Rediscovered and Still-Missing Cemeteries

One cemetery that was recently "rediscovered" is off Fuller Road, which begins a couple of miles east of Antwerp at the Rockwell Creek Road, and runs northeast, skirting the perimeter of the reservation's Main Impact Area.

A post Forester first recorded its coordinates in 1969. Seven years then elapsed before the real-property clerk wrote in a 1976 memo that he and the forester "actually tripped over a headstone in the severe brush while looking for the cemetery."

At that time, they counted 11 headstones; but heard from area people that there may have been up to 35 burials in all there. This was possible, they thought, because of the "very noticeable depressions in the center of the cemetery." However, the cemetery record at the Flower Memorial Library lists only 12 burials: two with the family name of Bacon, six with Fuller, three with Patten and one with Pomeroy. These date from 1846 to 1870.

Mistakenly identified as Freeman by Fort Drum, its historic name is the Bacon Farm Cemetery. In the early days the graveyard could probably be seen from Fuller Road, across the meadow to the west. But for almost two decades now, woods and thick brush have hidden it from view.

Only a few older, local people with friends or relatives buried there continued to find the graves. No one from Fort Drum had located the cemetery until this past fall, when an area behind one of the ranges was being cleared of unexploded shells.

For Adam King, who had recently arrived at the post to become its cultural resources program manager, this was a lucky opportunity to photograph the site and gather information on the gravestones for the first time in 20 years.
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Bacon Family Cemetery is only accessible on Memorial Day each year. Take Carr Road to Range 43 (machine-gun range) and follow gravel road down range until your reach a "T" junction. This is the now mostly overgrown Fuller Road. Turn right (West), cross a very small concrete bridge and continue past a pond on the left (South).

You will begin to see underbrush encroaching on the road and a small turn out on your left. There are the rusted remains of an auto buried in the brush. On the opposite side of the road is a mowed grass path. About 150 meters down this path you need to climb a shallow 2-3 foot rock outcropping. Area had been burned over within about five years.

(On the map, Fuller Road is depicted like Carr Road or any other range road, but this is NOT the case. Road is a narrow grassy path, rather than a gravel road)