Follow-up article:
Vandals shatter pieces of history
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
SEAN KIRST
POST-STANDARD COLUMNIST
Whoever desecrated the grave of Emily Upton probably wasn't thinking of what Emily's husband endured when his wife died.
But that's all Lydia Rosell could think about Tuesday, as she stood above a broken tombstone so heavy it dug a trench in the turf when it fell.
Emily's grave was one of about 70 monuments vandalized after closing time Friday at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, where some of the most famous men and women in Upstate New York history are buried.
Abraham Lincoln's secretary of state, William Seward, is
buried there. So is Harriet Tubman, the escaped slave who was known as "The Moses of her people."
So is Leon Czolgosz, who assassinated President William McKinley and was put to death at the state prison in Auburn. So is Myles Keogh, one of the Americans who died in 1876 while serving under George Armstrong Custer at the battle of the Little Big Horn.
Emily Upton lies beneath the same circle of monuments as Keogh. A profile of her face dominates her tombstone. That is what first caught the attention of Rosell, a historian who fell in love with the cemetery years ago. Rosell soon learned that Emily was a niece of Enos Throop, a 19th-century governor of New York. She grew up to marry Emory Upton, a general in the U.S. Army.
In 1870, as a young woman, Emily died of tuberculosis, Rosell said. Emily's husband struggled with his grief until it overwhelmed him and he committed suicide, Rosell said. The monuments to that tragedy stood side by side at Fort Hill for more than a century.
Friday night, someone pushed Emily's tombstone to the ground.
"I feel this very deeply at many different levels," said Rosell, author of a book about the cemetery. "In the broadest sense, I feel it because the community's history is represented here. It's such an insult to these people, the people who built this city, and such a slap in the face to all their hopes and dreams. You think of all the emotion that went into these burials, all the craftsmanship that went into all of these stones."
She wondered out loud about the fury that triggered the destruction. Old records show acts of vandalism occurred even in the 1800s, she said. But there is little question that it has gotten worse in recent years, and Rosell links it to young people who've lost all connection to their community and the way it came to be.
Don Poole, superintendent of the cemetery, and Elaine Hutson, the office manager, said vandals picked up stone urns and shattered them by hurling them against monuments. They pushed and shoved until they overturned stone pillars supporting a stairway in a hill. They knocked over a beautifully detailed tombstone for Louise Agnes Moses, an Auburn woman who died in 1872. That tombstone, inscribed with delicate script and floral patterns, broke in half.
"These weren't kids," said Poole, who guesses the vandals were probably young men. As of Tuesday, no arrests had been made. Poole said the Fort Hill Cemetery Association is offering a $5,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of anyone responsible.
The mayhem wasn't limited to old tombstones. Poole also discovered a line of newer monuments that were broken loose and shoved to the ground. One of them carried the names of an elderly couple whose infant daughter died in the 1950s and is buried in the plot. While the father also died more than 20 years ago, the mother, in her 80s, is apparently alive.
The vandals did not let a family's grief over losing a baby slow them down.
As for old stones that are severely damaged, Poole isn't sure if they can be restored. "Technically, under state law, if a tombstone gets knocked over the family is responsible" for the costs of repair, Poole said. But many descendants of those 19th-century families left Auburn long ago. And it would cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, to repair the more elaborate stones. While the most renowned graves in the cemetery somehow went untouched, Rosell said that offers little consolation. "Everyone in here is important," she said Tuesday. "Seward and Tubman just got a lot more headlines."
That point was reinforced a few minutes later, when a car pulled up and a woman climbed out with three young children. The woman said she'd read about the damage. She then hurried to Fort Hill to check on the grave of her father, who died in 2004. Although the tombstone wasn't harmed, the woman declined to give her name. She was afraid the vandals might return and target her dad's monument.
"I don't understand why anyone would do this," she said, as her voice began to crack. "Don't they understand this is a sacred place?"
All around her, as if in answer, she could see the broken stones.
Sean Kirst is a columnist with The Post-Standard. His columns appear Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Call him at 470-6015 or e-mail him at
skirst@syracuse.com or visit his blog and forum at
www.syracuse.com/kirst.
© 2006 The Post-Standard. Used with permission.