History Comes to Life Once Again at Evergreen Cemetery

Beatrice Jane Patchin was 107 years old when she died in 1989. “Aunt Bea,” as she was known to family and friends, never married. In an interview with the Register Herald on her 100th birthday she said, “I’m interested in everything. That’s what keeps me young. Wrinkles and gray hair are no reason to be old.” Aunt Bea’s world of Pine Plains and Patchin’s Mill, which her father owned, is one of several local stories that will be brought to life—in this case by Catherine Howard—during the Evergreen Cemetery Lantern Tour on Oct. 27 and 28.  

The Lantern Tour winds through the Evergreen Cemetery at twilight and stops at various gravesites, where performers in costume portray the person buried there. The time and setting can create a mood of otherworldliness. For the sixth straight year Dyan Wapnick, president of the Little Nine Partners Historical Society, and playwright Lenora Champagne have done the research and produced the scripts, though Champagne noted that some of the actors also do research of their own. 

Julia Duxbury Slingerland Jordan (1887-1976) had a lifelong relationship with Pine Plains. She helped start the first Parent Teacher Association in the community, served as vice president of the Stissing National Bank and ran an insurance agency during the last three decades of her life. She was also a trained musician and an early supporter of concerts at Tanglewood, in Lenox, Mass. Jordan Schmidt will play the role of Jordan, and Vaughan Fritts and Mary Jenkins will sing a song in her honor at the gravesite. 

The tour also includes Alfred Brush, a tailor who owned the Graham-Brush House from 1829 until his death in 1872; he will be portrayed by Thayer Durrell. Carl Baden will play Dale Leroy Fletcher, who died in 1978, and Jim Petrie will sing an original song in Fletcher’s memory entitled “May All Your Hills Be Easy.”  

For the first time the tour will conclude on the first floor of The Pines, a stately Victorian home and inn owned by Eileen and Jorge Yajure that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Located at the corner of North Main and Maple streets, The Pines is adjacent to the Evergreen Cemetery. There, spectators will meet William Stewart Eno, an attorney and banker who built The Pines in 1878, and an Irish maid, Honor Molloy. Brett Bernardini will take the role of Eno and Martine King will play Molloy.  

Champagne, who has directed the performances the past five year, has passed those duties to her husband, Robert Lyons, also a playwright. The couple have spent time in Pine Plains since the 1980s and lived there since 2017. Lyons, who retired this summer after over 30 years as the artistic director of the New Ohio Theater in Manhattan’s West Village, said he was “really loving” working on the Lantern Tour and that “the spirit everybody brings to it makes it really fun to be part of.” 

Lyons added that performances in the dark in a cemetery are a departure from the works he put on at the New Ohio Theater, but “somehow, it’s the exact same thing, simple staging and a scaled down production. I’m glad Lenora handed it off to me.” 

There will be three tours at Evergreen on Oct. 27 and 28 at 5:30, 6, 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for seniors and students; admission is free for children under 10. The tour lasts approximately one hour. All proceeds go to support the Little Nine Partners Historical Society and the Pine Plains Free Library. Tickets can be purchased at the library (518-398-1927) or at Eventbrite.