03/17/2026
📰David Tedford displays a Gravestone Rubbing at Saturday's "Show & Tell" event at the Schoolhouse Museum. The rubbing was done by Ernest & Marie Poland and gifted to David in 1995. They resided on Johnson Hill and were very involved in community affairs.
⚰The gravestone tells the sad story of Dr. Nathaniel Morrill who, at the young age of 27, was gored by "an unruly Ox". His resting place is at the Middle Range Pond Cemetery. The story is "the young Doctor was stopping at the Jackson Inn and out for a morning walk when along came the animal driven by Alvan Bolster (father of Janette Bolster Ricker, then a youth). In attempting to head off the infuriated creature, he was pinned by its horns and thrown, and his back broken by the fall. He was carried back to the inn where he died.
⛪The grove where the cemetery is, is the location of the first meetinghouse in Poland and according to the Ricker's, the oldest cemetery, and was once part of the Ricker estate. The date of the church is not known, however it easily dates back to the Jabez Ricker time frame of the late 1790s. "
