Update - 7/27/23 — GardensOfStone.org

Matteson/Whitman/Woodward Lot | West Greenwich, Rhode Island | Historical Cemetery No. 46

Added to Cemetery List, July 27, 2023! Click HERE to view.

When James N. Arnold visited this cemetery on June 25, 1894, he recorded a total of 41 burials, 7 proper and 34 rude, in what he describes as “several lots”. The lot “nearest the road, fenced, in poor condition” contained 19 burials, all marked with fieldstones, the family they belonged to unidentified. He then recorded 5 stones “partly protected by a fence”, all burials of the Woodward family (he does not specify if the fence that partly protected these 5 burials was an extension of the fence from the previous lot, or a separate fence). Finally, in a “lot not protected”, he recorded Roby Smith and Sarah Matteson’s gravemarkers, as well as 15 additional fieldstone burials. He gives no indication as to how close these lots are in relation to one another, nor how close to Division Road the fieldstone cemetery he indicated as being “nearest the road” actually was. Now, however, due to construction of a dirt road just west of these lots sometime in the 1970’s before Blanche Albro visited the site in 1977, there is just 1 stone remaining—or so we thought!

ROBY SMITH’S HEADSTONE, mid-excavation, UNCOVERED FOR THE FIRST TIME In MORE THAN 50 YEARS

Thanks to an obscure marking we’d made in our initial diagram of the lot from 1999, suggesting that we’d found a second stone about 40 feet southeast of the S. F. Whitman stone, we revisited the location. After some brush clearing, sure enough, we found a footstone, still in its base, marked “R. S.”

Further recovery efforts were underwent, eventually revealing the footstones of William H. (Burial No. 12), Francis A. (Burial No. 13) and Eliza J. Woodward (Burial No. 14’s) footstones. Even better, they, too, were found in their original positions, still inserted into their bases. With a picture of the cemetery as it had originally stood now beginning to emerge, we were able to consult Arnold’s recordings and “reverse engineer” the lot.

Ultimately, we ended up locating the headstones of Roby Smith (Burial No. 10), Elsie Woodward (Burial No. 11), as well as William H. Woodward, all displaced and buried deep under as much as a foot of sand, but thankfully intact. We located the base of Sarah Matteson’s headstone as well, identifiable as it is the only burial in WG 46 with slate gravemarkers, but the stone itself was nowhere to be found. In addition to these, we found 8 fieldstone burials. The closer we came to the sand berm along the western edge of the lot, however, the more difficult our efforts became. To put it in perspective, the top of one of the fieldstone gravemarkers we located (Burial No. 7) was approximately 10 inches down in the sand. As to the large fieldstone portion of this cemetery Arnold describes as being fenced and nearest the road, we could find no trace of it. Either it stood where the large area west of the lot has been dug out, and therefore permanently lost, or perhaps it is located further north of the portion of the cemetery we were able to diagram, awaiting rediscovery. Only future recovery efforts will tell!

Journal