By Dan Shine
Voice Columnist
The Old Burial Ground
(As written by Bob Shine, September, 2003.)
In about 1700, the Old Burial Ground was established, and was located at the intersection of what is today Campbell Avenue and Church Street. With the founding of the Congregational Church in 1719, and Christ Episcopal Church in 1723, the two churches assumed joint responsibility for its upkeep and maintenance.
The two sections that now exist on each side of Church Street were a single cemetery until 1857. At that time, the churches jointly agreed to what is now Church Street, thus splitting the cemetery.
Church Records indicate that the oldest gravestone legible shows a burial date of 1711.
As early as 1710, a committee of West Side area citizens negotiated with one Eliphalet Bristol for the title of seven acres of land located in the center of their community.
This land was considered by many as useless since its marshes (since piped away) posed a threat to stray livestock. Actually, Old Field Creek rose on the southwest corner of the Green, crossed over Campbell, Washington, and Peck Avenues, whence it flowed into Long Island Sound near First Avenue.
However, the Committee regarded it as an opportunity for converting this land into the village Green, and the future location of the Congregational Church. Included in this land transaction was the old Burial Ground, which in 1665, was first fenced in to keep livestock out.
In 1818, the Church Ecclesiastical Society voted to allow the pasturing of sheep only in the Old Burial Ground. At about the same time, the church voted to hire a gravedigger, and a parishioner donated a horse-drawn hearse to the church and Burial Grounds. Since the hearse could not be kept outside, a hearse-house was built on the Green, to the chagrin of a number of citizens of the town.
(I can add to my father’s report the testimony of Harriet North, that the iron fence which now surrounds the cemetery was fabricated in 1900 “by a local blacksmith at a cost of $1000.”)