History of the Olde Andover Burying Ground

The Olde Andover Burying Ground was established when Nathaniel House Jr. gifted a rising piece of treed land of about ten acres, and located at the southwestern end of his property, to The Andover Ecclesiastical Society in 1748. This happened just after surrounding area parishioners of the Ecclesiastical Societies of the towns of Hebron, Coventry, and Lebanon (whose town boundaries met immediately north of the burying ground) petitioned for and were finally granted approval by Colonial Connecticut Court (Legislature) to create and establish the Andover Ecclesiastical Society.

The first burial in the Cemetery was that of Aaron Phelps in 1750. He was a farmer and one of the original petitioners of the Andover Ecclesiastical Society. He also donated the site for its first Church Meeting House behind his home. The Cemetery was mostly filled and closed by the 1890’s with the exception of the (last) burial, that of the Rev. Joel Foote Bingham in 1914 at the south end of the Cemetery just above where some of his immediate ancestors are buried.

There are about 268 known and identified burials in the Cemetery, including members of the early families of Andover. Mrs. Henry F. Dimock commissioned and donated a listing of all of the headstone inscriptions to the Town of Coventry in 1906. The inscriptions on the stones are largely worn off, but because of this, we know the vital information carved onto the stones and about the people buried there. Because of his lucky find, the lives and times of those buried here can be researched to illustrate the rich history and traditions of early Andover, CT.

Click here to view the list of family names represented in the cemetery.

Click here to go to the Olde Andover Burying Ground Committee page.

John Handfield repairs the Cemetery’s stone wall (2016)