Rick Epstein, Frenchtown Borough Historian
Spending eternity in a cemetery isn’t so good for the living.
That’s why I broke my Frenchtown Cemetery Tour into 90-minute halves.
The half I’m conducting this Saturday morning goes through the older part of the cemetery and includes the grave of my new best friend – T. Powers Williams.
Powers’ dad built the National Hotel, and he grew up here during the Civil War. He wrote excellent stories of his boyhood antics, and I’ll be recounting a couple of those true tales on the tour.
My next tour is Saturday, July 3, at 10 a.m. and it’s the Capt. Slater Cemetery Tour.
If you have questions or want to sign up for a tour, please email me at rickepstein@yahoo.com and I’ll tell you where we’ll meet. Each tour costs $15 per person, payable in cash upon completion of the tour.
Masks are optional. (I’m all vaxxed up.)
Here are additional dates for my Frenchtown Walking Tours: Sunday, July 11 – Gloria Sipes Cemetery Tour; Saturday, July 24 – Bad Luck & Poor Choices Tour; Saturday, July 31 – Capt. Slater Cemetery Tour; Saturday, Aug. 7 – Bad Luck & Poor Choices Tour; Saturday, Aug. 14 – Downtown Tour; and Saturday, Aug. 21 – Gloria Sipes Cemetery Tour. All are at 10 a.m.
The Capt. Slater Tour – mostly of personages of the 1800, includes: the man who swam away from the Milford Train Wreck of 1878; Frenchtown’s first car owner; mischief makers Powers Williams and Lew Slater; the man who hanged Jeff Davis in effigy; and the Civil War captain who got a boost from Abe Lincoln. Zinc monuments will be examined.
The Gloria Sipes Cemetery Tour – mostly of personages of the 1900s, includes: a grieving father’s pink granite monument to the victims of a spinal meningitis epidemic in 1907; the homicidal Amos Hart; Frenchtown’s Tom Sawyer; Miss Frenchtown of 1931; the constable slain by a madman; and The Man Who Worked One Day a Year.
For information on the tours and for lots of Frenchtown history, visit bit.ly/frenchtowntours.
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