In the year 1646 a group of settlers; led by John Winthrop Jr. arrived in Southeastern Connecticut and established the Pequot Plantation in a region that the local Pequot tribe called Nameaug. During the following decade, the plantation settlers sought to change the name of their isolated settlement to “London”. The Connecticut General Assembly initially resisted this request and then partially acquiesced by officially bestowing the name New London on the community.
During the first year of the settlement’s existence, John Winthrop Jr. and other town leaders determined the formal boundaries for the fledgling community. Two lots comprising a total of one and half acres would be set aside for the meetinghouse and the town’s burial grounds. During the seventeenth century, New London was still a wild and isolated community and burying the dead was often an onerous task. The deceased sometimes needed to be transported as far as six or seven miles on makeshift biers before reaching the burial site. There were also no professional stonecutters for the creation of formal headstones for the graves of the deceased. Often the graves were sealed with a crudely cut piece of local granite.
In 1722, John Hartshorne moved from Essex County, Massachusetts to Franklin, CT. Hartshorne developed a stone carving style that would that became a standard for other carvers of granite headstones in eastern Connecticut. His carved stones were regularly purchased by Joshua Hempstead of New London. Hempstead would then inscribe the lettering on gravestones purchased by families for the interment of their deceased family members in the New London burial ground.
As the eighteenth century progressed and New London’s prosperity as a port city blossomed, so did the variety of the types of stones appearing in the burial ground. Carved stones consisting of blue and green slate were imported from Boston and Newport along with red and brown sandstone from central Connecticut. The different types of regional stones together with the diversity of carving styles makes the New London Burial Ground unique among other burial grounds in Connecticut.
To view photographs of the ancient burial grounds of New London and read about the history of the burial grounds by Frances Manwaring Caulkins in her 1899 monograph Ye Antient Burial Place visit the Otis Library’s Flickr page.