BIDDEFORD — As DNA testing and online genealogy services tracing ancestry remain popular, an effort to restore an old family cemetery in Clifford Park is helping directly connect area residents to their family roots.  

Situated in an isolated part of the park behind an old greenhouse on Pool Street, the cemetery has been subjected to repeated vandalism through the years and now only the gate posts and a handful of old headstones are scattered throughout the site along with broken tree limbs and overgrown brush. 

About 25 members of the Nason, Dean and Jordan families are buried in the cemetery, which dates to the 1800s.

The idea to restore the cemetery to its former majesty was spurred by Biddeford Mayor Alan Casavant’s challenge to volunteers to update the 121-year-old Clifford Park in 2015.

“This is part of an effort by the Friends of Clifford Park and the Heart of Biddeford to beautify the park,” said Dana Peck, a volunteer who’s been involved with the cemetery project since its inception. “This is ongoing. We’re not going to rush anything. The plan is to work on this site for the next two years and then to re-evaluate to see where we’re at.”

It’s an ambitious undertaking that includes clearing the 600-square foot cemetery, cutting down trees and employing ground-penetrating radar later this summer to unearth headstones that may have toppled over and then have been buried under decades of vegetation and shifting soil.

Dawne Provost of Biddeford and her sister, Cynthia Wood of Scarborough, are descendants of the Jordans and say the restoration project holds significant meaning to them.

“When you start digging in the soil and find an ancestor, it’s very moving,” Provost said. “You just want to keep digging and digging and digging.”

Wood agreed that the project is linking the sisters to distant members of their family.

“It’s just so exciting to be a part of this,” she said. “It’s truly a part of history.”

Labor and materials have been donated for the project by the public. One key contributor has been Top Branch Tree Service of Biddeford and Maine Architectural Services, which will help create a new entrance gate for the cemetery. 

“I found a piece of the fence that was around the cemetery when I was there last,” Peck said. “There was enough of it there so I could track it to Chase Brothers in Boston. The 1862 City Directory has them as HL Chase and Irah Chase Jr. on Winter Street. They made iron fences and iron furniture. Since this is all cast iron, I am assuming they had a foundry. I am hoping to find the original design. This does date the support for the cemetery to some degree, to the mid-1800s.”

Since the restoration began, a number of sandstone headstones have been found, but they were broken and the inscribed names on them have been obliterated by time, neglect and vandalism.

One headstone uncovered by volunteers in decent shape marks the grave of Sarah Jordan, wife of Major Rishworth Jordan of Biddeford.

Other early Biddeford residents believed to buried at the site are Captain Benjamin Nason and his wife Jemima, who died in Biddeford in 1815 at age 81, and Captain James Donshell, who collapsed and died on board the schooner Ira in 1819. Donshell’s widow, Abigail, also is thought to have been interred in the cemetery following her death in 1840.

“My grandfather was a Jordan, so it’s mind-boggling to find Sarah’s grave and know that we’re part of something bigger,” Provost said. “This is local history and it warrants the respect of the community to keep this ground sacred.”

Provost said she’s going to share the initiative with the Jordan Foundation when the Jordan family holds its annual reunion in 2019 and hopes foundation members will pitch in to help and actually come to Biddeford to tour the cemetery restoration.

Peck said he’s optimistic that once the the cemetery can be revived and restored that it will then maintained perpetually by the city of Biddeford.

— Executive Editor Ed Pierce can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 326, or by email at editor@journaltribune.com.