Baptist Corner Gravestones

The "History of the Connecticut Valley" and the Ellis book both assume that the Baptist Corner Cemetery is the oldest in town, but there does not seem to be proof that the first burial in the town was there… In 1772 it was voted [in town meeting] to purchase a burial place of Chileab Smith for 12 s. 6d. – this the Baptist Corner yard.^[1]

On 18 June 1910 Houghton Z. Smith and his wife, Sarah Smith, sold to the Ashfield Burial Ground Association for one dollar "all my right, title and interest in and to a certain parcel of land… known as the Baptist Corner cemetery…bounded on the north, east and south by the land of the grantor…and comprises three fourths of an acre of land more or less."^[2]

In 1851 Aaron Smith wrote, in a letter to his cousin, Ziba Smith, that the first person buried in the Baptist Corner Cemetery was a sister of Ziba's father, Chileab Smith, 3rd. Mary, a child of Chileab Smith, Jr., was born 16 July 1769 and died 17 July 1769. If she was the sister mentioned by Aaron Smith, burials occurred in Plain Cemetery and probably Beldingville Cemetery prior to this. A stone in Plain Cemetery for Phebe Lilly is dated 21 May 1764.^[3] A monument in the Beldingville Cemetery for Richard Ellis and his wife, Jane Phillips, erected in 1887 by their descendents, says Jane died in 1760; we have found no primary record to prove that she was buried there.

There are many unmarked graves in the Baptist Corner Cemetery. The graves of the three Chileabs [Smith] near together are pointed out, but are unmarked. Unless something is done to mark the spot, in a few years the location will be unknown. Several others of the Smith family who were Revolutionary soldiers are buried here…[Japheth Chapin] has no stone, but an iron marker at his grave. The Shepards, Lyons and Elmers are also here. The stone of the grandfather of Mary Lyon on her mother's side [Deacon Isaac Shepard] … and the stone of the father of Mary Lyon [Aaron Lyon] [are] here… This cemetery has been sadly neglected, but a movement for its improvement has lately begun …^[4]

In 1834 Reverend Thomas Shepherd noted that the five people who drowned in Ashfield Lake on 25 May 1827 were buried in this cemetery following a funeral held at the home of Deacon Lyon. The gravesites of Deacon David Lyon and his son, Aaron, have engraved stones. We did not find stones for Arnold Drake, age 28, or for William and Robert Gray, sons of Eli Gray, age 15 and 13.^[5] These gravesites either had no markers or they were marked with unengraved fieldstones.

Many of the earliest people buried in this cemetery were members of the Baptist Church. A marble monument across the road from the cemetery marks the location of the original Baptist Church, organized in 1761 by Chileab Smith, Sr. The church building was erected in 1775 about 20 rods north of Chileab's house. His son, Elder Ebenezer Smith, was the first preacher. In 1789 Chileab Smith, Sr. and his son, Enos were ordained as elders and founded a second church in Buckland a few rods north of the Ashfield line. In 1831 the original church building was moved further east to a site on Baptist Corner Road. It later went to decay and the Baptist Corner schoolhouse was moved to this site.^[6]

Many of the footstones were reset arbitrarily by a former caretaker. Consequently some footstones are not near their respective headstones. Some of the stones are broken or illegible. Walter E. and Lottie S. Corbin recorded the vital information on the stones in this cemetery sometime before 1960; fortunately they were able to read some of the inscriptions that are illegible now.^[7] If a gravestone was too damaged for us to read or if we did not agree with their reading, we have included the Corbin data in a footnote.

We have copied the stones, to the best of our ability, exactly as the engraver inscribed them. We have made note of unengraved fieldstones that appear to be positioned as grave markers. We used the entrance gate as our reference for determining the left and right sides. We read the stones from left to right starting in the northwest corner, which is left of the gate and nearest March Road. We have used an asterisk (*) to designate a veteran who has a gravesite marked with a U.S. flag.

We have added from public records, as footnotes, the year of birth and/or death, if the vital record differs from that engraved on the stone. We have indexed married women by their maiden and married names for the convenience of the researcher. We have footnoted names not engraved on the stone with the source(s) we used. This gravestone project was never intended to be a genealogical study of the people buried here. Therefore we do not claim to have included all the available information. The accuracy of our information is determined by the accuracy of the public records we have used.