Last year while attending an event at the St. Hyacinth Cemetery at 296 Stroudwater St. in Westbrook, Andy Levesque of Gorham, came across a patch of land with unmarked graves dedicated to newborn and young babies.
During WWII, the State Department requested metal for the war effort. St. Hyacinth Cemetery removed and donated almost 300 cast iron crosses that were placed over both adult and baby graves. The graves were not subsequently re-marked, and throughout the decades no effort was made to show where these babies were buried.
Levesque has started a project to restore dignity to those that were buried on these sacred grounds. A completed list of all the names of people that were assigned a metal cross as well as a list of dates and ages with some detail of why they died has been finalized.
In the preliminary task of determining the location of any metal on site, 30 locations were found. So far nails, workshop items and one iron cross with some pieces have been unearthed.
Levesque said, “At present, I am at a phase where I need to determine if any of the babies can be detected using Ground Penetrating Radar. I have a couple organizations willing to help in this discovery work. Once it is determined that the individual graves can or cannot be detected, my next phase would be to place a small foot-stone over each known grave.”
He continued, “However, many of these graves are dated in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s so it is highly unlikely that we can find the individual babies buried there. If that is the case, I would cordon off the plot and erect a monument at its center with the names of all the deceased individuals inscribed in stone.”
Levesque has met with a stone distributor that wants to help with the foot-stones, and was given the name of a person that does stone engraving. He is also working with a memorial company in Lewiston who will help erect a monument listing all the names.
Presently, many people are parking their cars and trucks over these graves as they visit loved ones at the cemetery. Levesque asks that we try to avoid this in the future.
To help with this project, donations can be sent to Cemetery Project, Roger Roy, 37 Samantha Drive, Gorham, ME 04038. For more information, contact Andy Levesque, (207) 523-0299.