This guide was created to identify the cemeteries and known burial sites in Chautauqua County, New York, and to locate the known inscriptions copied from those cemeteries.
Every burial site listed here has been actually visited by at least one member from the Chautauqua County Genealogical Society. In addition, this guide has been read, reread, corrected, and augmented by several Society members. The Society takes full responsibility for errors, which we hope are negligible.
No attempt has been made to include inscriptions themselves in this guide. If the inscriptions for a cemetery are known to have been recorded, at least one repository holding those inscriptions is identified here.
Among the earliest lists of inscriptions are those done in the 1920\’s by the local chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution. While they lack a record of later burials, they include inscriptions from many stones no longer in existence.
Some who read cemetery inscriptions and left transcriptions for others to use are: E. May Christy , Minnie Cohen, Henry V. Davis, Gertrude Dunham, Marie Faulkner, Elsie Hamilton, Kate Wilson Heath, Edna Ingham, Mary Kidder, Frank B. Lamb, Kenneth Lawrence, Rupert C. Loucks, Frances S. Ramsey, Clayburne B. Sampson.
Many of the early lists of inscriptions in the towns of Pomfret and Hanover are in the handwriting of E. May Christy. In 1989 they were typed, indexed and updated by Margaret Swift Munn of Silver Creek, who has generously shared her work with the Barker Museum.
In 1984 local representatives of the Genealogical Society of Utah microfilmed the cemetery records of the Chautauqua County Historical Society (the Clayburne B. Sampson Collection) and those of the Fenton Historical Society.
Copies of the microfilms are housed at Prendergast Library in Jamestown, Patterson Library in Westfield, and Reed Library on the campus of SUNY Fredonia. The high reduction ratio of this microfilm (42 X) requires a microfilm reader equipped with special enlargement capacities. Reed Library has such a reader.
Special thanks for special help go to Norwood Barris for patient and imaginative creation of our maps. It was he who finally solved the problem of designing only what is relevant and omitting the extraneous.
Also special thanks to Jack Ericson, Douglas Shepard, Karen Livsey and Donna Carlson.
Virginia W. Barden
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
This is a partial list of those who provided information which made this book possible. It was a group effort and everyone\’s contribution is appreciated. Any omissions are unintentional.
Ruth Griswold Arkwright
Norman Carlson and Rupert C. Loucks Busti
Ethel Bastion and June Richards Carroll
Record Barris and Donald Jordan Charlotte
Joyce Chase Cherry Creek
James Lyons Dunkirk
Jack T. Ericson Ellery
Helen Johnson and June Richards Ellington
Jean Bedient and Karen Livsey Gerry
Vincent Martonis Hanover
Irene Nagel Harmony
Jean Brustrum Kiantone
Robert Willsie North Harmony
Roger Bish Poland
Elizabeth Cracker Pomfret
Edward Kurtz Portland
Janet Dorsett Sheridan
Genevieve Larson Sherman
Cathryn Berndt Stockton
Barbara Wise Villenova
Evelyn Adams Celoron
