Town Historian Dan Cruson offered a walking tour of the Village Cemetery on Sunday, June 14.

While standing in the newer section of the cemetery, Mr Cruson said he would not be talking about the 21st Century graves, but would be focusing on graves from the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries.

“My purpose today is to kind of give you an idea of how to read a cemetery,” said Mr Cruson. “If you come into it and you just look, scan the tombstones, you can tell a tremendous amount about the cemetery, how old it is, and a good deal about where trade relations were. There is a great deal that it tells about the town itself. What I hope to do is show you how to do that.”

The types of stones in a cemetery shares a tremendous amount of information, according to Mr Cruson, who advised first looking at the stones.

Most of the headstones in the Village Cemetery, Mr Cruson said, are granite, which is long-lasting and hard.

“As we get into the 19th Century you’re going to start to see marble stones,” said Mr Cruson, adding those stones came primarily from marble quarries in Vermont.

Marble’s unfortunate quality, Mr Cruson said, is that the carbon dioxide from rain causes the marble to dissolve over time.

“As we go into the 18th Century we are going to find slate,” said Mr Cruson. “Almost all of the slate that you are going to find in here comes from Boston.”

Sandstone is also a stone that can be seen in the Village Cemetery, and Mr Cruson said those primarily came from central Connecticut and were shipped by water.

Mr Cruson spoke about Mary Hawley’s donation of land for the cemetery, and the town benefactress’s arrangement to have the cemetery’s gates built and landscaped.

“She was involved directly with this, which was done in 1924,” said Mr Cruson, while tour members peaked into the cemetery’s holding vault, which Mary Hawley also had built.

Later during the tour, Mr Cruson spoke about trends in cemeteries throughout the different centuries, like obelisks, which he said became popular after Napoleon Bonaparte traveled to Egypt in 1798. Mr Cruson also noted different markings on gravestones and sentiments that were popular in the different centuries.

Along with Mary Hawley, notable Newtowners Mr Cruson pointed out during the tour included John Beach, Alfred Jefferson Briscoe, and David Judson.

Mr Cruson also emphasized the importance of maintaining and preserving cemeteries during the tour, and he spoke more about Mary Hawley by her gravestone, which is situated near the markers for members of her family.

“She did so much for the town,” said Mr Cruson, after bringing up the then growing topic in town of the Newtown Board of Education looking into possibly closing Hawley Elementary School in the 2016-17 school year due to declining enrollment.

The walking tour was one of multiple events held by the Newtown Historical Society that day. The society also hosted an open house event at the Matthew Curtiss House, 44 Main Street, and a marble making demonstration at the house by Thomas Kingsley, of Kingsley Marbles in Trumbull.