The Kingdom was the first European-American settlement in Plymouth, and this was the first graveyard in the town. The ground was very hard & stony, making it difficult to dig graves, and after 1817 when the Tyson-Pollard cemetery was established, fewer burials were made in the Kingdom cemetery. By the late 1800s there was hardly anyone still living in the Kingdom; many having moved downhill to Tyson as that water power and the main road through the valley - and the Tyson furnace - made that village grow in importance. Thanks to Charlotte Davis, host of the Bethel town genealogy site, for these photos, taken on her visit to the area in early Spring 2002. |
This inventory is from Plymouth burials before 1870, from 1919 gravestone readings by Floyd Hadley, which is in the Plymouth town clerk's office, and is available on microfilm through the Family History Library (film #28688). Nancy Wygant transcribed these records from photocopies of the microfilm. Those gravestone transcriptions were done under Act No. 92 of 1919, "An Act to Provide for the Completion of the Vital Records of the State and to Require Town Clerks to Transmit Certain Records to the Secretary of State." That Act directed the Secretary of State to determine which town's records had not yet been deposited with the state, and provide forms for transcription; the towns were to transcribe and send to the state all birth, marriage, and death records in possession of the town or churches, which had not already been submitted. If the town death records prior to 1870 were incomplete, "The selectmen....shall, before October 1, 1919, cause to be copied at the expense of the town under the direction of the secretary of state, the inscription on all gravestones in their town erected to the memory of any person who died prior to 1870 so far as relates to name of deceased, date of death, age or date of birth, if given, and the name of the cemetery where buried and shall cause such records to be recorded in the town records." The Act further provided that records were to be made available for reference; the effective date was 26 March 1919. It is generally believed that there are other burials in this cemetery for which there are no longer, or in some case never were, stone markers. The Mudge and Johnson families, early Kingdom settlers, were probably buried there. |
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This site maintained by Nancy Wygant of Philadelphia, PA. Last updated 16 June 2002. |
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