Small Pox Cemetery. (0)

Only six people are buried here. They were the victims of the terrible disease, small pox. The disease is so contagious and deadly that many were buried here in the still of the night. According to the 1937 Jaffrey History the cemetery was totally neglected and the whereabouts of any gravesite has long been lost.

The small Pox epidemic occurred in 1792 with Eliza Danforth the first to die. Abel Wilder was next. Then twelve year old Nancy Thorndike on Nov. 4, 1792. Enoch Thurber died a few days later on Nov. 12. Then a Mr. Cambridge on December 14 and on Dec 19 there was Oliver Gould. A short lived tragedy but still a devastating tragedy.

This cemetery is located at the very end of Fitch Farm Road, north of East Jaffrey. In 2011 there appears to be depressions or rises in the earth that might indicate where bodies were buried. The cemetery is once again being maintained by the town and emblazoned with a new marker. Also there is an existing stone wall enclosing the actual graves that clearly outlines this tragic site.

Phillips Cemetery. (1)

This cemetery is located in the southwest corner of Jaffrey on the Fitzwilliam road. This was an area of very prosperous farms but it was also far removed from any cemetery in either Jaffrey Center or East Jaffrey. The residents were somewhat tied to the town of Fitzwilliam, being the closest area of larger habitation, but being isolated as they were they developed a sense of community that was unique to them.

The cemetery gets its name from Lt. Governor  Samuel Phillips of Andover who was the administrator of the Phillips estate and in 1797 he  provided, for a nominal consideration, 95 square rods of land on the condition that it be fenced with a good stone wall. The town complied and the Phillips cemetery was created.

The total number of 105 gravesites does not account for all the people interred in southwest Jaffrey. Some were buried in the old yard by the meeting house, and some were buried where they had lived. This cemetery is little used and the last burial here was Emily Adams in 1918.

Conant Cemetery. (2)

By 1859 there was an ever increasing need for burial space in Jaffrey.  In this same year John Conant retired from his farm near the mountain and bought a house and property in the village. The Village Cemetery was within sight of his new home and he became aware of the inadequate facility and decided to alter that by providing a table of land within a convenient distance of the village center for use as a cemetery.

The Conant Cemetery Foundation was formed in 1859 and immediately the cemetery received its first burials. The foundation improved the property with a picket fence around the entire grave yard and stonework at the entrance and for the Tomb. It has been expanded and is currently well maintained by the foundation and the town.

This cemetery is nicely laid out and a pleasure to walk. There is however one drawback for you to consider. The numbers associated with plots do not all run sequentially from anyplace to anyplace, therefore you must obtain a map of the cemetery to easily Locate a grave.

Village Cemetery. (3)

 The town of Jaffrey expanded from west to east and in 1829 the citizens living to the east found it too far to go to the old cemetery at Jaffrey Center to bury their increasing number of dead in the already overcrowded Old Burying Ground. A new graveyard was begun on land purchased from Oliver Bacon just north of the turnpike very near to the Baptist Meeting house that it was referred to as the Baptist Cemetery. In 1831 the Town paid to have a stonewall built around this new cemetery. For a time the Village Cemetery was more used than any other in town.

Cutter Cemetery. (4 & 5)

Jaffrey Center, where the Old Meeting house is located, was the original center of life for Jaffrey. Just east of the center heading towards the area now called East Jaffrey you will shortly take a left that goes over Cutter Hill. After a very short distance, you will come to the cemetery on your left. It is very treed and shaded. This cemetery was owned, operated and maintained by the Cutter Family. The cemetery was founded in 1836 in accordance with the wishes of John Cutter who was a tanner by trade and lived in a large house at the fork in the road between rte 124 and Cutter Hill road. In 1927 the care and maintenance was turned over to the town of Jaffrey.

Old Burying Ground (6)

This was perhaps the first formal location for burial in Jaffrey. The first person buried here was – he was buried on the old ground but within as little as five years, his gravesite was lost. It is believed that the current Meeting house was built over his gravesite.

The cemetery is roughly laid out in vertical rows but they are sometimes hard to follow. On the map below you can get a general loction for a grave by recording the plot location from the detail obtained in the Cemetery Index on this site and then locating a general area by using the map below. Then you must get out there and walk the ground to find the actual grave.

St. Patrick’s Cemetery. (7)

Catholic’s had no in town cemetery and instead used Manchester or St. Peter’s in Peterborough. That changed in 1890 when a lot was acquired outside the village limits on the Peterborough road. The cemetery is in the care of St. Patrick’s Church in Jaffrey.