Dignity in final rest: Once forgotten, Primrose Cemetery now restored

LACONIA — It took more than a year, along with community engagement and a lot of hard work, but those buried at Primrose Cemetery on the north end of the city have been afforded dignity in their resting place.

A coordinated effort to memorialize those buried there and restore the cemetery was largely finished last week, just in time to beat the fast-approaching winter, though there’s important work which remains. 

Primrose Cemetery, located on a quarter-acre plot tucked away in an industrial park off North Main, is the final resting place for some few dozen souls, mostly former residents of the county farm. It was little-known before a group of citizens volunteered to clean it up and, fatefully, asked county employees for permission to remove a fallen tree.

When they approached Jon Bossey, Belknap County facilities director, he gave them permission, then set to work to push funding through in order to restore the graveyard, bringing it up to a respectable standard in order to honor the dead laid there. 

Prudy Veysey of Gilmanton and Lois Kessin of Laconia were two in the group — they’d learned all they could about the cemetery and its history, and were struck by the lack of care afforded to it. They approached Bossey who, like other contemporary county employees, was not aware of its existence. 

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Bossey responded to their request at the time. “But, we have a cemetery?”

County Commissioners Peter Spanos, Glen Waring and Stephen Hodges through the last budget process — and recognizing its significance — immediately jumped on board with the effort, appropriating $11,000 to kick-start restoration.

Bossey approached Boyd Corporation in Laconia, operating nearby the cemetery, and asked their permission to cross their property in order to begin performing restoration work. They approved.

“They’ve been really friendly and helpful,” Bossey said Friday morning. 

And other community volunteers, like Jason Drouin Custom Homes — whose employees cut down all overgrown brush cluttering the cemetery — helped move the project forward, too. Other volunteers cleaned headstones, now in much better condition than they were a year ago when their inscriptions, many just numbered, were nearly impossible to read.

“Some of [the stones] are buried,” Bossey said. “It’s dignity, it’s respect.”

The restoration includes a black fence which rings the graveyard and a memorial sign, noting the names of those buried in the cemetery and their likely dates of death. It was created by inmates in the sign shop at the New Hampshire State Prison and is a striking blue.

“Last week we got the sign hung up,” Bossey said. 

In the next budget cycle, Bossey will request money to have 41 gravestones replaced by Perry Brothers Monument Co. in Concord, a group skilled in that department. 

“Then it’s perpetual care from that point on,” he said when asked about next steps.

In 1853, Belknap County purchased 148 acres of land from the Boynton family — Stephen Boynton and his wife Betsey S. Boynton and daughter Mary E. Boynton — and turned the property into the Belknap County “poorhouse” and jail, according to an article written by Virginia Hansen in the fall 2022 edition of The New Hampshire Genealogical Record.

The “poorhouse,” more commonly known as the county farm, provided housing, care and work for the indigent of Belknap. In 1873, the Belknap County Farm laid out a new cemetery to replace the old one, which was full and in an inconvenient location. The location of that older cemetery remains a mystery.

The earliest stone markers in the newer cemetery, Primrose, are engraved with names and dates, and denote remains of those buried between 1873 and 1892, Hansen explains in the report. Those number 40, and there are an additional 60 simple stones marked only by number.

“I would hope that someone would find that their family member was laid to rest there,” Bossey said when asked Friday about his hopes for community engagement with the newly restored graveyard.

“It’s a landmark for people to come back to,” Shelley Richardson, county nursing home administrator said Friday, adding credit is due to the county commissioners, who avidly supported the effort. “They cared about the county and the people who came before us — it’s a lot of history.”

Anyone who has questions about the restoration effort, identifies a relative buried there, or hopes to get involved should contact Bossey at 603-547-5490.

Further information regarding the cemetery is available at belknapcounty.gov/history.

Those buried at Primrose Cemetery and identified are: Walter Ballyntine Alexander, Wallace F. Baker, Israel Bartlett, John F. Batchelder, Rosa Bickford, George Bodreaul, Robert Briggs, Margaret “Maggie" Elizabeth [Carson] Buswell, John F. Campbell, John Clark, Sarah Collins, John H. Cook, Joseph D. Cota, Mahala L. Cota, Saubour Courcy, Frank Davis, Moody Davis, Thomas J. Denning, Edward Dillingham, Louisa Dockham, Samuel Dolloff, Henry Eaton, George Elliott, Horace Elliott, Joseph Ellis, Caroline Dora Evans, Emma Fifield, William Fogg, Viola Goodale, Lews/Louis Guy, Charles Hill, Hannah Hilliard, Dolly Jenness, Ann Ladd, James Lesnor, William A. Merrill, John Messer, George M. Mudgett, Rebecca Nutter, Eben Osgood, Eliza Parker, Emma Peavey, Harry Perkins, Joseph Pero, Anna M. Pickering, Curtis Pickering, Valorie Powell, Frank I. Prescott, John W. Price, Sarah O. Rand, Jessie H. Reynolds, William S. Rogers, Arthur J. Salisbury, Caleb M. Smith, Joseph B. F. Smith, Emma Snow, Laura Stackpole, William Straw, Benjamin Thompson, Versile Tilton, John Tobin, Charles Warren, John Weeks, George Wyman, and John F. Batchelder, who was disinterred in 1927 and buried in Blossom Hill Cemetery in Concord. 

“At least now, it’ll get the acknowledgement it deserves,” Richardson said.