Old Durham Cemetery, Durham, Connecticut:
Established circa 1700, Durham’s oldest burial ground is a reminder of mortality in colonial America. Though accounts differ, there are likely more than 1,000 souls laid to rest beneath this knoll overlooking Main Street and Old Cemetery Road. Many of the earliest headstones are made of brownstone or sandstone while the site’s 19th century gravestones are mostly of white granite. Some stones are intricately carved and others are modest. Several epitaphs are illegible due to centuries of weathering.
The most well-known person interred here is James Wadsworth (1730-1816). The Yale College lawyer became Durham’s Town Clerk and eventually Connecticut State Court Judge of New Haven County. At the start of the American Revolution, Wadsworth answered the Lexington Alarm and later rose to second in command of the Connecticut militia as major general. Most notably he served as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1784. Wadsworth’s last role was Connecticut State Comptroller and he lived to the age of 87.
Another marker preserves the memory of Durham’s first pastor and Yale’s first graduate, Rev. Nathaniel Chauncey (1638-1685). Also buried here is Elias Austin (1718-1776), father of Moses Austin and grandfather Stephen F. Austin, the Empresarios who founded the Republic of Texas. On the perimeter of the cemetery is a stone for a Native American named Ann Cornelius (1757-1776). A headstone dedicated to Sarah Johnson (1766-1790) was once dubbed the finest example of early New England gravestone carving by the Smithsonian Institution. The last person to be commemorated was Harriet Webster Fowler Lyman (1866-1956).
Old Durham Cemetery was surveyed and recorded in 1912 by Town Clerk Andrew Camp. The next person to fully catalog the site was Lori Chace in 2000. According the Hartford Courant, Chace was able to decipher 260 weathered headstones. Common surnames memorialized at Old Durham Cemetery include:
Austin
Baldwin
Bates
Camp
Canfield
Chauncey
Coe
Fairchild
Fowler
Loveland
Lyman
Norton
Parmalee
Parsons
Pickett
Strong
Tibbals
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