Aaron Hartshorn Grave Dedication held on July 29

At a love­ly cer­e­mo­ny in the Danville Cen­ter Ceme­tery, locat­ed at the top of Danville on Dole Hill, two groups came togeth­er to hon­or one of Danville’s found­ing families–Aaron and Zuruiah Hartshorn. How they came to do so is in the sto­ry writ­ten below by Helen Sta­ley, Pres­i­dent of the North­east King­dom’s chap­ter of the Nation­al Soci­ety of the Daugh­ters of Founders and Patri­ot’s of Amer­i­ca. The oth­er group rep­re­sent­ed was the St. J. de C. Chap­ter of the Daugh­ter s of the Amer­i­can Revolution.

“Sev­er­al years ago, Don­na Glea­son of Valatie, New York, request­ed from an asso­ciate mem­ber of the Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety a pic­ture of Zeruiah Hartshorn’s head­stone. It appar­ent­ly did not exist, all of which result­ed in the search in the old­est Danville ceme­tery on Dole Hill.

“Phil Somers of Bar­net found weath­ered pieces of the head­stone with Aaron on one side and Zeruiah on the oth­er. The old head­stone let­ter­ing was deter­mined by fit­ting the pieces togeth­er and fill­ing in the gaps.

“We are deeply indebt­ed to Phil Somers, not only for locat­ing the Hartshorn head­ston rem­nants, but also for his con­sid­er­able research, which can be found in a book of about 300 pages in the Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety files. The book con­tains the fol­low­ing: 1)introduction 2) nar­ra­tive of all gen­er­a­tions 3) ances­tral charts 4) news­pa­per arti­cles 5) deeds 6) vital records 7) pro­bate 8) mis­cel­la­neous: fam­i­ly genewalo­gies, town records, pho­tographs, etc. 9) cen­sus records and 10) pen­sion records.

“Don­na Glea­son locat­ed some of Aaron’s mil­i­tary and pen­sion records. The local Dis­abled Amer­i­can Vet­er­an’s Ser­vice request­ed and received a mar­ble replace­ment head­stone for Aaron. Fund and gift rais­ing was pro­vid­ed by: the local DAV, the Hartshorn fam­i­ly, the North­east King­dom Ver­mont Chap­ter of the DFPA, the U.S. Vet­er­ans Admin­is­tra­tion, and “at cost” engrav­ing of Zeruiah and two of their sones by Gandin Broth­ers of South Rye­gate. This is what you see today!”

Aaron Hartshorn is cred­it­ed in the Danville his­to­ry Vil­lage in the Hills as sell­ing  the town the land for the green. Before he came to Danville, he served two months and 26 days with the Mass­a­chu­setts com­pa­ny of Cap­tain John Bacheller’s, and Colonel Ebenez­er Bridge’s Reg­i­ment. When Aaron died at age 49, Zeruiah Blunt Hartshorn, wid­ow of Aaron Hartshorn, applied for a Rev­o­lu­tian­ry War pen­sion in Lam­oille Coun­ty, VT. She brought up their 10 chil­dren and died at age 100 years, 11 months and 11 days in Calais, Vermont.

After the cer­e­mo­ny, the group returned to the Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety for punch and cookies.