Wolcott History – Dead and Buried

This year is the 225^th year of the incorporation of Wolcott and the 290^th year since John Alcox and his wife settled in the Spindle Hill area of what was then known as Farmingbury. There have been many people born in the town, but everyone eventually dies and needs to be buried somewhere (unless they are cremated). So, where are all those early Farmingbury/Wolcott residents buried?

According to Orcutt’s History of Wolcott, in 1760 the settlers in the area first petitioned the General Assembly to make them a “Distinct Society”. This was rejected by the First Society of Waterbury, and it was not until the fall of 1770 that a petition was granted. However, a meeting of the First Society in Waterbury did establish a cemetery in 1764 (the Edgewood Cemetery). In 1772, a committee was appointed by the nascent Evangelical Society of Farmingbury to “fix a place or places for burying grounds” and in 1776 three gravediggers were appointed (indicating the existence of three graveyards). These three graveyards were the Pike’s Hill Burying Ground (*1), the South East Burying Ground (*2) and the center cemetery (now called the Edgewood Cemetery) near the Congregational Church. In the 1805, a new graveyard, the Northeast Burying Ground (*3), was built just down the path from the Pike’s Hill Burying Ground. The latter was then discontinued and all but a few gravestones from there moved to the Northeast Burying Ground. Around the same time, a new cemetery was begun in the Woodtick area.

The number of gravesites in each of these cemeteries and the oldest and newest graves are (based on findagrave.com, noting that there are some erroneous entries on that website):

·       Pike’s Hill – 9, 1776-1791 (entries for 1891 and 1856 are erroneous)

·       Northeast – 103, 1796-1929 (those before 1805 having been relocated here)

·       South East – 63, 1772-1867 (entries for 1712, 1731, 1736, 1929 are erroneous)

·       Woodtick – 971, 1801-still active (entries for 1754, 1784 erroneous)

·       Edgewood – 1666, 1769-still active

[Grave of Heman Hall, oldest gravestone in Wolcott]

 

In my former blogs about the first three of these cemeteries, I have done a detailed analysis of each of the graves, who is buried there, and the relationships between the individuals. This was relatively easy with such small cemeteries. But because the latter two are so much larger, I’d like to just provide a brief overview.

Woodtick Cemetery

Since there are nearly 1000 graves here and this is still an active cemetery, I’d like to focus just on the earlier graves, i.e., those which date before 1900. There are 173 of these (171 when discounting the two erroneous entries from 1754 and 1784). It’s obvious when scanning all these, that certain families account for the vast majority of these early graves. Beginning with the largest number from one family, these are:

·       19 – Todd (note that there are 19 others in the East Farms Cemetery)

·       16 – Upson (note that there are also 25 members of the Upson family in the Edgewood Cemetery 11 others in South East Burying Ground, and 1 in the East Farms Cemetery)

·       14 – Frisbie, Hall (13 more Hall members in the Edgewood Cemetery, 6 in East Farms Cemetery)

·       12 – Welton (5 more in Edgewood Cemetery)

·       8 – Higgins

·       7 – Downes/Downs, Nichols (10 more Downs members in Allentown Cemetery)

·       6 – Doolittle

·       5 – Garthwait, Wakelee

·       4 – Finch, Hough (7 more Hough family in Edgewood Cemetery)

Edgewood Cemetery

Again, focusing on graves from before 1900, we can reduce the 1666 to a more manageable number of “just” 433. But, there are some even larger families represented here:

·       45 – Alcott/Alcox (7 others in Pike’s Hill and Northeast Burying Ground, 3 in Allentown Cemetery)

·       27 – Hotchkiss (2 others in Northeast Burying Ground)

·       25 – Upson

·       20 – Norton (2 others in Northeast Burying Ground)

·       19 – Minor

·       18 – Plumb (6 others in Northeast Burying Ground)

·       16 – Bronson (8 others in Northeast Burying Ground)

·       15 – Tuttle (10 others in Allentown Cemetery)

·       13 – Hall

·       12 – Harrison

·       10 – Thomas (6 others in Allentown Cemetery)

·       9 – Carter

·       8 – Atkins, Pritchard

·       7 – Beach, Hopkins, Hough, Moulthrop

·       6 – Bartholomew, Bradley, Kenea, Merrill, Scarritt, Twitchel

·       5 – Bailey, Beecher, Horton, Johnson, Pardee, Sperry, Welton

·       4 – Butler, Pierpont (most of Pierpont family in East Farms Cemetery)

Other Cemeteries

We should not leave this subject without covering a few other places where area residents are buried.

One of these is the East Farms Cemetery off of East Main Street in the “East Farms” area of Waterbury. Since this cemetery is near the southern end of Pierpont Road, many of the early residents of the southern end of Wolcott were buried there as it was closer than the Edgewood Cemetery and also closer than the Woodtick Cemetery when it opened in the early 1800s. A few families dominate this small cemetery of 163 gravesites, the oldest being from 1789 and the newest from 1906 (with one new one from 1954) (one from 1738 in findagrave.com is erroneous).

·       41 – Pierpont

·       21 – Austin

·       19 – Todd

·       17 – Frost

·       9 – Mix

·       6 – Hall

Another cemetery with a close proximity to Wolcott is the Allentown Cemetery on Allentown Road in Plymouth. There are 125 graves here, dated from 1825-1968, with the following Wolcott families represented.

·       12 – Allen

·       10 – Downs, Tuttle

·       6 – Bassett, Lane, Thomas

·       5 – Andrews, Parmeley

·       3 – Alcott

The final location is that there are two memorials in the Saint Maria Goretti Church Memorial Garden. Both of these are fairly recent.

Summary

As can be seen above, there are some families with many family members buried in these Wolcott cemeteries. All names listed are for the last name at death, so married women are buried under their married names and the frequent intermarrying of these families may obscure the number of lineal descendants. But the families with the largest numbers are:

·       55 – Alcox/Alcott (John Alcox had 12 children and 67 grandchildren!)

·       53 – Upson

·       45 – Pierpont (but most of these are from East Farms area)

·       38 – Todd

·       33 – Hall

·       29 – Hotchkiss

·       25 – Tuttle

With families this large, it’s no wonder that I can find genealogical connections from each of them to myself – as would anyone with ties back to pre-1900 Wolcott.

Wandering through any of the Wolcott cemeteries is like taking a stroll through history.

Notes

*1 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/07/wolcott-history-pikes-hill-cemetery.html

*2 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/07/wolcott-history-south-east-burying.html

*3 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/07/wolcott-history-northeast-burying-ground.html