The second in a series of Sunday Cemetery Strolls will be offered by the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown Sunday, May 28 at 2 p.m. at Margaretville Cemetery, Cemetery Road just off upper Main Street (NYS Route 30)
The one-hour tour on this Memorial Day Weekend will be a tribute to veterans. Tickets are $5 per person; children 12 and under may take the tour for free.
Reservations are not necessary. Participants are advised to wear sturdy shoes and expect some uphill walking.
Guides from HSM will introduce tour-goers to 20 cemetery residents, including veterans from the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World Wars 1 and 2 and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. Some, like Everett “Bus” Payne, a paratrooper who was killed in France the day after the D-Day invasion in 1944, never made it home to the Catskills. Others, like World War 1 veteran J. Stanley Bussy and his young business partners, Ken Miller and Fred McCumber who saw service in World War 2, returned to build lives and our community.
Tour goers will meet Sam Hunter, an Irish immigrant who survived Civil War combat and returned to South Carolina after the war to look for a comrade who didn’t; Valentine Newton, a Marine who died in France in 1917 and for whom the local American Legion post was named; Blanche Archibald Quinn, a sergeant in the Women’s Army Air Corps during World War II, and many others.
Future Sunday Cemetery Strolls are planned for Bedell (June 25) and a pair of Dry Brook-Millbrook cemeteries August 27.