Gravestone Repairs Among CPC Articles

BREWSTER — Bits of Brewster’s history, including the names of some of the first European families to settle here, are fading away – literally. Preservationists are hoping voters will approve Community Preservation Act funds to reverse the trend.

 At the Nov. 18 special town meeting, voters will weigh the merits of three Community Preservation Act funding requests, including one seeking money to clean or repair some of the town’s oldest headstones in the Brewster Cemetery on Lower Road. 

Known as the Sea Captains’ Cemetery, the burying ground is not only unique because it is owned by a not-for-profit group rather than the town, community preservation committee Chair Sarah Robinson told the select board recently. 

“It is also the burying ground of many of the founding families of Brewster,” she said. 

 A recent survey identified three gravestones that were broken, 15 that are leaning and in danger of collapse, and 850 that are “threatened by lichen and other biological growth elements which are obscuring the inscriptions and the historic craftsmanship of the stone carvers,” the funding application reads. Proponents are seeking $76,250 to to cover the cost of cleaning and restoring the stones, using historic preservation monies under the Community Preservation Act. 

 While CPA funds have been used for similar projects in Dennis and Harwich, they are generally used for town-owned cemeteries where town operating budget funds are an option. The Brewster Cemetery is owned and operated by a volunteer-run not-for-profit organization made up of lot owners and their heirs. The association cares for the roads, fencing, trees and grounds, but not the repair and restoration of individual tombstones.

 “That responsibility belongs to the owner families and their heirs,” the CPA application reads. “However, most of the historic tombstones no longer have family or heirs in the area to care for them.” Among those at rest there are a host of sea captains like John Lincoln, Albert Knowles, Elkanah Winslow and Judah Baker; and prominent citizens like Sara Augusto Mayo, who co-founded the Brewster Ladies’ Library; Sophia Hopkins who was affiliated with the Perkins School for the Blind and was a friend of Helen Keller, and Albert Crosby of Crosby Mansion fame. The cemetery is also home to a stately mausoleum for the Samuel Nickerson family, responsible for Nickerson State Park and the mansions now at Ocean Edge.

 With the inscriptions on headstones and monuments now difficult or impossible to read because of biological growth, the damage is “causing a loss of an important part of the town’s history,” Robinson told the select board on Oct. 7. 

 The request for funding has received strong support, including nearly 2,000 signatures on an online petition. Also sending letters of support are the historical commission, the chamber of commerce, the Brewster Conservation Trust and the Brewster Historical Society.

 “Rated a number two goal on Brewster’s Vision Plan was retention of Brewster’s historic character, and this cemetery is a major contributor to that character,” historical society President Sally Gunning wrote. “The stories the cemetery tells are so much a part of our history, not just as a town but as a country.”

 Also sending a letter of support to the community preservation committee was the select board itself. 

 “The Brewster Cemetery and its historic gravestones contribute to the town’s unique character and act as a means of communicating its fascinating history,” board member Mary Chaffee wrote. The site is a popular tourist attraction, she added.

 The select board voted unanimously to recommend that voters approve the funding request. If they do, work would begin almost immediately, focusing initially on repairing the broken stones and resetting the leaning ones before the onset of freezing weather. The cleaning would then take place during the spring, summer and fall of 2025. The applicants received two competitive bids for the job and have chosen John P. Fougere, Inc., who recently did similar work in Wellfleet, Dennis and Chatham. 

 “All give him good marks,” the application reads.

 Special town meeting voters will consider two other requests for CPA funding. One seeks $150,000 in CPA affordable housing funds to support the Brewster Affordable Housing Trust’s rental assistance program. Managed by the Housing Assistance Corporation, the program provides monthly subsidies of up to $500 to participating families, along with professional case management to help residents find suitable rentals. The CPA funds would be added to monies from various other sources to help fund the program’s $375,000 annual cost. The select board unanimously endorsed the request.

 A third application seeks $28,750 in historic preservation funds to enable the town clerk’s office to create a digitized record of all the historical documents in the town vault. The project will not only protect the documents from excessive handling, but will enable the public to easily search and access them online. The select board also unanimously recommended approval of this project.