Lessons Learned in an Old Burying Ground

            No Catholics are here.  New England history seldom mentions that even in death there was segregation.  For its first two centuries, Southborough Catholics were buried in Hopkinton.  But Patrick Cleary’s strange story  shows that even entrenched bigotry can change. The Clearys, refugees from the Irish Potato Famine, arrived in Southborough in the 1850’s, and worked in a local shoe factory.   When the Civil War came, young Patrick, described as witty and clever,  volunteered.  In 1862,  Massachusetts Co.K was cut off from rations and starving.  In Virginia,  Cleary  disobeyed orders and foraged for food., stealing some sheep. Company K feasted that night.  The next day, Cleary took sick and died, cause unknown. 

            Though his penniless family begged the town to bury him, they stubbornly refused until public sentiment and patriotism forced the town fathers to reconsider.  They reluctantly agreed to bury him, but in a pauper’s grave.  Whether he was first interred in the Olde Burial Ground is unclear, but when local men he had served with returned home, they were furious at Cleary’s shabby treatment and insisted he be reburied with honors. 

            It took some investigation to find Patrick Cleary’s grave.  Several Southborough people I talked to expressed great surprise that such discrimination had ever existed in their town, but the reality is that it was true in most towns. In the Rural Cemetery, I found a terse, lopsided stone that says simply P.H.Cleary, Massachusetts Co. K.   It reminded me once again that cemeteries are etched-in-stone pages of a history book, and Southborough’s are uniquely American history.  Thinking of  religious and racial hatred and killing in Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and the Middle East, I’m proud that here in America people somehow found ways to rise above sectarian violence and hate.  Remembering the Nipmuk buried here, so many Native Americans nearly eradicated in what could be called Ethnic Cleansing, like most Americans, I feel sadness and regret.   Nabby Bellows and the Parker and Fay children, remind me we’ve come a long, long way with the miracle of health care, of women who safely have babies, and babies who live to grow up.  These are our triumphs.  But there are failures, too.  Memorial Day was created by Southern women, wishing to remember their men fallen in war, but hopefully one day we will only need to continue to honor past fallen veterans, and not future ones.