Wayland A to Z:  Cemeteries

Every town has burial grounds and cemeteries that hold much of the history of the families who shaped the town.  Wayland is no exception, with four different historic burial grounds, each telling part of the story.  The Old Burying Ground surrounded the first meetinghouse (1643) on Old Sudbury Road.  It was the final resting place of many early Sudbury residents.  Names of, and epitaphs to, early settlers and succeeding generations of Goodenows, Curtises, Rutters, Parmenters, and Rices are found on some of the slate stones.  Near the edge of the road leading into the Old Burial Ground (now the North Cemetery) are two slate stones with decorative tops which mark the burial sites of Jacob Reeves (1720-1795) and his wife, Abigail.  Reeves was a signer of the petition to separate East Sudbury from Sudbury and served as one of the first three selectmen.  In addition, he ran one of the local taverns on Old Connecticut Path.  Other well known and important family names appear on grave markers throughout the cemetery, such as Draper, Heard, Glezen (or Gleason), and Noyes.  Many of the earlier stones are carved with willow trees, urns, the winged cherub and death’s heads, so popular in funerary art of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century.  Many of the later stones are carved in marble or granite.  Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) who came to Wayland to care for her aging father is one of the most prominent persons buried here.  Child, known for her anti-slavery writings, was the editor of the Anti-Slavery Standard in New York for a period of time, and was associated with William Lloyd Garrison.

There are two interesting anomalies in Wayland’s cemetery history.  Each is a small area dedicated to burials but not considered formal cemeteries.  One is the small area at the far northeast corner of the North Cemetery which is an Indian burial ground that was connected to the Old Burying Ground in the early 1800s when land was purchased from the Noyes family to expand the cemetery.  The other is a small burying ground just north of Old Town Bridge off Old Sudbury Road (Route 27).  It is recognized by a monument dedicated to the Concord men who were killed on their way to assist Sudbury settlers who were under siege by Indians in the “Sudbury Fight” of King Philip’s War in 1676.  (see Memorials and Markers)

The town center was moved south from its original location on Old Sudbury Road to approximately the corner of present day Pelham Island and Cochituate roads when the fourth meetinghouse was completed in 1726.  (see Meetinghouses)  More than a century later, in 1835, additional burial ground was needed and a site farther south on Cochituate Road was selected. The land chosen for the South Cemetery had been the site of a dwelling, or possibly a barn, as there are records that note that in October of 1839 someone was hired to fill in an old cellar at “the new burying ground.”  It appears that the only in-ground tomb in the lower southwest corner was built as part of estate planning because the names of the two men inscribed on the tomb were still alive in 1837 when the tomb was erected.  Jotham Bullard settled in East Sudbury in 1802 and ran a prosperous farm nearly opposite the tomb on Cochituate Road.  Jacob Reeves (1793-1846) lived at Reeves Tavern of which his father had been the first proprietor.  (see Taverns)  Each of these two men served the town, Bullard as selectmen for nine terms between 1813 and 1840, and Reeves as the town clerk.  Other markers in the South Cemetery–slate, marble, and granite–are in memory of prominent families who contributed much to the development of the community:  the Damons, Woods, Lokers, Wights, and Leadbetters, as well as some Civil War soldiers.

Lakeview Cemetery was established at the edge of Lake Cochituate in the thriving shoe manufacturing village of Cochituate.  There are three entrances to the cemetery but the main one is on the north side of Commonwealth Road just east of  Lake Cochituate.  While there are death dates recorded from the 1820s, it was not until 1871 that the town purchased land from Joseph Bullard and John Calvin Butterfield and appropriated money to lay out the cemetery on the newly acquired land.  Butterfield, a Civil War veteran, who came to the area before 1840 was a shoemaker and prominent resident of Cochituate Village.  He served as superintendent of the Lakeview Cemetery for more than twenty years, was Cochituate’s undertaker for the same period, and was one of the overseers of the poor.  The picturesque design of Lakeview Cemetery was laid out on a hilly site by the lake with winding paths and roadway and a central focus of a valley or bowl with grave markers lining the slopes.  The most prominent structure is the Dean family mausoleum set on the rise overlooking this central low area.  It is a granite block structure with the gated entrance marked by an elaborately carved arch that springs from pairs of Corinthian columns.  Another large and prominent monument marks the burial place of members of the Griffin family, one of the leading shoe manufacturing families who owned residences in Cochituate Village in the late nineteenth century.  The history of other shoe manufacturing families in Cochituate Village, like the Bents and Bryants, is documented at Lakeview.  So too is the history of families with both shoe workers and farmers, like the Damons and the Lokers.  (see Shoe Industry)

St. Zepherin (or St Zepherin’s) private cemetery in Cochituate Village was established for the burial of Roman Catholics.  St. Zepherin Church was built in 1890 in response to the large number of Roman Catholics living in the area and working in local shoe factories.  Many had arrived from Canada and had established a French-speaking Catholic parish.  Irish and some German immigrants joined in worship or attended other nearby parishes that worshipped in Latin and English.  St. Zepherin Cemetery is midway along Bent Avenue and is marked by a large treed lot in front and many rows of granite stones behind, separated by a grid path system.   

The most recently established private cemetery, run by the Jewish Cemetery Association of Massachusetts, opened in 1999.  Beit Olam, meaning “House of Forever,” consists of three acres and is entered through the North Cemetery along its south side.  It serves twelve separate MetroWest synagogues with sections to meet the religious needs of Conservative, Reform, and Interfaith members.