This burial site is on the east side of Rickard Road in Skaneateles. If one proceeds north from U.S. Route 20 on Rickard Road toward Lee Mulroy Road, the plot was on a knoll behind the barn of the second farm on the right, which is now owned by the Marshfields and whose number is 3646.
Although I have not visited the location to verify the report, I understand that there no longer remains any evidence of the graves. The best and most recent word concerning the graves was information that Michael Plumpton, of Marcellus, recalls his aunt Alice (Mrs. Raymond) Dando telling him. The Dandos lived on the farm in the 1930s and early 1940s. Mrs. Dando said that there were two or three tombstones. A woman and child were buried about 1803, and a man was buried about 1804.
My parents were best friends with the Dandos and after hearing Michael Plumpton's report I now remember my mother's telling me the same thing, which she had, of course, heard from Alice Dando. I remember that as a child of seven or eight in the late 1930s I had visited the farm with my parents. I played in and around the barn with Ray and Alice's daughters Helen and Kitty, but I have no recollection of the tombstones from that visit.
Barbara Spain (née Bendel), who has written about the topic in the newsletter of the Skaneateles Historical Society in the January/February issue, grew up on the same farm. She told me in January 2003 that there were no headstones there as she was growing up. She, however, had found a footstone that bore two initials. The second letter was a "P."
Anyone with additional information about this cemetery is encouraged to drop me a note.
woosterk@cortland.edu
Copyright © Kenneth Jennings Wooster
All rights are reserved.
File created: January 30, 2003.
File modified: January 30, 2003.