Community Corner

Library to Get Nearly $400,000 From Trusts, Town to Get Cemetery Funds

A probate judge made the determination this week.

The Rockville Public Library is receiving a substantial amount of money with the dissolution of trusts created by the Maxwell and Belding families.

This week, Probate Judge Peter Jay Alter made it official and terminated the trusts, ordering the funds to be shipped to the town for cemetery upkeep and to the library.

The Maxwell family was instrumental in establishing the library. Both the Maxwell and Belding families are prominent names from the days of Vernon's industrial and textile might.

The Town Council, on two occasions last month, agreed to take ownership of the Maxwell and Belding burial plots at Grove Hill Cemetery.
 
Town Attorney Harold "Hal" Cummings said that the Town will get approximately $170,000 from the close out of the trusts, which is "sufficient to provide for maintenance of two  burial grounds in perpetuity." The money will go into a cemetery fund, Cummings said.

He said the Library will get about $400,000.

The history of the burial ground maintenance charge dates back to just before World War II, when, in 1937 and 1941, testamentary trusts were created to fund the perpetual care of the Maxwell and Belding burial grounds.

The management of the Maxwell trust had become complicated. According to town records, the original trustee appointed to manage the Maxwell Cemetery Trust was The Hartford-Connecticut Trust Company. The institution was subsequently acquired by the original Connecticut Bank and Trust Company, which also faded away. As a result of bank mergers and consolidations over the last several years, the management of the Maxwell Trust had been vested in Bank of America, town records indicate.

Town records indicate that at a probate hearing last June, a judge and Library Director Donna Enman were critical of the way the trust was being managed, at which time the court suggested the town be approached to officially take over the burial ground. Such a move would trigger termination of the cemetery trust and disperse the funds to the town and library, the records indicate she said.

Coincidentally, the amount the library is receiving is just about what it needs to complete the fund-raising on a $3 million project to expand the facility.


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