Launched in 2005, WellesleyWeston Magazine is a quarterly publication tailored to Wellesley and Weston residents and edited to enrich the experience of living in two of Massachusetts' most desirable communities.
Issue link: https://wellesleywestonmagazine.epubxp.com/i/78488
All Cemeteries Tell Tales tle was discovered with a skeleton, nearly half full of some kind of liq- uid, but the lad who dug it up emptied it before the quality of its con- tents were discovered." Despite this cavalier disregard for the burial ground, no one seemed to think they were doing anything untoward. The digging continued, as did the removal of objects. But at least another historian, Samuel Adams Drake writing in 1880, seemed to understand the travesty. "We daily ride and walk over the bones of Natick's earlier inhabitants," he wrote. "In laying pipes for the water- works [1877] a number of skeletons were exhumed." Finally, in 1983, three centuries after the Native American popula- tion was banished from its own land, a law to protect unmarked graves went into effect. Thus, when workers shutting off an old water main in the square in 1987 accidentally stumbled across a fragment of an Indian skull, all work ceased and archeologists were called in. A burial 96 shaft was discovered and workers immediately covered the spot and routed the necessary piping elsewhere. Today, true-to-size photos of the unearthed Indian artifacts can be seen at the Natick Historical Society's headquarters. The artifacts themselves were returned to the State Bureau of Indian Affairs. The only Indian gravestone in the square is that of Takamwampbait, the first Native American minister. Moved at least once, today it is located in front of the rebuilt meeting house in which he preached, now the Eliot Church. Takamwampbait's footstone is across the intersection, inset into the foundation of the Bacon Library, the one meaningful stone amongst a slew of decorative ones. The Twin Burial Grounds of the Sherborn Reformatory for Women Perry Street is a winding country lane in Sherborn. The few homes on the road are neither mega-mansions nor cottages. There are woods all WellesleyWeston Magazine | fall 2012