from Plympton, I haven't found a date for when it was established but many
of the headstones date from the early 18th century. It sits on a hill on a
sidestreet overlooking Rte. 58 with a view of the cranberry bog on the other
side of the highway. There are more of my distant Barrows, Dunham and
Ellis cousins buried there but again the headstones, many of which are the
work of George Soule and his family, are weathered and difficult to decipher.
I was however, able to find the gravestones of my 6x great grandparents
George Barrows and Patience Simmons, and of George's second wife, Hannah
Ransom.
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| A monument to some Dunham cousins at the cemetery entrance. |
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| Gravestone of Patience Simmons Barrows.1672-1723 |
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| Hannah Ransom Barrows 1671-1758 |
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| George Barrows.1670-1758 |
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| The view down to Rte.58 and a cranberry bog beyond. |
The first person buried in Lakenham Cemetery was a daughter of Benoni Shaw (c.1672-1751) and Lydia (Waterman) Shaw (1678-1757). Although she is unnamed on her grave marker, Shaw genealogists are reasonably sure that it was their daughter Rebecca Shaw, who died on 4 April 1708 at 8 or 9 years of age. Rebecca's father Benoni owned land at North Carver/Plympton which he set aside to be used as a burying ground -- that is the origin of Lakenham Cemetery. See the relevant comments of Kenneth Linwood Shaw II and of Jonathan Allen Shaw (author of the definitive study on the first three generations of this Shaw family in America, published in the New England Historical & Genealogical Register in 1997) under the account of Benoni Shaw here:
ReplyDeletehttp://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~fesschequy/ShawGen2.html