The Colgate University cemetery quietly sits atop a hill in front of the forest and near Chapel House. For students, it largely goes unnoticed unless one makes their way up Chapel House Road or goes for a trek in the woods. For the small number of campus staff that manage it, it’s simply a part of their job with its own quirks and difficulties. Nevertheless, the space has importance as being a collection and record of history of those connected to Colgate and the surrounding area.
For most of the year, the Colgate cemetery exists as it is, without needing excessive maintenance by facilities staff. However, beyond the usual trimming of grass or placing of mulch, more severe weather occurrences can warrant additional maintenance. During the August 2024 storm which damaged the roof of the Africana, Latin, Asian and Native American (ALANA) Cultural Center, falling limbs from trees knocked over some of the headstones. Colgate hired a vendor to fix damage on the stones and prop up some older stones which were leaning. Director of Operations for the Division of Finance and Administration Jill Dinski commented on the efforts to maintain the space.
“There’s an effort to keep it a calm and tranquil place,” Dinski said. “We did an expansion in 2018, and during that expansion, they identified some other possible expansions if we need them in the future.”
While the cemetery hasn’t yet had to expand into other locations, they have added more burial plots to land they currently have. The last time they added plots was in 2018, when they added around 30 cremation plots and a few full burial sites to the more vacant side of the cemetery.
Groundskeeper and Foreperson James “Jamie” Reilly has worked to upkeep the cemetery for over two decades.
“I’ve been here for 25 years, and it’s remained constant,” Reilly said. “We just put in that extra spacing or spots for cremation plots, marked them with numbers and put them on the map. But other than that, it’s just pretty much everything that’s been inside that circle and the one little piece above it since the summer of 2000, when I arrived.”
Planning with families for the arrangement of a burial spot on campus is a complex task that is coordinated almost entirely by Colgate’s facilities and administration staff.
“My role in coordinating is working with the families or the individuals that are reserving their plots, so going up to the cemetery and outlining where their plot would be and helping them decide where they want to be,” Dinski said. “At the time of the passing, it’s coordinating with [Reilly] what the needs are for the interment, working with the families on their headstones and giving them vendor suggestions and working with the vendors about the size of the plots and whatever the family needs.”
It’s a doubly intensive task of ensuring a smooth ceremony while also carrying out the physical requirements for burial, which is completed by the facilities staff.
“The cemetery was there when I became a Colgate employee, and that’s part of my task,” Reilly said. “In the course of 25 years, I’ve dug hundreds of graves. We have to hand dig them, the cremation sites. I think that was mentioned in my interview in 1999 when I interviewed — it was just part of the job. It was already here and already established that the grounds crew does it. There’s other things the grounds crew does that I don’t question either; those decisions were made a long, long time ago.”
Early records of the cemetery are not entirely thorough. Many records of tombstone names and notes from the early 1800s are jotted down in scribbled cursive on slips of papers.
“Our notes and records are [currently] much more up to date from the past 15 years than they were prior to that,” Reilly said. “We also do have to trust the map. It has the plot number with the name that’s on the stone, and we have to trust that as being full. From the 1800s, early 1900s, there’s no record of any of that. So we just have to assume that that’s what it is, even though it’s long before any of us were around here.”
The origin of the cemetery is not entirely known. A note from April 16, 1835, preserved by the University Archives and titled “Origin? Colgate Cemetery” says that a decision will be made within the week on a suitable spot to have a burial ground for those dying while members of office. An article preserved from the July 1930 issue of Colgate Alumni News speculates that it originated like that of some of the “family burying-grounds” that are seen on farms in remote, rural regions, expanding as members of faculty died.
The magazine article from Colgate Alumni News discusses the importance of the cemetery in preserving local history. It records that the cemetery has the graves of Abraham Payne, who helped to found the village of Hamilton after serving in the Revolutionary War, and presidents of colleges including Colby College, Dartmouth College and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Even in 1930, it recognized that many names on the tombstones may not be recognizable to the “present generation,” but to those who returned for commencements 30 years prior, they were “literally household names.”
“With the memorials of the mighty dead about him, and this scene to which to direct his further glance, the returning alumnus may well — as many have done, and still do — make a pilgrimage to this ‘cemetery on the hill’ an invariable feature of his Commencement,” Dr. Charles W. Spencer wrote. “If the whole company of those to whom the lives of these who have been named have brought something of value could be brought together on the hill side — what an assembly!”
The cemetery often sparks contemplation in its visitors, sometimes bringing reflection into its past. A preserved message from Warren Ramsclaw — presumably a former Colgate student — to the department of social relations inquires about the presumed existence and subsequent disappearance of several students’ grave markers he had seen while walking in the Colgate cemetery some years ago. The markers were from the class of 1873, all members of the sophomore class who had died at the same time and had been buried together.
“Was there ever such a grave or graves there? Have some of the stones or markers been changed or replaced?” Ramsclaw wrote. “Does any of this make sense to you? Or is my memory playing tricks? Or am I just not remembering the correct place? When you have an idea some day give me a call and rescue me from my confusion.”
A May 1899 story in Madisonesis, titled “Patrons’ Day,” which doesn’t include the name of its author, detailed the proceedings at the cemetery, which began with a service in memory of the founders and early patrons of the University.
“After the singing of a hymn the caskets were lowered to their places and with the benediction the company quietly wended its way down the hillside, realizing more than ever before the great significance of the inheritance which comes to men today from those early patrons of our university,” the author wrote.
The cemetery is a resting place for those who have devoted themselves to the University and have a deep connection to its history. Though the names on the tombstones may be unfamiliar, they’re the record of past centuries of personal relationships that shaped the institution. Even after current students walk through it much like the classes before them, the cemetery will continue to endure on the hill above campus.
