Guilford Receives $3,300 Grant To Clean Up And Repair The Smallpox Cemetery

From the Town of Guilford:

January 14, 2021

First Selectman Matt Hoey has announced that the Town of Guilford has received a $3,300 Neglected Cemetery Grant from the State of Connecticut Office of Policy and Management. This is the second Neglected Cemetery Grant the Town has received. The historic Goldsmith Cemetery at 1454 Moose Hill Road was repaired in 2019.

The “Smallpox Cemetery” is a ¼ acre parcel of land enclosed
by stone walls and located in a deeply wooded area on the west bank of the East
River in Guilford. It has been owned by
the Madison Historical Society since 1949 and can be accessed through a
right-of-way path for its members from the public road.

The cemetery proper is part of a larger 9-acre tract known
as the “Pock Lot,”, which was purchased and used by the Town of Guilford
between 1760 to 1814 to quarantine people exposed to the highly contagious smallpox
virus. Colonial medicine was in its
infancy at the time, but many of the scenes of quarantine resembled what we are
now experiencing in the 21st century with the COVID virus.

Maintenance of the “Smallpox Cemetery” over the years has
been mainly limited to brush clearing since the Madison Historical Society is a
non-profit group primarily committed to the maintenance of the historic house
museum and historic school building. As
a result the cemetery enclosure has been neglected.

The grant money will be used to remove a downed tree on a
section of the stonewall, repair several sections of the wall that have come
down and if resources permit, reset the bronze plaque that has been loosened.

“I want to thank Joel Helander and Tracy Tomaselli for
taking the lead and securing this grant for the Town,” said First Selectman
Matt Hoey. “Many of these older smaller cemeteries in Town have fallen into disrepair,
but they are an important part of our history and it is important that they be preserved.”

This press release was produced by the Town of Guilford . The views expressed are the author's own.