Restoring Town of Niagara cemetery becomes labor of love
Jun. 22—TOWN OF NIAGARA — It all started with a casual visit.
In 2019, Town of Niagara historian Pete Ames went to an old cemetery off Witmer Road to do some research.
When he got there, he noticed some of the stones at the bottom of the pillars at the entrance gate were damaged. He worried letting them go would only make the problem worse over time.
"I went by there to look up somebody buried there and I noticed the stones," Ames said. "I figured if something doesn't get done, it would fall and would never get put back up."
On that visit, Ames also noticed that the cemetery, which is the final resting place for more than 250 people, many of them town residents, had more problems beyond the front gate.
The fencing surrounding the property was covered in sumac, grapevines and Japanese knotwood.
Several headstones were toppled over. Others were broken into pieces.
These days, Ames and supporters from in and around the town have made strides in restoring the cemetery to more of what it should be: a clean and inviting place for visitors to get a glimpse of history and enjoy some quiet time outdoors while paying their respects.
For Ames, the son of former Village of Youngstown historian Don Ames, it's all part of his passion for history and learning more about it.
As he likes to say, "Everybody's got a story," and he believes the new-look Witmer Road Cemetery has plenty of good ones to tell.
"I've always been interested in history but mostly genealogy," he said. "That's my passion, whether it's my family or somebody else's. I like the detective work and digging up information. That's always been a passion of mine, doing genealogy. I try to help people where I can who are looking for answers."
CEMETERY'S HISTORY
The cemetery traces its roots back to two members of one of the most prominent families in Town of Niagara history, the Witmers.
Two of the Witmer brothers, John and Abraham, moved from Pennsylvania to what is now the Town of Niagara in the early 1800s, with John arriving first in 1810 and Abraham following a year later.
The family had a farm in the area and buried some of their loved ones on a roughly 2-acre parcel where the cemetery is now located.
"That was the original family cemetery," Ames said. "Over time, the cemetery was expanded to accept other burials within the town."
By the 1970s, Ames said there were no longer any Witmer family members who were able to maintain the cemetery so it was taken over by the town. Since then, he said, the grounds have gone through periods of looking good and, at times, not-so-good.
"For the last 50 years, it goes in cycles," Ames said. "People care. They do some stuff to fix it up. Then they fade away and then it stops. Then another group comes along at some point and the same thing. The town ended up with it when it became abandoned so it's up to their purview to keep it up."
A NEW 'UP' CYCLE
Since Ames first took notice of the shabby condition of the pillars five years ago, a lot of work has been done to make Witmer Road Cemetery more attractive.
The first order of business was shoring up the pillars at the front gate. The Town of Niagara Lions Club donated $2,000 to get the job done and local masonry expert and Wheatfield Town Justice Gary Strenkoski did the work at an affordable price as part of what Ames described as a "labor of love."
Then came the landscaping work.
Ames, his significant other, Theresa Brosius, and his "right-hand man" from Lewiston Jeff Manning, spent hours, days and months clearing vegetation that covered both sides of the four fence lines that surround the property. Ames said Town of Niagara Parks and Highway Department workers have helped with the trimming and the cutting.
Manning said he had no idea the cemetery existed before he started looking into the background of his wife Barbara's family history and found out some of her relatives were buried at Witmer. He said he had a discussion with Ames years ago about "trying to do something" to improve the cemetery's look and appeal. The talk led to work that produced positive results.
"Just by coming, every couple of days, using little hand tools, cleaning out a little section, we got all the inside fence done that year," Manning said. "The following year, we got the outside fence done."
Cornell Cooperative Extension in Lockport helped as well. The organization spent about four years assisting with one of the biggest landscaping challenges — removing the presence of Japanese knotweed, a particularly stubborn species of weed with bamboo-like stems that spreads rapidly.
Brosius took the lead on creating a small garden around a shade tree in a corner of the cemetery near the main entrance. The spot includes a wooden bench for visitors, one of two on the grounds that were donated by David D. Witmer, the great-great-great-grandson of Abraham Witmer.
Before Ames and others got involved, the cemetery had no sign at Witmer Road to alert passers-by that it existed.
The Town of Niagara Lions Club donated funds to install a new sign on the street. It features the name of the cemetery with information on cremation burials on the front and a map of the cemetery plots on the back.
Last fall, the cemetery made another big addition when Ames acquired a columbarium from Wisconsin. The permanent structure, which has niches that are designed for the respectful storage of urns, was installed on a concrete pad poured by Strenkoski.
"This way each of the 40 niches will hold up to two cremates," Ames said of the columbarium. "So we can hold up to 80 cremates in that unit.
"I'm hoping the Town of Niagara residents will want to be buried in the town so that's why we did that," he added.
HISTORY AND HEADSTONES
Ames estimates there are between 250 and 300 people buried at the cemetery, although most of the records were lost over the years, making it a challenge to locate and identify all of them.
Some of those that have been identified have interesting histories, including Ezekial Hill, who was the first Town of Niagara secretary in 1812 and who Ames said was known as the "first school teacher west of the Genesee River."
When Ames started digging into his cemetery research project, he initially identified 12 military service members who were buried there.
He discovered No. 13 — Lauren Witmer — after he and another cemetery volunteer, Tom Tierney, worked with members of the town's parks and highway department to lift up a large headstone that had fallen over on its face.
Once lifted, the headstone revealed Lauren Witmer's name. Ames researched his background and he and Tierney rebuilt the base and have since set Witmer's stone upright.
Arguably the most interesting cemetery discovery by Ames involves George Martin, a Civil War soldier who served in the Third Regiment of the United States Colored Cavalry.
When Ames first found Martin's stone it was lying on the ground next to the headstone of his wife, Jane, which was also in a similar position.
Ames had a birth year — 1840 — to work with but no record of his military service.
"I spent the next six months researching his story back to Virginia where he was born a slave and his mother and his four siblings were also slaves," Ames said. "His father was a freeman, a Black freeman. The father bought the freedom of his wife and his five kids and they moved to Pennsylvania because, back then, the law in Virginia was, after a year, they could be re-enslaved so they had to leave the state of Virginia."
Records show Martin enlisted in the Union Army in 1863 in Pennsylvania.
"He was one of the first groups to sign up when (President Abraham) Lincoln decreed that Black people could fight for the Union Army," Ames said.
After the war, state records listed Martin as a resident in the Town of Niagara in 1875. Ames said, that at that time, Martin worked as a potato farmer on a small farm located near the current site of Target store on Niagara Falls Boulevard.
Three years ago, the Town of Niagara Lions Club paid for a new foundation to replace the original base which heaved from frost. Ames said Niagara Monument Co. reset Martin's stone using a crane free of charge. A plaque recognizing Martin's service and place in U.S. history was also added.
Ames said he's thankful for all the support he's received from all of the individuals and organizations, and especially the town parks and highway department workers, who have made contributions along the way, noting that all of them have been "instrumental" in the project's success.
Work continues on identifying additional cemetery occupants and restoring and properly replacing headstones and other markings.
And, of course, there's always more research for Ames to do.
"Now my thing is to try to get headstones repaired and set back up," Ames said." Some of them are hundreds of years old. They fall over. They break. The frost heaves them up. Now, that's what we're working on, repairing the headstones."
UPCOMING WORKSHOP
Next month, Ames will join members of the Western New York Genealogical Society in presenting a "Save our Cemeteries" workshop in the town.
The workshop will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on July 13, with a morning session to be held at the Calvin K. Richards Community Center, 7000 Lockport Road, and an afternoon session to include a tour of the Witmer Road Cemetery.
The workshop will feature presentations by Ames and Manning, who will discuss the cemetery restoration effort as well as Town of Cheektowaga historian Maureen Gleason, who will provide information on how to properly clean a headstone, and Strenkoski, who will demonstrate how to repair a headstone and headstone foundations. A representative from Cornell Cooperative Extension will also provide information on how to contend with Japanese Knotwood.
The cost of the workshop for members of the Genealogical Society is $20 per person. Admission is $25 for non-members. Lunch is included.
To register for the workshop, visit wnygs.org. Registrations will be accepted through July 1.
