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INTRODUCTION
This cemetery has fascinated me since during my early years in Halifax, when while walking with our young children, I found graves in it for a Paul and Anna Sturtevant. This gave me a creepy feeling of history repeating itself. Many years later after becoming interested in genealogy, while tracing my husband's line, I found this Paul and Anna (Whiting) were direct grandparents of his. Since then I have located here the gravestones of five of his earliest grandparents. I took photographs of these gravestones in 1990. In 1996 I was asked to find and photograph gravestones of great-grandparents of a 'cousin' in Utah. At that time it was very noticeable what the ravages of time, acid rain, fungus growth, and damage by large mowers were doing. I resolved then, while it was still possible, to make this inventory and plot plan of these early graves. Some are dated before the town was incorporated in 1734, and many are dated before the Revolutionary War was fought.
This task could not have been accomplished without the encouragement, aid, resources, and expertise of our Town Historian, Ruth Perkins. The only records to be found were made in 1906 and presented to Mass. Society of Mayflower Descendants, which they published starting with Vol. IX, page 155 many years ago. Using this as a base, I have added to it to make a complete inventory. The names added at this time I have noted with an
*. On this list after each name is a reference code giving their position in the cemetery. Four names on this original listing could not be found.With the help of my husband, Paul F. Sturtevant, and a granddaughter, we laid out the attached grid. There are 68 plots with gravestones on them. There are no graves in the northeast corner, only a dirt road across that back area. Then 334 gravestones were located on individual plots, with the rows going parallel to the road (East and West), and Plots front to back (North to South). Because of the existence of a substantial fence with granite posts, we used this as a base for the grid. A recognized surveyor's marker can be located 18" east of the most westerly post. Further directions are included on the next page and the grid plan.
One could not spend time reliving those days and not feel a deep appreciation of the struggles they went through to raise a healthy family, the heartbreak and loss, engraved in stone, still stands out today.
The many interesting headstones, represented here, are worth a study in themselves. As are some of the sentiments expressed. Many can no longer be deciphered. Here is one example.
"Calm be the spot where her form now reposeth
May the friends who so lov'd her revisit the grave
And feel through the cold sod her ashes encloseth
She lives in the presence of him who can save."
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Copyright © 2003-2008 by Anna N. Sturtevant and Dale H. Cook. All rights reserved.