Text By Vicky MacLean and Linda Perkins
Photo By Vicky MacLean

Located on Doolittle Drive, across from Benedict Lake, is a small cemetery surrounded by woodland known as Pond Town Cemetery. It holds a few more than 200 gravesites. Do you believe someone in your family might be buried here? If so, please join our project to identify and collect meaningful memories of the neighbors, friends and ancestors buried at Pond Town.

The cemetery includes many older graves; there was then a long hiatus when nobody was buried here. More recent burials date back to 1952, when Frederick Barbour requested that the cemetery be reopened so that his son, Lieutenant Frederick Sprague Barbour, who had died of polio, could be buried here.

Most of the early graves date from the first half of the 1800s; many of these people were born in the 1700s in the early days of Norfolk. Only two documented burials date from before 1800. One is the grave of three-year-old Aurelia Hotchkiss, who was buried in 1796. The other is that of Keturah Pratt Holt, who died in 1790. Another notable “resident” is Leander Campbell, who was killed at the battle of Cold Harbor during the Civil War.

Most of the existing gravestones have been identified, but a lot of them are no longer easily readable. Fortunately, transcriptions done in the 1930s provided enough information that partially decipherable stones were able to be correlated with those records. There are several stones that are no longer identifiable and some small stones that may not be grave markers and only contain a number or a letter. They might mark rows or perhaps paupers graves that are otherwise not identified. There are various records noting the names of several people who may be buried here, but there is not enough information to be positive. The findagrave.com website has photos and known information for the Pond Town Cemetery. 

Newer graves include those of our grandparents’s and parents’s generations, people born in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Sadly, there are a few graves of contemporaries, as well. Those who have been in Norfolk for any length of time would have known many of them. Some were long-time Norfolk residents, others were summer people, many were tied to Norfolk through their family camps on Doolittle Lake.

We know little about most of the people who were buried at Pond Town Cemetery in the early days. This is sad—a part of our town history lost. Going forward, we would like to create a “memory book” about as many of the people buried here as can be found. If you know of someone buried at Pond Town Cemetery, please let us know. 

We are looking for stories, photos, occupations, accomplishments, where they lived in town, and anything else that can be shared. There are many resources available to those who would like to do some research: the Norfolk Library, the Norfolk Historical Society, town records and websites like ancestry.com. A copy of the mapping of the cemetery is available to view in the town clerk’s office during regular business hours. It includes locations of several unmarked graves which were located using ground penetrating radar.

Please help spread the word. We welcome any information for the informal memory book on the people of Pond Town Cemetery. This would be your gift to them. Please email Vicky at agillabs@mcn.net or Linda at townclerk@norfolkct.org or send mail to Town Clerk, P.O. Box 552, Norfolk, CT 06058.