Bill Hartley is a member of the Charlestown Historical Society. In this year’s Cemetery Walk, he played clockmaker, builder and businessman Stephen Hasham (circa 1761-1861). The following is an edited interview.
You come in to the cemetery and start looking at the names — Hastings, you’ve got Parker here, Enos Stevens — and you start to wonder, “Now was he the Enos Stevens that was taken by the Indians?” You start to make connections and ask questions. Sometimes you get more interesting things from the people who are dead than the ones who are alive.
The first time my parents took me up to Fort Ticonderoga, I was maybe 4 years old, and that makes an impression. I’ve been told by my mother that I’d go sit on the floor in front of the display cases and just stare at the different things. So it’s been over a long period that this interest in history has been growing.
I try to make a connection with the past. I’ve done re-enactments — I prefer to call it historical interpretation — but I’ve outgrown the “shoot ’em up, bang-bang” because people were doing more than going around shooting their guns back then. There’s the whole life that they lived. If you go out and mow hay by hand and rake it and pick it up with a pitchfork, or do colonial crafts like pewter casting and woodworking, all these different things give you a somewhat better understanding of what life was like.
My big thrill today is this Hamilton pocket watch I bought for $4 at a flea market down at St. Luke’s. This was new 108 years ago.
As far as Hasham, I didn’t have much of an interest in the guy until we started doing these cemetery walks. But he was quite an artist and a craftsman, and apparently he was quite the character.
His youngest daughter died at the age of 3, and he just made a wooden box, put her in it and wheeled her up to the cemetery in a wheelbarrow. People said, “Oh you should have a service.” He said, “Why? She’s as dead as the devil. What would be the point?”
Like him, I’m a bit eccentric. I know I’m related to some of the Hunts in here, but I’m not sure if I have any genealogical connection to Hasham. If you look over there by those graves, that’s where my real connection is going to be. That’s where I’ll be planted. So we’re going to be neighbors in a way.