Stories in Stone

Finding our Founders
October 27 from 4-5pm

Join the staff of the Archives Halloween week for a walking tour of nearby Riverside Cemetery where we will stop by the gravesides of Oren B. Cheney, Jonathan Stanton, Alonzo Garcelon and several other founders
and early professors of the college. Established in 1857 and a mere three blocks away, this garden cemetery in the tradition of Mt. Auburn in Cambridge, Massachusetts was the burial place of choice for Lewiston's most prestigious and affluent citizens in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries.  Through stories and pictures, we will retell the lives of these significant individuals who shaped Bates College.

Please RSVP to muskie@bates.edu if you would like to join us.  The tour will be limited to the first 15 responders.

Bates faculty, staff, students, and friends tour nearby Riverside Cemetery during Halloween week, learning College history by visiting graves of early Bates notables, including founder Oren Cheney, famed professor Jonathan Stanton, and leading Lewiston citizen Alonzo Garcelon.

Here, the group pauses at the graves of faculty legends Benjamin F. Hayes and Richard C. Stanley. The two died years apart yet they and their families are buried side by side, suggesting (but not proving) a close friendship, explained Kat Stefko, director of the Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library (tan coat, gesturing), who led the tour with archivist Pat Webber. The Muskie Archives celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2010. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen.