Following an old Maine custom, most families had a cemetery on their own land. Like many of the cemeteries when the families have died off or moved away, they have been neglected or grown up to bushes and lost. The last few years with encouragement of Maine Old Cemetery Association, the Westport Community Association has been locating and caring for many of these grave sites.
In the Thomas (Bonyun) Cemetery are the graves of two brothers, sons of John Thomas, Elijah and John. They were coming down from Bath in a boat during a storm and took shelter under a tree and were struck by lightning and killed. The inscription reads -
" They were lovely and pleasant in
Their lives
And in their deaths they were not divided! "
We find many of the stones that we can read say "lost at sea" and many are of small children lost during the epidemics of diphtheria, smallpox, and other infectious diseases that swept the island
One other inscription from a child's stone bears repeating:
I am a little angel now
A diadem is on my brow
A golden harp is in my hand
And on the heavenly throne I stand.
Tombstone Inscription State Page - Maine
Info on more Westport Grave sites
