds, families living in the country would have buried deceased members on home-ground, or in a church graveyard, he says.  Small family burial grounds can still be spotted across the Hilltowns.

Dennis Fancher, a trustee of Westerlo Rural Cemetery Association  and the town historian, says there are 72 private cemeteries known to exist  in the town. He says records show that the oldest decedent in Westerlo Rural  is a woman named Miriam Lobdell, whose husband, Isaac,  served in the Revolutionary War.  She died on Sept.  7, 1802, and was reburied, probably from one of the community cemeteries when Westerlo Rural was incorporated in 1871. Many of the first burials in the now formalized cemetery  were reburials from  cemeteries scattered throughout the town, Fancher says.

Fancher says it isn’t known what people called the graveyard  back in the early 1800s, when the town of Westerlo had yet to be carved out from the towns of Coeymans and Rensselaerville and the site was one of many community cemeteries.

The Westerlo Rural Cemetery  Association has been revived recently and now has  an active  core of citizens who are  watching over its maintenance and well-being. Peterman has devoted a lot of time to the cemetery’s improvement and so has his corps of volunteers, including Roy Quick, Herbie Deering, Harold Smith, Jack Boone, and Sammie Baker.

Cemeteries as parks

The notion of landscaped  cemeteries that took root in the mid-1800s resulted in sprawling park-like places with monumental memorials at every turn — Oakwood Cemetery in Troy and Albany Rural Cemetery in Menands are two of the most impressive examples in this region.

Peterman makes no grand claims for Westerlo Rural.  There was neither the wealth nor the  desire for conspicuous display that created places like Oakwood or Albany Rural.

“It’s a modest country cemetery,” says Peterman.

“We have a few large monuments,” he says, “a yew tree, some little copses, a nice grove of fir trees, and pleasing, undulating terrain.”

But perhaps the most noteworthy feature, he says, is the vault in the middle of the original cemetery, a formidable stone structure built into the hillside and faced with monumental iron doors strapped shut against intruders

Once used to safeguard  the caskets of those whose deaths came in winter and whose burials could not occur until the ground thawed, the structure — along with a small old white frame building — has received the attention of Peterman and his fellow volunteers.

The vault, paid for by a local worthy in 1871, according to an inscribed slab above its doors, was displaying the ravages of time, collapsing in on itself, and its stone walls coming apart when Peterman and others decided to go to work on it.

The restoration work removed the grassy earthen dome which, it turned out, was supported by slabs of bluestone.  The long disused chamber below — after a big bluestone slab was propped against the doors —  was laboriously filled with “several  dump trucks-worth of earth,”  Peterman estimates. Then the top was reseeded.

But the pièce de résistance of the restoration work was the gardening part, involving the transplantation  of a big old lilac bush — about 12 feet tall Peterman estimates — that was not thriving at its location against a wall.

A backhoe, front loader,   and lots of labor were required to lift it up — “The root ball must have weighed three tons,” Peterman says — and then set it down again and replant it to one side of the vault, where it is enjoying more sun and more freedom to grow.

The big move was made on Good Friday —  “It just fell out that way,” Peterman recalls — on a day when spring was in the air but, as it turned out, not for long. Nonetheless, the transplantation was a success and the lilac bloomed, abetted by Peterman’s daily 10-gallon daily watering.

“It did everything it usually does,” he says.

An old and healthy hydrangea to the other side of the vault complements the lilac nicely. Together, they soften the somewhat forbidding aspect of the vault.

“It truly is massive and impressive,” Peterman says. “You almost think it could be the tomb of Jesus.”

Peterman and his team are also restoring another structure: a tiny, windowed, white frame building that might have been built as a caretaker’s cottage, he says.

“It’s a work in progress,” said Peterman. Woodchucks and mice have been banished, the foundation relaid with fresh white-oak timber, and joist and floorboards renewed.

George Coffey, a 96-year old resident who remembers mowing the cemetery in 1936,  has told the restorers how the building looked when it was still in good shape. His memory has served as their guide.

“We want to make it a good-looking building in harmony with the rest of the cemetery,” Peterman says.

As for landscaping plans, Peterman says there is no room in the old part for new trees or shrubs, just for an occasional new burial, though those take place mostly across Route 143 in the newer part. Individuals are always welcomed to beautify gravesites, Peterman says, especially if not with the plastic flowers that have become all too common in recent years.

But volunteers  like him who love the old cemetery will continue to trim, prune, remove wild vines, and keep the place looking spruced-up and well cared for. 

Corrected on Sept. 15, 2016: The original caption for the picture of the cemetery vault had the wrong name for the stonemason; it was actually Roy Quick.