Here I am walking the
North Orange Cemetery
where Lucy Chase Malcom is buried on a
beautiful October day in 2007. She, of course, has no gravestone
because before she died she resided at the local poor farm and therefore had
no personal assets for a marker. Below the photo you will see a
map showing the relationship of the poor farm and the cemetery. This
cemetery is about 4 1/2 miles north of Orange, Massachusetts on Wheeler
Road. My husband and I did mightily search of many of the likely
nearby cemeteries to find the grave of her husband, Michael Malcom. We did
not find it. He disappeared from the known recorded history of the Malcoms
after 1798. ( We do not know if he died or just left the area.)

If Michael indeed died in the vicinity of
Orange, MA, he too, probably has no existing cemetery grave marker in those
burial localities around Orange. The Malcom family at that time had no
money for a frivolous expenditure such as a stone marker. He may
just have been buried on the property on which they lived at the time.
Here
is a map showing the relationship and the distance between the North Orange
Cemetery (small red circle) and the township "poor farm" (large red
circle). Looking at the map, it seems that the farm was named TOWN FARM
judging by the name of the road which runs by it. This cemetery has other
persons buried there that were not indigent. Greg and I found the location
of the former "poor farm" with the help of a gentleman we found working
outside on his property located on the corner of Main street and Athol Road just
east of the cemetery. The poor farm today no longer exists because such
institutions long ago became "politically incorrect".
It was not an auspicious beginning for the Malcom family but I think Lucy and Michael would
have been proud of the way their children, grandchildren and the future
Malcom generations conducted their lives except for a glitch or a "bad patch" or two.
Please continue to explore the rest of the Malcom pages on this website to find out for yourselves what happened.