Udhagamandalam :
She’s spent the last few years tracking down her ancestors but when Australian social anthropologist Lesley Branagan reached the cemetery where the graves of her great-grand uncle and aunt are located in Kotagiri she was disappointed to find it in ruins and overrun with thorns and brambles.
The cemetery in Dimbatty village, about 1km from Kotagiri, is the first Christian burial ground of the Nilgiris and contains the graves of a number of British-era personalities who contributed to the entire state’s development. It was founded as an Angilican burial ground in 1822 on land gifted by modern Ooty’s founder John Sullivan.
Among the people buried here is Ralph T H Griffith of Corsley estate who was the first to translate the Vedas into English around 1900. According to Dharmalingam Venugopal, director of Nilgiri Documentation Centre, the entire Cockburn family is buried there. M D Cockburn of Hope Park, former Salem collector and regarded as the ‘father of Yercaud’, was the first to introduce coffee cultivation in Kotagiri. The popular tourist spot of Catherine Falls is named after his wife who loved to paint near them. The schools and churches the Cockburns helped build are still in use.
“The families in the British India Society Database’ contains the details of the graves along with their photographs taken 10 years ago,” said Venugopal. “Family members like Branagan who came hoping to see the graves are greatly disappointed. Even about five years ago the cemetery was well maintained.”
The cemetery is supposed to be undergoing restoration with the assistance of British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia. “The cemetery is part of Nilgiri history and heritage and needs to be cared for properly,” he said. Robert Stanes and his wife of the famous Stanes family of Coimbatore, E J Boesinger, one of the pioneering photographers of the Nilgiris, and noted archeologist A H Longhurst are other notable persons buried in the cemetery, apart from several planters and missionaries.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Coimbatore / TNN / August 12th, 2014