By Michael Davis

Special to The News

Howdy neighbor!

On the edge of a swamp in the woods off North Bridgton’s Middle Ridge, cast up along a languid bending of Roger Brook and overspread by shadowy pine, a single headstone can be found laid out as on a bier of moss. Despite its position perilously close to the swift-running stream, and despite the erosion wrought by a century’s measure of storms and the encroachments of frost and lichen, even still, the white marble of this lonely headstone rises like a pale ghost to meet one’s eye, as if to affirm amid the moldering overgrowth of its surroundings the eternal and unperishing nature of that soul whose graven name can still be traced on its timeworn surface. It is the stone of Martha E. Longley, born March 8, 1824 and wife of J.R. Longley, and the inscription informs us that Martha went to her peace on Nov. 30, 1896 over 125 years ago.

The situation of this wayward stone was recently brought to my attention by Paul Waterhouse, who had first noticed it on a hike a couple of years ago and who, walking by Roger Brook in recent days, had thought again of Martha and gone down to see if her headstone was still there. He found it just as it had been, but this time, spurred on a moral urge to set right the problem of a gravestone seemingly so far from its proper place. He contacted me down at the Bridgton Historical Society, offering the case up as a mystery for me to solve if I was able. Eager to learn more, and ever-ready to investigate the secrets of our town, I resolved to find it out. But as it happened, the case of the missing headstone was not to be an easy one, and the secret of the stone, once learned, is a far greater one than even I expected.

We began with a supposition, that Martha was not actually buried beside Roger Brook. Now, it must be allowed that remote, solitary gravestones are not an unknown thing, even in Bridgton, as of the case of Seth Cole on the Merrifield farm, and sometimes such burials are even overgrown and forgotten, as with the Brocklebank Yard in Side City, but in most cases, such burials are known to us, as our archive maintains an active collection of all known graves in Bridgton. Looking through the archives, I found nothing of Martha. And beyond that, the situation of her slab on the very marge of the river, less than a foot away from the rushing water on a swampy peninsula utterly devoid of any development, fencing, or gradation to indicate a small family burial yard, indicated to me that this stone did not actually mark out an unknown grave. Paul supposed it might have been carried there by some unknown action from the nearby Ridge burial ground, but whatever its origins we both agreed it did not seem likely that Martha was really buried there.

In light of this, I began my research in the vault and, quite honestly incredibly quickly, I hit on a result. In our archive of the Bridgton Police Blotter, I found a note that on Saturday, April 30, 2005, Bridgton Police dispatch got a call reporting that, “A gravestone was seen in a Middle Ridge Road brook.” I have little doubt that this call is in reference to Martha’s stone, which can be seen with slight difficulty even now by persons passing over the Middle Ridge Road bridge. In 2005, Martha’s stone was not where it now lies, but was down in the water beside the bridge, and after being noticed there, the responding officer must have fished it out and propped it up on the river bank nearby. While today Martha’s stone has fallen backwards, a pair of now crumbled cinderblocks beneath it indicate that it was once set erect along the river’s edge sometime in recent memory. Inquiring down to the Bridgton Police office, looking through their archives and talking with officers, it became clear that the stone had been retrieved and, without knowing of any grave in that vicinity, it was judged most appropriate to erect the stone on the riverbank near to where it was found, rather than remove it entirely for fear of further desecrating the site.

But to my mind, I recognized that the Longley’s were not Bridgton settlers, but rather lived in our neighboring Waterford. It stood to reason to me that if Martha married a Longley then she was probably from Waterford also, and was likely buried there too, which put me on the phone with the Waterford Historical Society. This theory proved correct. Initially searching for Martha through the History of Waterford, I failed to find her, which sadly is common when researching women of that era; however, looking up her husband in the Biographical Review of Oxford County gave me more than enough information. Martha’s husband, who I knew from her gravestone only as “J.R. Longley,” was Mr. Jonathan Robbins Longley, born Oct. 4, 1825 in Waterford. A local stonecutter and a holder of minor political offices, he married Martha on Oct. 21, 1847. Her full name was Martha Elizabeth Munroe, of the Waterford Munroe clan, and she too had been born and spent the whole of her life there. I knew they weren’t Bridgton people! After her marriage to Jonathan, the couple had settled on a large farm in South Waterford, where they raised two children, Eugene and Lizzie Ada. From her stone, I knew Martha died in 1896, while her husband outlived her, dying in 1913.

Next, with information courtesy of the genealogical and burial records of the Waterford Historical Society, I discovered that Martha and Jonathan, lifelong Methodists of South Waterford, had been buried with many of their fellows in the Elm Vale Cemetery in that village. This same burial ground contains Jonathan’s parents and his brother and many other Longley relations, as well as Martha’s parents and her various siblings. So, I thought it would be a simple matter of taking a jaunt out to Waterford, rambling around the lake to Elm Vale, and finding the family plot, from which I expected to find Martha’s stone missing. But there proved a deeper mystery at work than I expected, for when I visited Elm Vale and canvassed it — though it took me two separate trips to find the Longley’s — when I did I was most surprised to find that Martha’s grave was already marked by a gravestone, and not only that, it was one which perfectly matched the headstones of her husband and her two children. All were blanketed under a uniform coating of moss and Martha’s stone looked in no ways different or newer than those on either side. Having come up against a seemingly insoluble dilemma, of a duplicate headstone a town away from where it should be found, I knew I needed to start talking to others who had grown up in the area, and who might be able to tell me more.

My answer came from Mr. Liam Opie, who grew up on the Middle Ridge and now lives in Waterford, just a bowshot from Elm Vale. The story I obtained from him perfectly explained the mystery of Martha’s second headstone, and I’d like to share it with you now. Just up from the brook, through the woods on the left-hand side, there stands a long low building, painted white with many windows. Once upon a time, for over 30 years at the close of the 19th century, the Allen family — of whom Mr. Opie is a near descendant — lived nearby and Mr. Allen, who was a stonecutter by trade, used that shop as his workspace. He often cut headstones, and sometimes owing a mistake or mischance, he would err in his engraving in some manner, and the stone would be unsalable. Perhaps it broke halfway through carving, perhaps he spelled the name wrong when he started, or — as was the case with Martha — perhaps he messed up on the final piece of engraving, where either from bad information or an honest mistake he miswrote the date of death, in Martha’s case, a day too early. Despite having almost all the finishing touches already in place, despite Martha’s stone looking quite literally finished, Mr. Allen could not allow it to leave his shop. Martha’s husband Jonathan was a fellow stonecutter; both respect for the dead and professional courtesy required that this headstone not go out incorrect, but rather be cast aside and replaced. That is what he did, with all of his rejects. He would take them a short walk through the woods to the riverbank, and cast them in disgust and remorse into the flowing waters. Liam told me that, after his death, many other stones were left unfinished or never started in his shop, and some of them ended up in the brook too, so that by the middle of the 20th century, his grandmother told him that one could walk along Roger Brook and see half a dozen or more headstones poking up amongst the boulders, all in various states of decay and incompleteness. Since then, as the decades lapsed into more a century, these other stones have broken and sunk down in the mud, and some have no doubt been taken by ne’er-do-wells or impulsive youth in some flight of morbid curiosity, so that today only Martha’s stone, which looks finished to the unfamiliar observer, is left to tell the tale. Perhaps because it is complete, and does not look unfinished, it has been allowed to remain by all who have discovered it, thinking as many have that it means Martha is actually buried there. So, when it was fished up from the river in 2005 and set on the bank, it was regarded by those locals “in the know” that it should be allowed to sit there as a monument, not to Martha specifically, but to the now vanished headstone shop of the Allen’s. 

So that lonely headstone by the brook remains a memorial after a fashion, for it is a thing which speaks of the Ridge’s history, a specific reference to a piece of local culture, which those still living in that vicinity hope remains in the public’s memory. That is why I am writing this column today, having been told it was acceptable to do so, for it may well be that the time has come to better document and spread this story in the public’s conscience. With more and more development in Bridgton of late, and with many new homes going in along the Middle Ridge, several near the marge of Roger Brook itself, more and more people are discovering the spot. Perhaps it began in 2005, but I’ve since heard it was noticed in 2015 by a group of photographers, and Paul first saw it a few years ago. The chances are high that it will be noticed by more and more people in coming years, and I think it is equally likely that many will think the same things that Paul and I did, that either someone is buried there or, more likely, that it is stolen or missing and should not be there. For fear that some well-meaning person might try to take it away or move it without knowing the facts, I have shared this story today and hope soon to place a small wooden plaque on a nearby tree, which explains the story for all who may come to visit the spot, so that it may safely remain there for generations to come.

As Paul said to me when we first talked of this, he felt that Martha’s stone reminded him of Poe’s Annabel Lee, and I must agree that there is a haunting sort of spirit about the place, and the lonely desolation of the swamp in which it lies. Even now, wildflowers are now rising in bright color and verdant life about it, ready to paint the scene in the fresh beauty and promise of spring, when I walk past that bridge and peer down into the brook, the stone seems to look back at me as some pale, ghostly face; a shade of a now vanished past, quietly maintaining its solitary, lonesome, eternal vigil by the stream as it has done for generations. Going down to visit it, I received this tale, which I am now sharing that it may not be lost to the knowledge of men. May it last a century more to be told.

Till next time!