Carmen/Miller Cemetery Restoration Progresses

Today cleared up much earlier than forecast but given the ~2" of rain this morning and the wet ground I think we made the right decision to wait until Tuesday to resume.


According to most written accounts, Sam Carman, Daniel Webster and the tavern crew imbibed quite a bit. The day usually ended with Webster being carried upstairs to his room. Given the historical alcoholic haze though which the folks interred here saw things, this fence would look perfectly straight to them.

-- Marty

Good start installing Carmans fence

Monday, November 16, 2009
Today was a beautiful Fall day and Betty, Diane, Ron, Bob, Eben and I made good use of it by putting in nine sections of split-rail fence at Carmans/Miller. The posts for these sections are still loosely placed, we'll tighten everything up after we get the fence roughly placed. A County employee, Kevin, was there with two helpers grinding wood chips out of the bush pile we left in the field and just happened to have an auger with them. They put the holes in near the oak tree on right, in background, of below picture where the roots were thick. Depending on the weather, we tentatively plan to come back on Friday to continue. --Marty

More Work at the Carman/Miller Cemetery

It's taking a lot longer than we anticipated readying the Carmans/Miller cemetery for the split-rail fence. Diane, Ron, Eben and Marty spent another two hours on Friday removing logs, small hills, fence poles and leveling the two Miller headstones plus several foot stones. Ron and I will go back on Monday to remove a few more small trees, I think then we'll ask for the fence to be delivered. Here's what the scene looked like today- 

The below is in the Miller portion of the cemetery where the usual suspects leveled two mounds of dirt from uprooted trees:

We bought some crushed concrete with us, and a level, and straightened out the Miller stones:

 

In clearing out the debris from where the barbed wired fence was I found the missing piece to Warren's headstone:

Ron dug all the way to China trying to dislodge Anson Hard's fence pole (installed 80 years ago) to no avail-

 

At the end of the day there was a big pile of logs and brush and a cemetery that hasn't seen the light of day in many years: 

 

If only Sam's Club (Sam Carman's Inn, that is) were still in business we could have gone across the street to wet our whistle.

--Marty

 

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Helen Tiernan Murder 1937

It was a lovely spring day. The weather was fair and in the upper fifties on Sunday, May 16, 1937 as sixteen year-old May Savage of Brookhaven Hamlet was walking through the woods near her home about 100 feet east of Yaphank Avenue [this section now generally known as Old Stump Road]. But her pleasant afternoon was shattered when about 2:50 pm she discovered the body of a young girl whose throat had been cut and whose body burned.

Thus began an episode that brought to Brookhaven Hamlet notoriety that was front page headlines in newspapers across the country.

Finally, after several years of procrastination, I have finally gotten to posting this story on the Brookhaven/South Haven web site at http://brookhavensouthhaven.org/history/HelenTiernanMurder/HelenTiernanMurder.htm

While the news stories appeared in many national and international newspapers and were carried by the wire services, the accounts here are mostly transcribed from local community newspapers. They were selected to “tell the story” from a more local community perspective.

Cemetery Maintence, 1937

Found while perusing the Long Island (Patchogue) Advance, Sept 3, 1937, Brookhaven (hamlet) news, by Helen M. Ewing:

"The annual cleaning of brush from the graveyards is being carried on by the state through the Town highway department. There are 12 of these family 'bury-grounds' in this community, including South Haven."