Cemeteries are wonderful places to find mysteries of history. Years ago, we plodded through about a half mile (it seemed) of hayfields, the grass shoulder-high, into a cluster of tall trees that cast shade over a number of old gravestones, fieldstones, and just plain rocks.

This was the old graveyard known as John Akers Knight, simply because it was on Knight’s property, off what we now know as the Dutton Hill Road.

It was in this old burial ground that Windham’s well-known patriot Stephen Manchester was originally buried. His grave was removed to the Smith Cemetery in Windham Center in the early part of the last century, by relatives who also erected a large monument.

Many of the headstones in the Knight yard were simply carved and some of them had a few letters crudely cut. A good look would show just the initials in some cases, such as “B. W.” Apparently, no thought was ever given to future historians who might wonder who B.W. was.

A former curator of Windham Historical Society lived in the Knight house on this property for many years. She painstakingly made a list of all of the headstones she could find, along with using resources at the Society, compiled a list of all burials. These included five members of a Whitehouse family – with their initials, A., B., J., L. and P.

Who were these people? By going through the vital statistic listings on the Historical Society website, we find Pomphret, Abigail, Benjamin, Hannah, Comfort, Huldah, Mary and Levi in the Whitehouse family. Several died in the early 1800s. They were members of the Society of Friends, also known as Quakers and their records go back to the late 1700s. Anything else about this family is unknown at this time. It does appear they originated in Dover, N.H.

This is an ongoing mystery. Contact the Historical Society (info@windhamhistorical.org) with any information about where they lived, what their occupation was or any other data. Perhaps these little rocks with “B.W.”, or “P.W.” signify the end of the Whitehouse family in East Windham.