There's a clearing in the woods off the Connecticut College rugby field where runners on a trail can see a scattering of weathered gravestones, their inscriptions nearly erased by time.

The spot is marked by a bronze plaque that's easier to read because it's been there only two months. Mounted on a boulder, it explains the site's history, holding it fast against the advance of obscurity.

This story isn't exactly about the plaque, though there's more on it later. And it isn't quite about the people beneath the stones, a strange religious community whose tribulations have filled a book.

Mostly, this is about what happened in between.

It's about a sacred patch of earth that has withstood insult, neglect and the ravages of progress.

It's about how we struggle to keep history from getting away: forgetting, then remembering, then forgetting again.

And it's about how, with time, the cycle of remembering and forgetting itself becomes history.

* * *

John Rogers Bolles was a forward-looking man. When he saw farmland in Groton, he imagined something better and acquired it for the government. Today the site is the Naval Submarine Base.

But Bolles also looked backward. He bore the names of two families in a community of faith that got a full chapter in the "History of New London" by Frances Manwaring Caulkins, herself a descendant.

The Rogerenes, as they were known, were disliked and misunderstood in their day. To the extent they were remembered at all, they remained so two centuries later. In old age, Bolles was moved to do something about that.

Whether the story in The Day on Dec. 9, 1886, is what set him off is hard to say. But the errors and contemptuous tone in that story got his attention. It claimed the movement had begun in 1720, which was off by a good half century. It said one of the group's tenets was "to violate the Lord's day, openly and offensively." It said members would show up for church half naked.

Bolles set about writing a defense of the Rogerenes to set the record straight and dispel the notion that his ancestors were fanatics.

Whether they were is a matter of perspective. They were devoutly Christian but rabidly anti-clerical and would burst in on church services, shouting and disrupting the proceedings. They were often fined and jailed for profaning the Sabbath, a punishment they seemed to welcome.

Bolles made his case with conviction, but his eyesight was failing. So in 1894, a cousin became his secretary, reading old documents for him.

Anna Bolles Williams helped her relative finish his project, and he died soon afterward. Rather than publish it, she decided his arguments lacked context, so she delved into Rogerene history, combing through colonial records. The result was a 400-page book by the two of them that shed new light on the forgotten group.

One scene it recounts is the day in 1753 when John Rogers the younger, son of the Rogerene founder, was laid to rest by his 15 children at Mamacock Farm on the Thames River.

Two years earlier, Rogers had set aside the waterfront spot for family burials. It was to be kept by his children and "their Children after them from Generation to Generation forever."

That isn't quite how it worked out.

* * *

The cemetery was still there when the book was published in 1904, but by then the Great September Gale of 1815 had washed some of it away and the railroad had plowed through the rest. Only a fraction of its original acre and a half remained.

Though deeded to family members, what was left had changed hands several times. The latest buyer planned a subdivision. So Williams and a few other descendants decided to save the place, which was in sorry shape.

"The pile of nameless headstones had been somewhat readjusted to form a fireplace and extend hospitalities to tramps," H. Eugene Bolles, one of the group, wrote after a 1905 visit. He later learned with surprise that the disorder had been caused not by tramps but by a fellow descendant, whose name and motivations are unrecorded.

Most of the jumbled markers were simple fieldstones, in keeping with the Rogerenes' disapproval of fancy monuments to the dead. Some semblance of order was restored, and the group decided a plaque might discourage the creation of a street nearby.

A boulder was needed to put it on, but one would have to be moved there, as had just been done, with fanfare, for the new statue of John Winthrop, New London's founder.

Correspondence from 1905 is filled with fussing over the inscription, cost and boulder logistics. The next year, the grounds were restored and fenced, but for reasons unknown, the plan for a plaque wasn't completed.

By 1915 much had changed. The cemetery and surrounding land now belonged to a new institution called Connecticut College for Women. Frederick Sykes, the president, assured the descendants the school would oversee the grounds but didn't commit to regular maintenance.

A boulder had been moved there at some point and set on a foundation, then removed so the foundation could be repaired.

"When it is again in place I am prepared to cause a modest but suitable tablet to be placed upon it," descendant William Bolles wrote.

But again, the plaque failed to materialize.

* * *

One day in 1958, a boy playing in the woods came upon a shocking sight: a large hole in the ground in front of an ancient gravestone. Someone had tried to dig up William Peck, dead since 1798.

The desecration made the paper, and the brief story spoke volumes. It identified the spot as "an abandoned cemetery in a wooded section north of Farnsworth St."

* * *

Decades later, when Brian Rogers learned of the burial ground, it remained neglected. Rogers was the librarian at Conn and a descendant of the Rogerene founder's father. But not until 1996, amid the college's plans for New London's 350th anniversary, did he take an interest.

The cemetery seemed a natural thing to commemorate. It was no longer so remote, since the land immediately south had been cleared for the rugby field.

Camille Hanlon, a professor of human development, was researching the Rogerenes and found the 1905 and 1915 correspondence in the college archives. She gave Rogers copies, and he read of the twice-unfinished effort to mount a plaque.

On Sept. 21, 1996, about 45 people gathered under a tent on the rugby field to honor the Rogerenes.

"How will those who come here in the future know about the cemetery?" Rogers asked in prepared remarks. "They will know because they will read the bronze plaque we intend to attach to the great boulder, if possible before the end of this 350th anniversary year."

But that year ended with no plaque. Once again, the job somehow didn't get done.

"I've always felt a lot of guilt," Rogers said recently.

* * *

When Patrick Crotty joined the Waterford Historic Properties Commission a few years ago, he became "the cemetery guy" who pushed for a graveyard survey.

He learned of the Rogerene burial ground from information compiled in the 1930s by local historian Margaret Stacy. Writing just a few years after the first efforts to mark the site, Stacy somehow came up with this:

"One large boulder is supposed to have marked the grave of an Indian chief."

That nearly instant legend was probably a symptom of the cemetery's inability to hold anyone's attention.

Just 10 years ago, Conn arranged for a ground-penetrating radar survey that identified 40 possible unmarked graves. Yet when Crotty found the site, it wasn't well-maintained.

After he cut away some vines, he had a not-so-original thought: The place needed a plaque. He brought the matter to Robert Nye, Waterford's town historian. That Waterford officials should take an interest in a New London site was oddly appropriate.

When the cemetery was established, it was in New London, as it is today, but it spent the entire 19th century in Quaker Hill as the towns' borders shifted. Quaker Hill got its name from the Rogerenes, who were sometimes called Rogerene Quakers.

Nye brought Brian Rogers on board to discuss a plaque, and they put a new twist on an old idea: They finally made it happen. Nye and Rogers worked out the wording, quoting the 1751 deed, then placed an order with Mystic River Foundry. The commission paid most of the $800 cost, with Rogers pitching in.

On Sept. 28, Nye and Crotty finished a job 114 years in the making. They drilled two holes in the boulder, attached the plaque and secured it with epoxy.

With the name "Rogers Family Burying Ground" now engraved in bronze, the cemetery has a new lease on life. The college is working on a plan for its future maintenance, said Maggie Redfern, assistant director of the Connecticut College Arboretum.

Still, if history's rhythms are any guide, it's possible the place could again be forgotten.

If it is, the next round of remembering should at least be easier with the plaque, a project passed "from Generation to Generation" for what seemed like forever.

j.ruddy@theday.com

Timeline for Rogers Family Burying Ground

1674: John Rogers establishes the Rogerenes

1721: Rogers buried at Mamacock Farm on the Thames River

1751: Rogers' son deeds family cemetery at his gravesite

1815: Great September Gale washes away part of cemetery

1822: Cemetery passes out of Rogers family ownership

1849:  New London, Willimantic & Palmer Railroad cuts through

1904: "The Rogerenes" by John R. Bolles and Anna B. Williams published

1905: Gravestones found disturbed; plaque first discussed

1906: Cemetery restored by Rogerene descendants

1911: Connecticut College buys land including cemetery

1915: Plaque again discussed

1940: Descendant Ernest Rogers tells Conn of cemetery's history

1958: Grave of William Peck desecrated

1996: Conn commemorates cemetery and plans plaque

2009: Radar survey suggests 40 unmarked graves

2019: Plaque installed on fourth attempt