Dead come alive at Brownhelm Cemetery

BROWNHELM TWP — Violins played in the background as men in top hats and women in long dresses conversed and reminisced in Brownhelm Cemetery on Sunday. Death couldn't stop the graveyard's residents from sharing their stories at the annual "If Tombstones Could Talk" cemetery walk hosted by the Brownhelm Historical Association. The cemetery, at the corner of North Ridge and Sunnyside roads, is the resting place of many early settlers from the area. Guests were led between tombstones bearing the names of men, women and children, many who have been dead since the 1800s. Beside some of those tombstones, costumed actors portraying the dead stood six feet above the people buried there, waiting for groups to approach them and hear about their lives. Among the characters in the cemetery were farmers, millers, cobblers, college professors and soldiers for the Union in the Civil War. The first resident guests heard from was Brownhelm namesake Henry Brown. He traveled to the area in 1816, at the time known as "number six in the nineteenth range" and after returning to New England he entered into a contract with the Connecticut Land Company to form Brownhelm. "They call this place Brownhelm, but they wanted to call it Freedom," said Norm Miller, of Amherst, portraying Brown. "They said, 'Brown at the helm? Why are you taking all the credit?' Well, it was my money." Other residents didn't play such large civic roles, but their lives still lived on through the reenactors. "My father came to Brownhelm in 1817, shortly after the original colony was founded," said Dan Foy of North Ridgeville, portraying settler Elisha Peck. "My father taught me many things. He taught me how to sow plants, how to grow a farm. He taught me how to hunt game." Foy explained how Peck married his wife Sally Ann in Brownhelm after they "courted for a while," then became a shoemaker and raised a family. Kate Rivet, president of the Brownhelm Historical Association, portrayed Olive "Patty" Crandall. She, along with many members of her character's family, died after ingesting white snakeroot, a plant that is toxic to humans, but not to the cows that eat it and transfer it to humans through milk and beef. She said that being dead for more than a century has given her perspective on the life she lived with her family in Brownhelm. "Despite our painful and untimely deaths," she said, "the life we shared was worth it." Contact Dylan Reynolds at (440) 329-7123 or dreynolds@chroniclet.com.