Saturday, October 13, 2018

Historic Cemeteries


In one of the Facebook groups on genealogy that I belong to, someone posted a link to an article by the New England Historical Society that was titled “Six Historic Cemeteries in New England.” (*1) The authors picked out one old cemetery in each of the six New England states to feature: Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, CT; Mount Hope Cemetery in Bangor, ME; Myles Standish Burying Ground in Duxbury, MA; North Cemetery in Portsmouth, NH; Newman Cemetery in Rumford, RI; and Hope Cemetery in Barre, VT. Because my various ancestral lines go back almost 400 years in New England, I’d like to look and see what “connections” I have to these cemeteries. I’d also like to mention a few other cemeteries in CT where many of my ancestors are buried.

I have relatively few ancestors in Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, or Vermont. The historic cemeteries in each of those state are fairly large (25K, 1100, 2200, 7K respectively), since I am not aware of any ancestors there I did not search through the memorials there. It’s possible that there are distant cousins or other relatives, but I have limited time to do the research involved. The historic cemeteries in CT and MA have 13K and 192 memorials respectively. I’ll look at the Myles Standish Burying Ground first.


Myles Standish Burying Ground

This is the oldest maintained cemetery in the US (*2). The oldest grave is dated 1687 and the most recent is dated 1789. Thus, while most of the individuals who were part of the original Pilgrim colony in Plymouth died before this cemetery was establish, many of their descendants or other relatives may be found here. There is only relative of mine interred here:

·       John Rogers – Two of the original Mayflower passengers were Thomas Rogers (1571-1621) and his son Joseph (1603-1678). My wife and I are both descended from Joseph (*3). Neither Thomas nor Joseph are buried here, but a brother of Joseph, John (1606-1691) is. He is my great*8 uncle.


Grove Street Cemetery

For the first 160 years of New Haven, people were buried on the New Haven Green. But when the green got overcrowded during the yellow fever epidemic at the end of the 1700s, the Grove Street Cemetery was established. The first burial there took place in 1797. Since my mother’s family had been in New Haven for over 100 years at that point, there are a number of relations in this cemetery. Here are the primary family names in my ancestry and the number of people with that last name interred here (note that women are listed under both their maiden name and their married name, so there is some overlap). But you can get a good idea of how many of my relatives are in this historical cemetery.

·       Beecher – 117
·       Blakeslee – 14
·       Bradley – 296
·       Davenport – 3
·       Edwards – 28
·       Frost – 2
·       Hitchcock – 31
·       Hotchkiss – 351
·       Johnson – 68
·       Peck – 191
·       Perkins – 27
·       Pierpont – 12
·       Potter – 44
·       Russell – 21
·       Sperry – 39
·       Talmadge – 10
·       Trowbridge – 182
·       Tuttle – 123

It’s pretty obvious that with so many relatives in so many branches of my family that doing an exhaustive look at each one to document the exact relationship of each of them to me is much too large a task. Suffice it to say that I have a lot of connections to the families of New Haven and most of them from the late 1700s are buried here.


Center Church on the Green Churchyard

This is the cemetery that preceded the Grove Street Cemetery above. My great*7 grandfather, James Pierpont (1659-1714), was the pastor of this church and the founder of Yale in 1701. He is one of the ones interred in this cemetery, along with many other relatives from that time period.

The present church building was built in 1814 and was built over the top of part of the burying ground. In 1821, almost all of the remaining outside monuments were moved to the Grove Street Cemetery (many of them around the inside wall in alphabetical order). Of the 622 graves remaining, 137 of the gravestones remain in the basement crypt which is only open a few hours a week for tours (*4, *5). I toured the crypt a few years ago when the Pierpont Family Association met in New Haven and we had arranged for a special tour. Here are some of the family names in my ancestry and, like above, the number of individuals in that family interred here:

·       Alcott/Allcock – 8
·       Beecher – 7
·       Blakeslee – 4
·       Bradley – 29
·       Davenport – 4
·       Edwards – 2
·       Hitchcock – 7
·       Hotchkiss – 14
·       Johnson – 2
·       Peck – 12
·       Perkins – 17
·       Pierpont/Pierpoint – 14
·       Potter – 7
·       Russell – 4
·       Sperry – 11
·       Talmadge – 1
·       Todd – 30
·       Trowbridge – 35
·       Tuttle – 2

Again, a lot of my relatives in this one cemetery.


East Farms Cemetery

This is a small cemetery with only 162 graves that was located down the driveway next to my grandparent’s house in Waterbury, CT. Since it only contains graves from families who lived in the area, and that area had many of my relatives living in it, a large number of the graves are of individuals related to me. Family names are like those listed above for the cemeteries in New Haven as that is where many of these families moved from – including families like Beecher, Frost, Hitchcock, Johnson, and Pierpont, the Pierpont family alone numbering 41 graves.


Wolcott Historical Cemeteries

I’ve written in the past about three small historic cemeteries in my hometown of Wolcott, CT. With my ties to so many people in Wolcott history, a large percentage of the people in these old cemeteries are related to me.

Pike’s Hill Burying Ground (*6) – 7 graves from 1776-1781, all related to me.
Northeast Burying Ground (*7) – 103 graves from 1796 (oldest ones relocated from Pike’s Hill Burying Ground) to 1829, nearly all related to me.
South East Burying Ground (*8) – 63 graves from 1782-mid 1800s plus one more recent, many related to me.


Notes



1 comment:

  1. Grandpa Joe's ancestors are buried in the High Cemetery in Concord Mass. Several Hartwells were on Concord Bridge that morning they ran the English off and the Hartwell Tavern is still there.

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