MONTICELLO, Maine — Town officials in Monticello will ask residents at the annual meeting to approve to make repairs to gravestones in the municipalities’ two cemeteries.
Monticello residents will consider setting aside funding to repair broken and aged cemetery stones during the town meeting on Monday, April 1. (Jen Lynds | Pioneer Times)
Town Manager Ginger Pryor said when she and the selectmen were preparing and reviewing the budget, they felt it was necessary to put the question on the warrant for the annual town meeting that starts at 7 p.m. Monday, April 1.
“Some of the stones in the cemeteries are just so old that they are desperately in need of repair,” she said. “Especially in the Village Cemetery. We felt that we needed to do something, especially for those who no longer have family or ancestors around in this area to fix the stones.”
The cemetery was established in 1847, just 17 years after Monticello was first known as Wellington Township. It contains the burial markers of some of the earliest settlers of the town. A number of the stones in the cemetery are broken, tilted or near falling over, Pryor said, and town officials have opted to request $2,000 to fix as many as they can.
“Each year we have been trying to fix as many of them up as our budget has allowed,” she said. “There are a number of them in Jewell Cemetery [on U.S. Route 1] that are getting old and broken, too. So I think it is time to fix them. It doesn’t look good to have them like that.”
