Preston Street cemetery

I visited the old cemetery on Preston Street on a lovely fall afternoon last month (October 13, 2023).  In the photo above you can see the cemetery entrance and beyond it, to the east, some of the condominium buildings that now stand where our old family "Pine Knoll" homestead stood for over 100 years (1861-1975).

I was a bit surprised that the old misshapen tree near the hilltop was still standing, looking much as it had in 2017, my previous visit.

The rhododendron bush by that tree has grown larger, now covering some family gravestones. I parted the leaves and leaned in to take the photo below: 

This gravestone is for Clara Louise Ballou (1869-1916), the first wife of Joshua Ward Nichols (1868-1928), whose gravestone is beside hers, only partly covered by rhododendron foliage: 

To the left of his stone is the gravestone for his second wife, Maud Kimball (1868-1945).

Joshua Ward Nichols was a brother of my grandfather (William Stanley Nichols).  A larger monument nearby lists them both, and all their siblings, and their parents and grandparents, with notes indicating other cemetery locations where some were buried.

[Click on photo to enlarge]

The 8 children listed above were all born (1862 to 1878) in the Nichols family home at Pine Knoll. That home had been built in 1861 by Andrew for his Salem bride "Lizzie". 

On the back of that large monument are the names of another generation, the children of the Andrew born in 1862:

[Click on photo to enlarge]