By Nicholas Brown
Dunbarton News Staff Writer
Thank goodness a hearse can’t feel humiliation, for Dunbarton’s own has been degraded more times than any is decent. Most recently, it’s the victim of an infestation of powderpost beetles.
When the Hearse Restoration Committee was formed in November 2004, members soon became acquainted with some of the horse-drawn hearse’s checkered past, but may not have anticipated more pitfalls to follow.
The hearse was purchased by the town in 1870, said committee member Donna Dunn.
In that time, she said, “It was the town’s responsibility to escort the dead to their burial.”
Based on the committee’s research, Dunn suspects the hearse was retired from use sometime in the 1920s. But its golden years have been far from smooth.
A fire sometime in the 1950s or 1960s, said Dunn, destroyed much of the hearse.
What could be salvaged was then placed in a shed – specially designed to house large, horse-drawn rolling carriages used to compact snow – on Robert Rogers Road.
From there, the hearse moved to the dirt floor of the Historical Society’s blacksmith shop and museum, where it sat for years, said Dunn.
The hearse’s next stop was in a privately owned barn, though there more trouble – in the forms of a raccoon and a porcupine – awaited.
“Both of those animals not only chewed on it, they used it as a latrine,” said Dunn. “There’s not a very nice way to put it.”
Last year, Dunn, along with fellow committee member Gail Martel, went in with masks and cleaned off the hearse enough to move it to the Gorham Pond Road barn where it now sits.
Though moved, the hearse required some further scrubbing.
“That’s when we found the white powder and the little holes,” Dunn said.
A nearby exterminator made a quick diagnosis: powderpost beetles – the rue of many a New Hampshire barn.
Though formally known as the Lyctid beetle, the pest earned its common name because an active sign of infestation is a very fine powder, produced by the larva as they destroy the wood, said Chris Pestana, general manager of JP Chemical in Milford.
Pestana, who diagnosed the hearse, said the beetles create pin-sized holes in a random, “bird-shot pattern.”
“When you see the little holes, that’s all well and good,” said Dunn. “But there can be a huge cavity behind them.”
That cavity is where the larva then pupate, said Pestana. Once adult in late winter or early spring, the beetles emerge from the wood to renew the process, with the female laying 15 to 50 eggs in the wood’s crevices.
In New England, said Pestana, this cycle generally lasts 12 months.
“It’s pretty amazing the damage these little buggers can do,” said Dunn.
Having faced equal challenges in the past, however, the committee seems up to the latest challenge.
Pestana gave the hearse a heavy treatment of pesticide, largely composed of boric acid.
Once the hearse is relieved of its latest natural foe, committee members plan to use an advanced epoxy compound to refurbish all the damaged wood.
“When it’s dry, you can cut it, paint it, sand it; it’s wood,” Dunn said of the compound.
Now that the hearse is largely dismantled, many of the components can be fixed up and put back together in sequence – one determined by on old hardcover book, “Horse Drawn Funeral Vehicles” – that outlines reassembly for a similar model.
Dunn expects the entire hearse renovation to be completed before 2007, quite a feat considering it’s all being done by volunteers from town.
Dunbarton resident Beth LaMarca has compiled a record of every financial transaction related to the hearse, and none of those escape the hands of Dunbarton residents. Dunn said the committee has maintained the spirit of a town project.
“It’s apparent to us that, through every phase, the old Dunbarton Yankee frugality has been at work,” said Dunn.
The hearse even has a rich family history in Dunbarton.
Bob Boynton is a committee member whom Dunn dubbed the “technical expert.” Boynton’s father worked for one summer as a town employee and was known for napping his lunch break away in the rear of the hearse.
Committee member Nancy Frost’s grandfather, John Bunten, was at one point the hearse’s driver. And Bunten’s son, John D. Bunten, was responsible for the leaf fire that ultimately reached the hearse. Dunn said Frost was integral in initiating the restoration project, while her son, Bill Frost, has been leading necessary the metal work.
“One drove it; the next one burned it; the next one said, ‘yeah let’s do this;’ and the next one is chipping in with the work,” said Dunn.