Update - 6/30/23

Sweet Family Burial Ground | West Greenwich, Rhode Island | Historical Cemetery No. 52

Added to Cemetery List, June 30, 2023! Click HERE to view.

This lot demonstrates very effectively the importance of work like this. When we’d first located this lot back in 1999/2000, it was truly a delight to visit. Despite its fairly remote location, it was always clean, always clear, with very little vandalism evident. On more than one occasion, we’d visit and find freshly-potted flowers on one or more of the graves.

Regrettably, some time in the last 4 or 5 years, storms brought an enormous pine tree down across the first row of burials, damaging several of the stones and making fully 2/3 of the lot effectively inaccessible. You can find a photograph of the results below. We’d thankfully been able to take photographs and recordings of most of the stones located here before that time, but that doesn’t change the fact that future visitors to this lot have quite a mess on their hands!

We tend of think of our historical cemeteries as these constant, unchanging things, but nothing could be further from the truth. Vandalism, nature, neglect, and even time itself will all take their toll. This lot, once a joy to visit, is a very sad reminder of this, and all the more reason for those of us with historical or genealogical interests to hit the roads and trails of this wonderful little state and pay our respects!