Attleboro  Massachusetts  Cemeteries

See also the pages for the parent town of Rehoboth and the daughter town of North Attleborough

Return to Bristol Cemeteries Database Project

 

Attleboro Cemeteries

     Webmaster's special note: When this community was a town its official name was "Attleborough." On June 17, 1914, it was incorporated as the city of "Attleboro." The daughter town has officially remained "North Attleborough." The spellings "Attleboro" for the parent and "North Attleborough" for the child are universally used throughout this site except in titles and direct quotations.

     Collecting information about the cemeteries of Attleboro is an ongoing effort, and this page will be revised as needed. If you have cemetery information or gravestone transcriptions that you would like to share please send me email.

     Where I have been able to determine it, the records repository for a cemetery is indicated. In the entries for the individual cemeteries, if one has its own web site or a portion of a web site the cemetery name provides a link to that site. When the location of a cemetery is known there are links to street and topographic maps to help you find it, as well as notes about the cemetery and a brief description of its location. Below these paragraphs is a locator map of the city showing the cemetery locations. Any gravestone transcriptions online also have links. At the bottom of the page is a separate section listing all online, published and manuscript gravestone transcriptions that I have found for these cemeteries.

     When a cemetery has had more than one name during its history the first name listed is the one by which it is usually known today, and alternative names are listed in square brackets. In some cases a cemetery has been abandoned, its burials have been removed to another cemetery, or its location has been lost. In those cases the name may indicate that it is a cemetery site, meaning that no gravestones are to be found there. The year in parenthesis next to a cemetery name is my best estimate of the year in which that cemetery was established. In some cases the year is mentioned in town records, a town history or some other source. In other cases it is the year of the oldest gravestone for which I have found a record.

     I would like to thank John Sterling and Cherry Bamberg for sharing the Bristol Cemeteries Database of Bristol County gravestone records. Most of the information in the notes for each cemetery has been drawn from that database and from Cherry's files that were used to compile the database.

 

Agudas Achim Cemetery (Jewish)
Orchard St., Dodgeville (Attleboro), MA

Street Map
Topographic Map from TerraServer USA

For records contact:   Congregation Agudas Achim, 901 North Main St., Attleboro MA, 02703   508-222-2243.

Location:   West side of So. Main St. across from Thurber Ave. Agudas Achim is at the end of Orchard St., behind Hillside Cemetery.

Location:   Uncertain - on the farm of Nathan Bolkcom on Cutting's Plain.

Notes:   Some 30 graves were moved with the consent of the Bolkcom family to a single grave in North Purchase Cemetery when Interstate 95 was built in 1959.

Location:   East side of Oak Hill Ave. between Briggs Corner and the Rehoboth town line.

Notes:   Contains about 30 burials. Responsibility assumed by the Oak Knoll Cemetery in Rehoboth in the 20th century.

Location:   West side of Pike Ave. between Thayer Farm Rd. and Sheridan Cir.

Notes:   Only one stone has been noted here.

Location:   On an island along the south shore of Dodgeville Pond.

Notes:   Originally the cemetery for the family of the New York-born owner of the Dodgeville Mill and for most of Mill Village.

Location:   West side of Pike Ave. between Orchard Ln. and Preston Rd.

Notes:   Contains about 8 burials from 1815 to 1845. Started by Apollos Follett for his family.

For records contact:   Hillside Cemetery Association, 77 Johnson St., North Attleborough, MA 02760.

Location:   West side of So. Main St. across from Thurber Ave.

Notes:   Contains about 120 burials, and was given by Joel Robinson for a burial place at about the start of the Revolutionary War, and additional parcels of land were added in the 19th century.

Notes:   The exact location of this cemetery is now lost, but it was probably located on the west side of No. Main St. between the North Purchase and Woodlawn cemeteries. Burials here probably ended by about the 1740s.

For records contact:   Newell Cemetery Association, 533 Newport Ave., So. Attleboro MA, 02703.

Location:   Intersection of West St. and Read St.

Notes:   Began as two acres of land given to the town in 1715 as a burial place for inhabitants of the southern and western portions of the town.

For records contact:   Woodlawn - North Purchase Cemetery Association, 825 No. Main St., Attleboro, MA 02703.

Location:   East side of No. Main St. across from Toner Blvd.

Notes:   Contains about 30 burials removed from the Bolkom Lot when Interstate 95 was constructed.

For records contact:   Second Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, 50 Park St., Attleboro, MA 02703.

Location:   Park St. behind the Second Congregational Church.

Notes:   In 1744 the people of the Second Prcinct voted to have their own burying place next to the church, and it was later expanded. Some burials from as early as 1736 were moved here. When the Boston and Providence Railroad came to town its route, despite much opposition from townspeople, ran through the Yard. Burials from the eastern part of the Yard were removed to newly added land on the opposite side. When the Attleborough Branch Railroad (now abandoned) was constructed in 1871 its junction with the Boston and Providence was located at the Yard, necessitating the removal of about 100 burials to the Mt. Hope and Woodlawn Cemeteries.

Location:   West side of Florence St., between the old railroad grade and the Bungay River.

Notes:   Cemetery for the family of Hezekiah Peck, who settled here about 1709.

Location:   North side of West St. south of Clinton St..

For records contact:   St. Stephen's Church, 683 So. Main St., Attleboro, MA 02703; Phone 508-222-0641.

Location:   West side of Tiffany St. near So. Main St., behind St. Stephen's Church.

Notes:   The St. Stephen's Parish was established in 1880, and was originally French-Canadian, and so are most of the early burials here. Later burials include Irish workers from Dodgeville.

Location:   West side of Solomon St. across from Rondi Lee Terr.

Notes:   Set aside by Dr. James M. Solomon for his family, and contained about 20 burials.

Location:   North side of Wilmarth St. east of Thayer Farm Rd.

Notes:   About 10 burials, mostly from the Thayer family.

For records contact:   Woodlawn - North Purchase Cemetery Association, 825 No. Main St., Attleboro MA, 02703.

Location:   East side of No. Main St. across from West St.

Notes:   Contains a number of burials from 1754 and later that were removed from the Old Kirk Yard in 1871.

The Bristol Cemeteries Database Project currently contains some 27,000 Bristol County gravestone inscriptions collected by volunteers using the Association for Gravestone Studies (AGS) Gravestone Database Standard Program. Records are first entered from published sources and manuscripts. Those records are then verified and corrected by trained volunteers during field visits, and additional information about those gravestones and their cemeteries is added. This project is still in its earliest stages. I am currently working on putting this database online. Volunteers are needed to enter records found in books, libraries, and historical and genealogical societies. Additional volunteers are needed who will receive training in AGS methods and standards for transcriptions, and who will then correct and update the database during cemetery visits. This project is being undertaken in accordance with AGS standards in order to create a complete and accurate record of Bristol County gravestone inscriptions for future researchers and historians. If you would like to volunteer for this project please send me email.

Ira Ballou Peck, Burying Ground Inscriptions from Seekonk, R.I. [sic; Mass.], Cumberland, R.I., Wrentham, Mass., Attleborough, Mass., Rehoboth, Mass., Woonsocket, R.I., Smithfield, R.I., West Wrentham, Mass. (Ms. at NEHGS, Mss/C/1802).

David Jillson, Attleboro, Mass., Cumberland, R.I., and Rehoboth, Mass. Births, Marriages, and Deaths (1889 ms. at NEHGS, Mss/SL/ATT/1).

John Daggett, A Sketch of the History of Attleborough From Its Settlement to the Division (Boston: Press of Samuel Usher, 1894).

John Whitehill, Epitaphs in South Attleborough Cemetery (1900 ms. at NEHGS, Mss/A/358).

Clara Blackinton and Elizabeth Josephine Wilmarsh (ca. 1903 ms. at NEHGS, MS70/ATT/2).

AHS (1972 and 1980 mss. at Attleborough Historical Society).

Susan F. Salisbury, Southern Massachusetts Cemetery Collection, Volume 2 (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1996).

Susan M. Galligan, Voices of the Old Kirk Yard, Attleboro's Epitaphs (Compiled for a Founders' Day celebration).

Susan Thacher and Calista Thacher, Attleboro, Mass., Epitaphs (Two undated mss. at NEHGS, Mss/A/344).

Author Unknown, Inscriptions Copied from Tombstones in the Old Burial Ground in So. Attleboro, Mass. (Undated ms. at NEHGS, Mss/SL/SOU/1).

Special Note on Carter: — Because the cataloging of Carter's typescripts and manuscripts varies from library to library it is possible that the following list includes some duplicates. Note also that I have not seen the copies at all of the listed libraries, so my descriptions of "typescript" or "ms." may need to be revised, when a volume exists in more than one version.

Marion Pearce Carter, Cemetery Records: Attleboro - Rehoboth, Mass.

• Vol. I: Second Congregational Church Records of Attleboro (In 1924 this was edited by Charles Shepard II, as Membership and Vital Records of the Second Congregational Church of Attleboro, Massachusetts, Shepard Genealogical Series, Number 16, at NEHGS, F74/A89/A85/1924, which is also in the NEHGS web site database).
• Vol. II: North Swansea Cemetery Records (Ms. at NEHGS, Mss/A/890).
• Vol. III: Tomb Stone Records of Old Kirk Cemetery, Attleboro, Massachusetts (1928 typescript at NEHGS, F74/A89/C33/1928; also at RIHS and at Kirk Cemetery Association)
• Vol. IV: Burial Hill and Conant Burying Ground - alias Briggs Corner Cemetery - alias Oak Knoll Cemetery (1928 ms. at NEHGS, Mss A 313; typescript at RIHS).
• Vol. V: Records of Six Cemeteries in Attleboro, Mass. (1928 typescript at NEHGS, F74/A89/C3/1928; also at RIHS). Includes Dodgeville (Hillside) Cemetery (Att.), Old Hatch Grave Yard (N. Att.), Old Peck Grave Yard (Att., including burials removed to Mt. Hope in N. Att.), Burial Yard at Attleboro Falls (N. Att.), (Dodge) Island Cemetery (Att.), and Follett Family Burying Ground and Thayer Family Grave Yard (Att.).
• Vol. VII: Inscriptions on the Grave Stones in Cemetery at South Attleboro, Massachusetts (1930 typescript at RIHS). Transcriptions from Newell Cemetery.

Special Note: — The following NEHGS manuscripts are cited as containing Attleboro cemetery transcriptions by David Allen Lambert, A Guide to Massachusetts Cemeteries (Boston: NEHGS, 2002). These works are not yet in the NEHGS online catalog, so I am awaiting further information in order to identify them.

MS70/ATT/1, MS70/ATT/4, MS70/SOU/50, MS70/SOU/775

For a general reference to Attleboro's cemeteries see Elizabeth Phillips, Attleboro Burial Grounds Predating 1830 (NADAR, 1980).