Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1875-02-05
Bellows Falls Cemetery.

MIR. EDITOR 81 DO not often puIueh
your paper or exhaust the patience OF
your readers this seay, but with your
permission / will submit few observa-
tions upon the absorbing topic of the
day. Ispeak of Belloaos Falls Gene
terry" for think no place should be
selected unless it would be distinetively
a cemetery for the whole place, for no
sect no society, but one that can be re-
garded as public burial place for our
dead.
Can we regard the place which we are
called upon to take, Mr.. Hurd's plot
back of the Methodist church, as an
swering the purposes of public ceme-
terry for our villages
1t is conceded that only from three to
four acres can be used for burial purpo-
SEES. If this place is selected can we not
reasonably anticipate that the most de-
sirable spots would in one or two years
at the furthest, be selected and taken
up-I don't say actually occupied but
appropriated, so that very soon there
would be complaint that the grounds are
so restricted that the choice lots are
gone and only the least desirable are left
for our successors
| But it may be said those grounds may
be extended allowing it to be true, is
it not better in the first instance to OBJ
tain all we need now and prospectively
| than to take the hazards of future need
and the uncertainty of getting what we
may want for it must be borne in mind
that in extending this ground hereafter
we shall have to encounter the possible
opposition of the adjacent landholders /;
we may have to pay an excessive price if
it should be asked, and if attempted to
be taken by sequestration we may find it
utterly impossible to get rod of it, as
the law provides that you cannot extend
a burial ground within twenty rods Of
any dwelling, and we have shown that
this plot isaetually surroundedby build
! ing lots that the owners hold for build
ing purposes. So it would appear that
the ground is too small for present use,
with grave doubts whether we can ever
make tlarger, and if it could be purchased
the cost of any extension acoasld simply BE-
enormous. Then | repeat, is it not man
ifest that it is desirable to get ample
grounds in the first instance and spend
our time and money in identifying what
we get?
| Now there is another objection to the
place we are called upon to take. 1t is
too near the living portion of our vii
lage, and upon grounds that in all hu
man probability will be wanted and uset
for building purposes; already Their
are building lots taken up and owned b,
different individuals, all around thi
place, and in fact this very spot ha
been plotted and laid out into lots b,
the owner, and because they are not nov
! occupied can we say that they will no
Z be needed, aud that too in the near fiji
ture? If we could but realize tn
mistake that great many of ou
New England villages have made i
locating their cemeteries too near thei
towns, mistake once made cannot b
rectifed, cannot be overcome afterwards
mistake which leads to regrets that
more wise foresight could not have bee
exercised in selecting their ground
= mistakes, however, which they must Ia
: Dor under and endure to the latest pc
terity, we should hesitate long befol
we should appropriate this spot for OF
+" village cemetery.
Again, if we can secure other an
n ample grounds for cemetery and ever
way desirable, why should we insist u
on taking this place to the detriment
!, our citizens who have put their none
70 into building lots lying adjacent to ii
% | do not mean to say, if this spot of a
N others was the one we ought to hav
Il that that consideration should deter
from taking it, but if we are not requi
ed to virtually destroy the, lots mort
! south and east of this site, as we mo
II assuredly should if we selected it f
Of that purpose, shonld we not give OF
i. neighbors little consideration for the
" property and especially SO when thu
70 have invested upon the continued pre-
,s perity of our town and upon the reaso
m able prospect of their purchases BEN
i used in the future growth of the plat
in which we by an actof locating cemete
or in this spot must emphatically negati
ia. by putting limit to the growth in IL
n direction
M But it is said if we do not get Il
to ground we shall not get any. Why s.
we Why is it flung in the teeth of some
in our people at every corner of the sire
he that they don'twant a cemetery, that tn
wo are fighting this spot simply to stave
tie, the settling of the question, that tn