Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Hill Cemetery, Londonderry, NH- Tombstone Tuesday

The Old Hill Cemetery is the oldest graveyard in Londonderry, located on Hovey Road at 42°53'4"N, 71°21'27"W   It is very near the exit 4 of Route 93.   Any earlier burials were probably at the Forest Hill Cemetery in Derry, behind the First Parish Church.  The stones were removed and then replaced in the incorrect places, in neat rows, in the 1930s by a well meaning, but misinformed, person who cleared the grounds.  Many stones are illegible, or damaged.  There are transcriptions of most of the stones in the cemetery notebooks in the Leach Public Library local history room.


The Old Hill Graveyard 1733
When you looked at the top photo
did the stones look this tall?
I'm 5' 7"

This may be one of the earliest Celtic knots
on a New Hampshire gravestone

HERE LYES
BURIED THE BODY
OF Mr WILLIAM DICKE
WHO DIED JOBER 9th
AD 1743 AGED 60 YEARS

Has anyone ever seen JOBER before?  I suspect they meant "October" but you never know...

This is a good link for information on the Old Hill Graveyard http://www.familypage.org/oldhill/oldhill.htm

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Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

1 comment:

  1. You certainly don't look 5'7" standing by that stone! Graveyards in the east are always surprising to me -- how far back the dates go. Here in the Pacific Northwest, the earliest are 1840s or so --- altho could see some earlier stones around the Portland-Vancouver area. Thanks for the view of the old Hill Graveyard.

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