Embedded Files
The "Old Burying Ground" beside Phinney Park was a half-acre in size and was donated to the town by Joseph Hamblen in March 1771.
Here lies the Remains Of Elder Hugh McLellan
Who departed this life
Jan. the 2, 1787
Aged 77 Years
Sylvester Reynolds
Reader,
this marble speaks no common loss,
it guards the remains of one, whose
day closed in its dawning.
Sylvester, son of Solomon and Joanna Reynolds, of Southport, Tioga Co. N. Y. b. Sept 4, 1826, ae 29.
By Foreign Hand thy dying eyes were clos'd. By foreign hands thy decent limbs compos'd
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd By strangers honored, and by strangers mourn'd
From: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/9008661/sylvester-reynolds
Reynolds was a clown with a circus which was exhibiting at Gorham in 1826, at the time of the accident which caused his death. He was performing a burlesque trapeze act, and fell, receiving injuries from which he died four days later. The circus sent back a delegation to attend the funeral and burial, and a subscription was taken among the members of the troupe to defray the expenses and erect this tablet. He was a young man, well known and esteemed in his profession and his tragic death was the cause of circuses cutting Gorham off their routes for about thirty years. The memory of Reynolds is still kept green among the people of the sawdust ring, and today a circus rarely visits Portland that does not send a delegation to Gorham to decorate the grave, and at times quite an extended memorial service has been held at the cemetery.
Also buried in the Old Yard...
Stephen (III) and Patience Longfellow, paternal grandparents of renowned ("Paul Revere's Ride", "The Song of Hiawatha", and "Evangeline") poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow--location mid-cemetery
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