Stepney Cemetery Clean-Up Day June 23, 2012

The Save Our Stepney Task Force (SOS) is hosting the second Birdsey’s Plain/Stepney Cemetery Clean-Up day on Saturday, June 23rd from 8 a.m.-12 p.m. NOON to trim the overgrowth surrounding gravestones and the perimeter of the cemetery.

The goal is to prepare the cemetery for a Civil War Commemoration August 23, 2012. The community is invited to attend.

The Birdsey’s Plain/Stepney Cemetery is located at 25 Pepper Street, next to Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, originally the Methodist meeting house. In cemetery lie nearly over 1,400 men, women,and children. Each life constitutes a footnote, a page, or a chapter in the story of Stepney’s development as a community.

This cemetery was established with a gift of land by Noah and James Burr, Jr. in 1794, and subsequently enlarged in 1813 and 1844. The earliest death date on a surviving tombstone is that for Nathaniel W. Knapp who died in 1797.

Many individuals associated with sites on the Stepney Heritage Trail are interred here. They include industrialists William Penfield, Ira Penfield, Barnum Curtiss (with three of his four wives!) and Andrew Barnum Curtiss; merchant Burr Hawley; postmasters Harriet Platt and Stephen French; pioneer settler Thomas Hawley; and James Burr whose sons donated this land for a burial ground.

There are 31 individuals interned in the cemetery who served in the Civil War which include Ira Penfield, Edward Hawley, brothers Eugene and Edward B. Hubbell, Andrew Leavenworth, John Oliver and 25 other men.

The cemetery has been under the watchful eye of Phillip Corning for several decades and while regularly mowed, the encroachment of growth has overtaken some of the earlier graves. Any and all interested community groups or individuals are welcome.

Please bring your own gloves, trimmers and a bag lunch. Refreshment will be provided. For more information please contact Kathie Loehr at (203) 261-7892.