Ancestor fights across miles, time to save graves
By Gary Harmon, The Daily Sentinel
Monday, May 12, 2008
Marcia Neal, once an American history teacher at Grand Junction High School, now finds herself in a modern American battle over how best to remember a piece of that history.
Neal is the only identified direct descendant of Noah and Lydia Aldrich, who are buried in a tiny, private cemetery in Vermont that a potential buyer wants to move.
The Hartland Historical Society in Hartland, Vt., contacted Neal about what could happen to the burial place of her great- great-great-grandparents and to enlist her help in preventing it.
Noah Aldrich II was a veteran of the War of 1812, who died in 1848 at age 61. Lydia died two years later, also at 61.
The cemetery also holds the graves of their granddaughters, Louise and Martha, both of whom died in 1850, and possibly three other family graves.
The historical society sent Neal the legal notice advertising a prospective buyer's intention to move the cemetery so he could develop the surrounding 150 acres. At its behest, Neal wrote to the court asking that it to stop the proposed moving of the graves.
A judge at first noted that Vermont law required immediate family members only to act in the stead of Noah and Lydia, "but my argument was that when you've been dead for 150 years, you don't have any of those," Neal said.
She is hopeful the judge will allow her to participate in a May 20 hearing in which a decision is anticipated.
"Technically, I own it," Neal said of the cemetery.
Neal has never visited the property and she'd have to trespass to reach the cemetery because it's landlocked within the surrounding property.
The prospective buyer, Michael Guite, 62, of Connecticut, wants to build a house and barn near the cemetery.
Members of the Vermont Old Cemetery Association "really want me to fight this to the bitter end," Neal said.
"We're looking for some precedence setting because we've never heard of such a heinous thing," said Tom Giffin, president of the Vermont Old Cemetery Association.
But Neal said she understands Guite's position and would like to accommodate his desire to build a home there.
"It's sort of a Western thing, I guess," she said.
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May 12, 2008
9:19 a.m.
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blacksho89 writes:
Her ancestors are fighting?
Does George Romero know about this? He could make another movie.