Fairmont City

Wagaman uncovers stories in stone, leads efforts to restore site in Fairmont

History alive in cemetery -- Appeared in May 19, 2001 - Renaissance Fairmont from The Dominion Post

Ron Rittenhouse/The Dominion Post

Gena Wagaman, community volunteers and area college students are helping reclaim a part of Fairmont's history through their preservation work at a cemetery located off Maple Avenue overlooking Windmill Park.  Preserving the site helps residents connect with their past and is good for revitalization efforts under way in the Maple and Ogden Avenue area.

BY JENNI VINCENT

The Dominion Post

FAIRMONT -- Decades of neglect left the small cemetery overgrown and in bad shape.  Tombstones had fallen over and some graves were no longer marked when Gena Wagaman first visited it three years ago.

As she began to investigate the graveyard's occupants, Wagaman realized that this 2-acre cemetery -- located on a slight knoll just off Maple Avenue, overlooking Windmill Park -- contained a significant amount of local history.

Not only does it contain relatives of some of the area's most prominent early families, it also provides insight into others -- many workers of Irish descent -- who settled the area and what their lives were like, she said.

"This is a piece of local history that had been overlooked, but it's important because it gives local people a sense of pride and a way to connect to their past," Wagaman said. "We're trying to recover that for the community."

Foundation for growth

But its importance doesn't stop there.  Wagaman believes using the cemetery to educate residents about their community's history will provide a foundation for growth.

"This area -- Maple and Ogden Avenue, along with what's now known as Jackson Addition -- was one of the more prominent neighborhoods to begin with," she said.  "That ties in well with the revitalization work which is now going on in this area.  Many of the larger homes you see in the area date back to that more affluent era, while some of the smaller ones came much later in the 1940s and '50s."

"Further back in this area of the cemetery you can see a reflection of that affluence in some of the more elaborate monuments, more intricately carved stones, which are an indication of greater wealth or community standing," Wagaman said.

Wagaman, who works for the Cooperative Extension Service, is working under a $19,000 grant she received from WVU's Office of Service Learning -- funding that originally came from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Her local partner in this 1-year-old project is the Fairmont Community Development Partnership.

"Part of the goal is to use this money in ways that help students learn as they do service for the community," Wagaman said.  "It also allows us to enter into a partnership with the community because by bringing the university expertise here, the people are better able to empower themselves to improve their quality of life.

History in stone

The earliest of the 191 grave sites that have been identified belongs to John Manley, who died in 1815 at the age of 16, according to his marker, she said.

Wagaman said the last known burial occurred here in 1939.

Thomas G. Watson, brother of coal baron James Otis Watson, is buried at the Maple Avenue site, along with one of his sons, she said.

Former Gov. Francis Pierpont's nephew, Joseph Pierpont, is also buried at this old cemetery, Wagaman said.

He was wounded in the June 1863 Battle of Fairmont -- when Confederate troops tried to capture the union-held B&O Railroad bridge -- and died as a result of those injuries six months later, she said.

Zedekiah Kidwell, a Democrat who won a seat in the 33rd and 34th Congresses in the mid-1840s, is buried along with his family in the cemetery, Wagaman said.

"Ignatious Ghering, who died in 1870, was listed in the 1850 census as simply a 'gentleman' for his occupation," she said.  "Because of his social standing, you can see that he was able to afford a special kind of stone that didn't weather as badly -- which is shy you can still read it much more clearly today than many of the other ones."

Irish names such as Carney, Monaghan and Murphy show up on the tombstones, but that was only the beginning of Wagaman's genealogical research.

Many early Irish immigrants tot he area may have come to work in the coal mines or on the B&O Railroad, which first came through in the mid-1850s, she said.

"Through utilizing Census records, as well as county records of births, deaths and marriages, wills and deeds, we're able to reconstruct a little bit about their lives here," Wagaman said.

"For example, Cornelius Carney, who was the second son of Michael and Mary, was sheriff of Marion County in 1880," she said.

"Anthony Loftus died at age 18, but he was killed in a coal fall in one of the mines."

Looking at the tombstones has given her some clues about when illnesses swept the area.

"There may have been an epidemic -- probably influenza, but perhaps also from consumption or cholera -- in 1855 because we have several children buried here who have that as a death date," Wagaman said.

'1876 is another death date which comes up frequently because there was a massive fire in Fairmont that practically destroyed the downtown area, and some of those victims may have been buried here," she said.

"Cornelius Carney's wife, Mary, is here and her death date is about two months after the fire, with a cause of death listed as consumption.  But it could have been that she sustained lung damage in the fire and then died as a result of smoke inhalation and fire-related problems."

Wagaman believe that the evolution of Fairmont's development moved in a new direction -- closer to the east side of the Monongahela River -- after that devastating fire, which helps explain how this area became somewhat isolated.

Labor of restoration

Just cleaning up around the graves has taken lots of work by many community volunteers, including dozens of students from Fairmont State College and WVU, she said.

And the city of Fairmont has also helped clean up and dispose of brush.

While reclaiming the cemetery was the first step, Wagaman is now hoping to restore stones that have been damaged by the elements or perhaps replace missing ones to preserve the historic information contained on them, she said.

"Eventually we hope to have this registered as a historic landmark, which is why we are pointing out the historic individuals who are buried here," Wagaman said.

"We'd like to have a historic interpretative site here, one that people can walk through on self-directed tours, and perhaps also have a small interpretative center or museum here."

Revenues generated by these activities would be used to maintain the cemetery, Wagaman said.

She's also hoping to begin a "Save a Grave" campaign with Fairmont residents and organizations, aimed at helping to raise money for repairing or replacing old headstones.

"Once this place is looking the way it should, I don't think there's any way it will be neglected again the way it was for the last 90 years," she said.

An open house will be at the cemetery from 11a.m.-4 p.m. on May 27.  It will include a demonstration of laser scanning done recently by WVU students working through the Virtual Environments Laboratory.

The Marion County Historical Society has also been invited to participate.

Local residents will also be invited to give an oral history during the open house hours, Wagaman said.