By Donald Junkins; from JFA Newsletter no. 3, Winter 1990
Behind the Mobil gas station at York Corner, a 135-year old Junkins family cemetery overgrown with vines and darkened with rotten stumps has been cleaned out with cutting shears and a good amount of contemporary Junkins elbow grease. What appeared to Alan and Donald Junkins on the day before the Junkins Family Reunion as a totally neglected graveyard with the stones missing, reappeared to Roland Junkins on the first weekend in October. After he found the missing stones under six inches of dirt and leaves, and after applying the above-mentioned elbow grease, the graveyard of Mary (d. 1855, wife of Thomas: pg. 63, Junkins Family, Descendants of Robert Junkins of York County, Maine) and their son Elias, d. 1837 age 2 emerged. Mary's gravesite was not known to Harry Alexander Davis when he compiled the family history, nor was the existence of the little boy Elias.
Thomas Junkins (1799-?) "married 1824 Mary Curtis, born 1803 and resided at York Corner where he engaged in farming." He was the on of the once-jailed Samuel Junkins who took Olive Williams as his Cochranite wife, and whose story is recounted pg. 40-45 in the Junkins family history. Samuel left Thomas one dollar in his will. Thomas' younger brother, Elias, b. 1806, died in 1835/36, and apparently Thomas and Mary named their son after this brother, and as noted, the little boy died two years later.
Roland reports that the cemetery on Route 1 "was all vines everywhere and full of rotten stumps." On three of the sides, he was able to restore the iron rods to their original shape and position in the granite corner posts, and although the fourth side rods were misshapen by a great tree, which had grown up through them, he was able to pry them back into position with a crowbar. The tree had "torn it all around, grotesque." Roland was able to use gravel from the new development site for a shopping center to re-set the stones in their upright positions. He cleaned 3 feet around the perimeter of the square cemetery and left "a lovely evergreen tree" growing in the middle.
Donald Junkins