The Gravestone of Deborah Maynard

Last November, a storm brought down a tree in the Brush Cemetery, at the corner of Maple Avenue and County Route 6. It landed on the gravestone of Deborah Maynard, breaking it into three pieces. 

Here’s an image of the stone before it was damaged, taken in 2016: 

Here are a couple of images of the broken stone.    

We left it for the winter and in August, Dale and Tina Utter from Mount Upton, repaired and reset the stone. They left the piece that broke off at ground level and set the remaining stone in front of it, since doing so did not obliterate the inscription. They repaired the other two pieces. 

And here’s the repaired stone.  

So, who was Deborah Maynard? Sadly, we don’t know much about her. She was the eldest daughter of early Bovina settlers Elisha and Esther (Horton) Maynard. Born in April 1790, she was only 22 years old when she died in November 1812. The reason she was buried in the Brush cemetery seems to be related to the fact that Alexander Brush’s son, Joel, married her sister Elizabeth. 

Thank you to Dale and Tina and to the town of Bovina for ensuring that we’ll remember Deborah.