Rogers Hill Cemetery

“A family tree can wither if nobody tends its roots.”

Genealogy as a hobby often means spending hours in front of a computer screen, hours in a library, shifting through dusty old documents and planning vacations around town clerk office hours and cemeteries near by.

When I first visited the Peacham area last year, I spent most of my time driving around looking for cemeteries where ancestors were buried.  This often meant getting lost on roads I wasn’t familiar with, stopping at little country stores to ask directions and cursing at my GPS for not knowing every back road.

On one particular day I was in search for the Rogers Cemetery in Newbury.  I wanted to find the grave of Lieutenant Josiah Rogers.  Josiah was born in 1747 and was one of the pioneers of Newbury.  He settled on what was later known as “Rogers Hill.”  He served in the Revolutionary War and died in 1828.

It was getting dark but I was determined to find this cemetery, so I continued to follow the directions that the man at the hardware store gave me to follow.  A turn here, a left there and finally I found it.  So I jumped out of the car with my camera and proceeded to walk around the cemetery looking at headstones, hoping to find Josiah’s.

The cemetery is surrounded on all sides by tall trees, which made the area a little darker, as the sun was setting.  I was near the last few rows of headstones and had not yet found his grave.  It was fall so I was bending down to sweep the autumn colored leaves from around the headstones to read some of the inscriptions. 

I will admit that although I don’t frighten easily, being in a cemetery after dark is not high on my list.  So as the sun was almost gone, I was determined to find his grave.  The cemetery was alone on a road going up a hill, a lone house across the street and I found my mind running with thoughts of all those horror movies I saw as a kid, like Friday the 13^th and Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Suddenly something jumped from the leaves from behind a headstone and run into the trees.  I jumped back screaming it looked HUGE!  Ok in reality it was probably a squirrel but for that split second as I screamed I could have sworn it was much bigger.

I quickly covered my mouth with my hand and then removing it started apologizing to the headstones for jumping back on them and screaming.  Realizing that I had just screamed over a little (HUGE) squirrel and then apologized to people who had been buried for well over a hundred years, I started laughing.

I thought to myself, I must be a true genealogist to be out here, alone, in an area I don’t know, in a cemetery at dark, searching for an ancestor that died in 1828.

I did in the end find his headstone.