Hillside Cemetery

Richard Cossingham was born into slavery in Virginia on December 15, 1835. After he was freed as a young boy he became a cook on a steamship and worked all through the Civil War, cooking for soldiers. After his wife, Julia, died he moved to Norwich with his two sons in 1883 to work for Dartmouth professor Elihu Thayer Quimby as a chef. His two sons began a farm on Cossingham Road which eventually became one of the most successful dairy farms in Norwich. Richard eventually became a chef for the Newton Inn (the Norwich Inn) and worked there until his death in 1906.

Albert Messenger was one of the many soldiers from Norwich who fought for the Union in the Civil War. Albert and his younger brothers George, Charles, and Frank all wrote an assortment of letters to their family back in Norwich during their time as soldiers in the war. Albert, along with other men from Norwich, was assigned to the Vermont Sixth Regiment, Company B. In a letter that he writes to his wife, Albert writes that he visited the hospital where he found a fellow Norwich resident whose leg was injured. He explains the interaction and writes that the man is “pretty cheerful… and pretty glad to see me”. Community in Norwich extends much further than just the boundaries of the town as Albert makes clear in his letter.

One day that he lay on the ground, it rained hard, you will think that he must be pretty tough to live through it. he was pretty cheerful yesterday and pretty glad to see me, I can tell you. He thinks that he shall get along now if nothing new takes hold.

Dan Fraser and Whit Hicks.

At the age of 20, Daniel Fraser began to work at Merrill’s General store where he and Whit Hicks ran a delivery service. The two young men would spend the morning traveling around town taking orders from local families and then in the afternoon they would deliver the groceries. In 1955, Dan and Whit (the names everyone knew them by) decided to buy the store from A.H. Merrill who had begun the business in 1891 and was now retiring. At first, Dan and Whit operated the store in a way where customers read their shopping lists to the person behind the counter and the employee would then rush around the store fetching the items. According to Whit Hicks, this soon became tiring because people often changed their minds at the last minute and wanted to add more to their purchase. In 1972, Whit decided to retire and sold the store completely to Dan Fraser. Dan and Whits is still in the Fraser family and is an important part of the Norwich community.

Basil Milovsoroff was born in Siberia in 1906 and studied at Oberlin college where he met his wife and developed an interest in marionettes and puppets. He toured for 20 years with his wife and puppets, performing at schools, camps, and theaters. He moved to Norwich in the 1940s and became a Dartmouth professor of Russian in the late 1950s. He was one of several professors who left Europe during the War, settling in Norwich. In 1983, he received the President’s Award of the Puppeteers of America.