Pitcher Cemetery

Pitcher Cemetery is a small cemetery off RT 52 on Pitcher Road in Northport. It is easy to miss because you cannot see it from the road. Suddenly you come to what looks like a driveway going steeply up the side of a high embankment and at the top is the cemetery. It is best to leave your car at the bottom as there isn’t a good place to turn around in the cemetery and it is only a short walk up.

The burying ground is on a 150 acre parcel of land that Lewis Pitcher purchased from General Henry Knox in 1799. The land was shaped like a backwards L running from Beech Hill Road to Pitcher Pond and then turning and continuing out to Rt 52 (the Belfast Road.) It ran along Sucker Brook which Lewis Pitcher dammed up in at least 4 places to provide water for the sawmill he built at Pitcher Pond. (Called Great Pond and Long Pond in his deed.) Remnants of his dams remain today and show beautiful stonework. The Pitcher Road is most likely where the logs were brought in for milling and it is where Lewis Pitcher build his house, just off the Belfast Road..

It is not known how old this cemetery is. There are sites with only field stones for markers which could predate the dated graves. It is also thought that the earliest graves may have been Native American. There are reports describing the Penobscots coming down from Indian Island along this route on their way to Knights Pond and then to the Bay. The spot has characteristics that have been favored for burying grounds. It is on high ground with one side falling steeply down to Sucker Brook and the other above the road. Many burying grounds in this area have a flowing stream on at least one side. The remaining two sides here are wooded.

In 1835, Lewis Pitcher deeded the 150 acre parcel to his son, Amos, “excepting four acres heretofore conveyed by Lewis Pitcher to the Inhabitants of Northport.” It is unclear when this first conveyance occurred as there is no deed at the Registry of Deeds and no note of it in Northport, perhaps because all the Town Records before 1880 were burned in a fire. We have no idea what these four acres were for nor if Northport voted to accept them. If they did not, the conveyance is null and void.

In 1888, Amos Pitcher deeded the same land to his son, Lewis E. Pitcher. This time the deed read, “excepting from the above described premises one-half acre at the cemetery for the Inhabitants of the Town of Northport.” Perhaps this is the four acres that is now reduced to a half acre. In 1896, Lewis E. mortgaged his land to Lewis A. Knowlton and Charles Baker, “excepting about one-half acre reserved in sd deed (the 1888 deed) for a burying ground.” Because of this it has been unclear whether this is a family burying ground or a Town one. When Lewis E. died in 1924, and his wife, Edna, in 1939, the land passed to his children. They sold the rights for harvesting the soft wood to Roger A. Harrison from 1945-1947, but in 1955, the whole 300 acre estate of Lewis E. Pitcher was probated and sold to John Pitcher Wescott ( son of Mary Blanche Wescott, a daughter of Lewis E. and Edna Pitcher,) with all descriptions of the land being referred back to the earlier deeds describing the exception of the burying ground. The land stayed in the Pitcher family until about 2011, shortly before John Wescott’s death, when it was sold with the reference to the burying ground intact.

Until it fell into disrepair, Pitcher Cemetery was bounded by a fence. The remains of two of those fences remain on three sides. Oldest are the wooden posts which still hold the remains of decoratively twisted metal wiring that ran between them. Stapled to these posts now are metal ones which probably held a thinner wire. There are also the remains of a stone wall. From these markers it is clear that the cemetery is larger than the area used for graves, probably encompassing the half-acre set aside for it.

The cemetery is the resting place primarily of the Pitcher family and their neighbors. Lewis Pitcher is buried here but there are no stones for either of his wives, Sarah (Sally) Pendleton from Islesboro whom he married in 1784, and who died in 1805 and with whom he had 9 children, or Sally Smith, his second wife, about whom very little is known but with whom he had at least three children, one of whom was Amos. It has been reported that over the years many stones have fallen over and may now lie quite deeply buried which may account for absences. The cemetery was very overgrown and neglected until 1999, when Lester Pitcher died and bequeathed a sum of money for its maintenance and Wally O’Brien cut it out of the jungle. It is now mowed by the Town of Northport.

Job Pitcher, a son of Lewis and Sarah is buried here with his wife, Mary (Patterson) and their oldest child, Hiram. Amos and his wife Harriet (Hills) have their graves here and their son, Joseph who died of pneumonia and measles in the Civil War (1864) has a memorial stone. Lewis E. Pitcher and his wife, Edna (Patterson) are buried in the Grove Cemetery in Belfast.

The Jabes Ware family have a large monument set off by granite curbs. Jabes and his wife Chloe were neighbors of the Pitchers. Their son, Horace who died in a Confederate prison camp is remembered for his military service in the 4th Maine Volunteers. Their daughters, Eunice and Sarah died at 8 days and 24 years respectively. Daughter Harriet grew up to marry Frederick Flood but died at age 18; both are buried here. Also named on the monument is Benjamin R. Fields, 1769-1831, who is unknown at this time.

Simon Knowles (identified as a Soldier of the Revolution) and his wife Lydia were also neighbors of the Pitchers, and their son David, married Sarah (Sally) Pitcher, daughter of Lewis and Sarah. Mary Jane (Storey) Knowles, from Camden, whose stone is very broken and hard to read was married to David and Sally’s son, David. (David’s third wife was Mary McCobb from the Lincolnville side of Pitcher Pond whom he married when they were both in their sixties.)

There is a grave for Harriet Tenney who died at age 16 years. She is the daughter of Merrill and Suviah Tenney who are buried in Eastside Cemetery. Merrill was a mariner and the family lived in Northport while he was away at sea. Emerline (Clark) Small, wife of George W. Small, has a gravestone with an open book with a finger pointing upward suggesting that her soul has gone to heaven through her deep faith. Her husband, George, was a mariner and she probably lived in Northport while he was at sea. They had only been married two years when she died at age 21. Charles Patterson and his wife, Nancy, who married late in life, were neighbors of the Pitchers. Charles was the brother of the wife of Job Pitcher and the wife of Asa Pitcher .

Pitcher Cemetery begs for further historical investigation through new technology and old-fashioned research. It is a very interesting place.

Written by Corelyn Senn