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Local DAR Honors Susan Ferland as Chapter Citizen of the Year

photo provided DAR member Liz Bicknell presents DAR Chapter Citizen of the Year Susan Ferland with her award

Tuesday November 20, 2012

By Cookie Steponaitis

The members of the Daughters of the American Revolution by definition are historians and sleuths who have traced their ancestry back to someone who served in the military during the American Revolution. They have a strong commitment to history and helping others see its relevance in our busy and ever changing world. The local Seth Warner Chapter of the DAR’s choice for this year’s honor recipient was evident and special because Susan Ferland’s passion for history has transcended her own family’s journey and helped to preserve a local treasure.

    Susan Ferland became intrigued by the site known simply as the Old Vergennes Cemetery with stones dating back to the American Revolution and Thomas Jefferson’s presidency in the beginning of 2004. She was appalled by the condition of the cemetery and the stones and sought permission to plant flowers at the headstones of Revolutionary War soldiers, War of 1812 soldiers and those who fought in the Civil War and with help from local organizations her first level of beautification of the site was ready for Memorial Day, 2004.

    Since then Ferland has been actively pursuing grants and funds to repair the damaged and in some cases shattered headstones. She secured some funds in 2007 to begin the labor intensive process of cleaning, replacing and restoring the many damaged and fallen headstones. Working with town officials, church officials, Bruce Hyde and Tom Giffin of the Vermont Cemetery Association and with the support of an anonymous donor, the program picked up its pace in June, 2008 with students from Vergennes Elementary School and Vergennes High School participating in a grave cleaning day.

    Mrs. Ferland located and tagged headstones of veterans from the War of 1812 and the Civil War in early 2009. Her main objective was to locate and map out all the gravestones listed on an inventory of the cemetery done in the early 1900’s, since there wasn’t any map with the original listing that existed. Susan continued her research of early cemetery records and learned there are 423 people buried in the cemetery, but only 315 graves have stone markers. She also completed an inventory of all the unbroken gravestones and entered them into a database. She then compared her list with that of an earlier one from the local library and learned there was a large discrepancy between the two. Many were unaccounted for and may be in the pile of broken stones by the cemetery fence, some may have had wooden markers that have since been removed or rotted, or some may have had no marker at all. Working with retired draftsman and historian Robert Mitchell, a plot map of the cemetery has been created.

    Throughout her years of hard work with this project Mrs. Ferland has never tired of it or given up when dealing with the legal issues, lack of funds, mountains of paperwork or hundreds of hours of research in the local library archives. And, like any great detective, she sees each new piece of information as one more clue in the puzzles of our past and has been successful in preserving this incredible site for future generations.

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