It feels like a fairytale place where you might expect elves to dance at night. Indeed, spirits may linger in this spacious outdoor room with its walls of layered greenery and ceiling of sky. But expect any spectral creatures to move as smoothly as silk, for this is the private burial ground of the Cheneys, once masters of the nation’s largest silk mills.
A narrow shrub-lined path leads to a grassy glade surrounded by trees. Located in the northeast corner of Manchester, Connecticut’s East Cemetery and surrounded by a palisade of vegetation, the Cheney ground is all but invisible from the municipal cemetery. With soft grass, dappled shade from hemlocks and other mature trees, glossy-leaved rhododendrons, and islands of myrtle, lily-of-the-valley and other groundcovers, it’s more like a garden than a graveyard. In fact, the simple slab headstones are banished to the perimeter, often half hidden in, and almost seeming to grow out of the shrubbery. At first, a visitor doesn’t even notice them.
Without a grand entry arch, central monument, or classically columned mausoleum, it’s a cemetery lacking the usual trappings associated with final resting places for families of fabulous wealth and power. Perhaps they didn’t require architectural excess to confirm their worth. Instead, this bower of informally sculpted greenery offers something of even more and ever-increasing value—quiet, contemplative space.
About a mile to the south, the Cheney’s began their silken empire in 1838, and at its zenith in the 1920s employed about 4,700 people in a series of fortress-like brick mills which lined the streets in orderly rows. Beginning with the manufacture of silk thread, they expanded into cloth for clothing and upholstery. They engaged in every aspect of silk production except growing silkworms, although they tried. Among those buried here is Charles Cheney (1803-1874) who started a mulberry farm in Ohio in an unsuccessful bid to raise silkworms. As a result, cocoons were imported from China.
Beyond the classic New England industrial village, the Cheneys created a kingdom by building schools, utility companies, firehouses, reservoirs, hundreds of worker homes, and libraries. They donated land and money for churches, town hall, and other institutions. In 1867, they constructed Cheney Hall, a brick and brownstone center for entertainment in the fashionable French Second Empire style, still a hub for concerts, theater and other public gatherings. Around the corner from the mills, they built magnificent mansions on a rise with a long, grassy slope to the street that became known as The Great Lawn.
The Great Depression, synthetics, changing fashions, and the flight of textile businesses south meant the end of the Cheney empire in the second half of the twentieth century. Today the mills have new purposes, especially for apartments. But while silk production is long past, Cheneys continue to be interred in their secluded family arbor.
The cemetery’s modest headstones, fitted into a verge of greenery, often feature unpretentious but elegant reliefs or carvings such as a lamp, oakleaf cluster, mountain scene, birds, or botanical motifs. Any epitaphs are brief. Usually a few biblical lines, a snippet of poetry, or an inspirational phrase like “Forward Without Fear.” Some designs hint at the deceased’s interests or talent, such as the artist’s palette carved above the name of Ward Cheney Thorne (1909-1986), a talented painter of still life, landscapes, and portraits.
The Cheneys were not all entrepreneurs and businesspeople. There also were others with artistic ability like Jacob Weidmann Cheney who died in 2002 at age 92. He worked in the family business but was also known for his pencil sketches and portraits. Others in this talented clan distinguished themselves in the military, and as inventors, politicians, philanthropists, and writers.
Despite bordering a garish commercial strip that can’t be seen from within and subject to muffled traffic sounds, this hidden grove of Cheneys left me feeling as if I were in a deep forest clearing. Nature is dominant, emphasizing the natural return of bodies to the soil and spirits to the sky. Embraced by foliage, it’s a space as peaceful for the living as it is for the dead. Tranquility, wind in the trees, and birdsong inspire heightened awareness among those who visit. Voices are instinctually hushed.
Perhaps such serenity is what a shady alcove in a garden behind a Cheney mansion was like back in the day. And then they created a distinct and separate domain with which to confront the afterlife and incite memory in the living, just as they created an entire world in building their silken empire.
