Woodbury Cemetery is another easy place to miss. Tucked back behind a church, most of the folks flying down Route 302 have probably never taken notice of Woodbury. It sits beside the Highland Lake Congregational Church, right where the speed limit turns 45. I nearly missed it myself, but happened to glance over on my way home from the cemeteries of Chute Road. I park at the variety store several meters from the church and cemetery and walk over. I pass an enormous, ramshackle home that sits on the corner of Route 302 and Duck Pond Road. Just beyond this house, between it and the church, lies a crumbling building with the remnants of a neon sign that once read, “Millbrook Dancing”. I continue on to the cemetery.
Access to Woodbury Cemetery is not through its front gate, but through a path that winds up the side of the grounds. It’s bordered by a stone wall which appears to have been kept up better than the fences at Brown or Chute Cemeteries, although the lettering on its gate is quite faded. There a mere handful of graves – 15 in total. The families comprising Woodbury Cemetery are the Havens, Prides, Woodburys, and one member of the Small family.
A section of the headstones is cordoned off with a metal chain on granite posts. This fenced area contains a large monument for the Haven family. The monument has a beautiful bird engraving that I don’t think I’ve encountered previously. Altogether, the cemetery is very well taken care of – especially in comparison to my visit at Chute Cemetery. I assume that its proximity to the Highland Lake Congregational Church has ensured a certain level of upkeep for the cemetery.
Just beyond the stone wall at the back of the cemetery grounds sits an aged, rusting, flat-bed truck. It’s clear that the truck hasn’t been driven for many years, although it’s tires look brand new. I make a point to explore it – a Loadstar 1800 – and wonder how it ended up behind Woodbury Cemetery.
The Westbrook Historical Society has compiled some of the most thorough cemetery research I’ve encountered. Their website has links for every cemetery, listing each individual interred in the city’s various burial grounds (1). Because some of the smaller words on the headstones are erroded and difficult to read, I’m thankful for the work done by the Westbrook Historical Society – I can access their website and read full transcriptions of every headstone.
The names I see in Woodbury Cemetery are familliar. I wonder if the Pride family interred in Woodbury is the one that Pride’s Corner in Westbrook was named for. Perhaps the Haven’s there are related to the modern, local chocolatier of the same name.
The Woodbury family apparently lived quite closeby. A geneology website puts Captain Ebenezer Woodbury and his wife Anna as living in an area named Duck Pond Village (2), and I assume this is in the vicinity of the modern day Duck Pond Road (which is just around the corner from Woodbury Cemetery). According to his headstone, Captain Woodbury passed in 1855 at the age of 77, meaning he – clearly a maritime man of some sort – could very well have served in the War of 1812. But there are no American Legion flags here denoting anything of the sort.
All of those interred at Woodbury Cemetery would have lived not only to see Westbrook achieve status as a town in 1814 (3), but statehood for Maine in 1820 as well. I know that Westbrook has historically served as a mill town (even today), and it seems likely that early factories and mills would have developed here. The individuals in Woodbury would have lived during the boom times for Maine’s natural resource economy, and perhaps benefited from it.
I learned from a source in the Maine Memory Network that a new Grist Mill was opening in Westbrook in 1830 (4), confirming my suspicions that mill activity in Westbrook has been a longstanding source of employment. Would the individuals in Woodbury Cemetery have worked in one of the local mills, or even managed or owned one?
Aside from researching the cemetery, I attempt to uncover a little information about the dance hall a few meters away. Local weekly paper, The Bollard, wrote an article concerning the site in 2011 (5). Apparently, it was a happening venue for entertainment and fun in the mid-20th century. The folks in Woodbury Cemetery will never know that for a period of 20 years their resting place was neighbored by a community hot spot. It’s strange, looking at Millbrook Dancing – with it’s caved-in roof and broken sign – t0 think that it was ever new. I wonder how Woodbury Cemetery fared during the active years of Millbrook Dance Hall. Would any of their ancestors have danced the night away at Millbrook while their relatives rested nearby?
One of the most fascinating things about history is how it compounds over time. They are so many layers to history – even in Westbrook, which wasn’t yet a town at the turn of the 19th century. In a city just over 200-years old, there are a multitude of overlapping histories, and the corner of Route 302 and Duck Pond Road – with both the Woodbury Cemetery and Millbrook Dance Hall – is an example of such.
Notes:
1) “Woodbury Cemetery,” Westbrook Historical Society, http://www.westbrookhistoricalsociety.org/Cemeteries/Woodbury%20Cemetery.pdf.
2) “Pejepscot, Cumberland County, Maine 1790 Census Returns,” Roots Web, Ancestry.com, http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~meandrhs/pej90.html.
3) “Fact Sheet,” Westbrook Historical Society, http://www.westbrookhistoricalsociety.org/facts.html.
4) “The new grist mill broadside,” Maine Memory Network, http://www.mainememory.net/artifact/20132.
5) “That’s My Dump,” The Bollard, http://thebollard.com/2011/12/15/thats-my-dump-41/.
Plot Summaries 