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Article Last Updated:
Saturday, October 27, 2001 - 8:23:56 AM MST
Whose final resting place is
this?
By FRANK
JULIANO
MILFORD -- It sounds like one
of those trick riddles: "Who's buried in Peter Pond's
grave?"
The answer, of course, ought to
be Peter Pond, a fabled 18th-century explorer and
a member of one of the city's founding families.
But not necessarily. It could
be one of Pond's seven siblings, or someone else.
What is known is that Pond died
here, and many suspect his body is interred in the
Pond family plot in the Milford Cemetery on Gulf Street.
On Thursday, Don Wilson, a technician
from a Manchester engineering firm, used ground-penetrating
radar to search for the unmarked grave.
The vacuum cleaner-sized device
Wilson ran over the ground around Mary Pond's grave
found three nearby "voids," or open spaces that are
probably graves.
Mary Pond, the explorer's mother,
has the only actual headstone in the plot, which lies
in the oldest section of the cemetery.
"There is no coffin, no bones,
nothing but disturbed earth," said Bill McDonald,
head of the Peter Pond Society.
The group is dedicated to ensuring
that the man credited with mapping most of Upper Canada
and opening the vast area to exploration gets his
rightful place in history.
Unfortunately, the search for
Pond's final resting-place may already have hit a
dead end, McDonald said.
"Mary Pond had eight children
and there is no way to know who was buried in these
spots. It could be Peter, one of his siblings, or
even his father," he said.
It appears there's nothing left
to exhume, anyway. The ravages of time apparently
did away with any earthly remains in the plot.
And even if a bone or a tooth
turned up to study, performing a DNA match against
Pond's living descendents could do little but confirm
that it belonged to someone in the Pond family, McDonald
said.
"The technology just isn't there
yet," he said. "We can't bring a backhoe in here or
exhume a grave without knowing what we're looking
for."
Wilson, dressed in jeans and a
light jacket, sat cross-legged on the ground as he
studied the images on the device's suitcase-sized
monitor. Among the even lines showing layers of dirt
there were patches that formed herringbone patterns.
"Definitely disturbed earth,"
Wilson said. "Could be settling, backfilling, excavation"
-- or the collapsed ground when a coffin and body
inside turns to dust.
Wilson's Manchester firm, Fuss
and O'Neill, donated the service, which can cost \\$1,500
and is usually used to locate underground fuel tanks.
But the firm has been pressed
into service to find old graves before. Wilson and
another technician spent six days last fall mapping
Hartford's Old South Cemetery, and another four days
analyzing the data.
"We found at least six spots where
it is likely slaves were buried in the rear portion
of the cemetery," he said.
Susan D'Ambrosio, a descendant
of an associate of Peter Pond and a historian of the
Canadian fur trade, said Milford children should know
about Peter Pond, warts and all.
"He saw land white people had
never seen before," D'Ambrosio said as Wilson mapped
the grave. "He reportedly had quite a temper and was
twice accused of murder."
He had two disputes with business
associates and felt he was being bilked. So, he pulled
out a knife, stabbed and killed the two men, who were
both associates of his fur trading company. The two
incidents took place years apart in Canada. He stood
trial at least once and was acquitted.
Pond may even have been an indirect
inspiration for the Lewis and Clark expedition, said
D'Ambrosio, a member of the Peter Pond Society.
Members of Pond's company, the
Northwest Fur Trading Co. reached the Pacific Ocean
before Lewis and Clark mapped the American west on
their famous trip, she said.
Pond was born in Milford in 1740
and died here in 1807, after squandering his profits
from the fur trade. He died broke, said McDonald,
of Milford.
Raymond Scholl, Milford Cemetery
superintendent, said the burial customs of nearly
200 years ago were quite different.
"The bodies were behind the stones,
not in front of them as they are today," he said.
"The writing on both the headstone and the footstone
faced out, away from the body."
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