Cemetery tour in Kendall focused on Norwegian settlers, other pioneers

Summer tours end this evening at St. Joseph’s Cemetery on East Avenue in Albion

Photos courtesy of Susan Starkweather Miller: Orleans County Historian Catherine Cooper speaks last Sunday at Greenwood Cemetery at a plot for one of the Norwegian families that settled in Kendall about 200 years ago.

KENDALL – About 30 people attended last Sunday’s tour of Greenwood Cenetery in Kendall. The tour put a special emphasis on some of the Norwegian settlers who came to Kendall beginning in 1825.

The Orleans County Historical Association has been leading cemetery tours each Sunday at 6 p.m. during August. The torus conclude today at St. Joseph’s Cemtery on East Avenue in Albion.

Tour guides at Greenwood noted the Kendall cemetery has links to this year’s Orleans County bicentennial celebration.

Catherine Cooper, the county historian, shared notes on some of people highlighted on the tour:

Felix Augur donated the land for this cemetery. Born in Lisbon, Ct. in 1759, he served in the Revolutionary War. He and his family moved to the area now known as Kendall in 1816. He donated land for the cemetery and was buried there in 1818. Kendall Road was known as Augur Road for many years.

Robert Clark, 1801-1873, is buried in the Augur family plot. Another early settler in the area, he was married to Felix’s daughter, Anna.

Ken DeRoller recounted Clark’s recollections of his early years as recorded in the Pioneer History of Orleans County, the backbreaking work, sickness and fever.

(Left) Bill Lattin, retired Orleans County historian, also spoke on the tour at Greenwood Cemetery on Rpoute 18, near the Route 237 intersection. (Right) Ken DeRoller noted the contributions of Robert Clark who died in 1873 and is buried in the Augur family plot.

On July 5, 1825, the Restoration, a retrofitted sloop with a crew of seven, and forty-five passengers, fifteen of them children, set sail from Norway, bound for America. The expedition, later lauded as the “Norwegian Mayflower” started the exodus of Norwegians to America.

Some fourteen weeks later, on October 9, 1825, this intrepid group landed in New York and made their way to the area around Norway Road. Some families later moved to Illinois and Indiana,  but a nucleus remained and welcomed later immigrants. Several descendants of the Norwegian settlers were in attendance for the tour of Greenwood Cemetery.