Welcome to Andover’s oldest museum. The South Parish Burial Grounds were established with the Parish in 1709. For questions and inquiries email our cemetery historian here.
Welcome to Andover’s oldest museum. The South Parish Burial Grounds were established with the Parish in 1709. For questions and inquiries email our cemetery historian here.
The first recorded burial for Robert Russell was December, 13, 1710, three days after the Parish voted on its first pastor, Samuel Phillips. Rev. Phillips was ordained the same day as The Church of South Parish in Andover was founded, October 17, 1711. The grounds for the meeting house, parsonage, school, and burial grounds were given by John Abbot, the first Deacon, and son of original Andover settler, George Abbot. It is believed that the current grounds were the burial site of the Abbot family. Rev. Phillips encouraged the congregation to remember their loved ones buried in the cemetery between Sunday services as “lessons for the living.” The oldest original remaining stone belongs to Anne Blanchard who died on Febr’y 29th, 1723. Old South was the Town cemetery until a second burial-place was laid out in 1791 in the West parish. Old South has students and faculty from Phillips Academy and the Andover Theological Seminary before the Chapel Cemetery began in 1810. The first two pastors and families of South Parish, who served 98 years between them, are buried here, as well as many of the founders of the Academy and Seminary, and later The Abbot Female Academy. Ministers from the Methodist and Baptist churches are here, also. Three of the four captains of the Andover Militia who marched on Concord and Lexington and later Bunker Hill, are buried here with their families, along with 81 other veterans of the American Revolution. The only remaining head stones for slaves in Andover is here for Pomp Lovejoy (for whom Pomp’s Pond is named) and Rose Coburn, the last slave to die in Andover. Of the original 35 members of the church, only three original stones remain. Only 113 stones remain before 1800, out of 1500 burials, and 33 of those stones are Abbot’s. Over 2800 people are represented on over 1900 gravestones.
Total gravestones: 1930 stones, representing 2854 people. Total broken or missing stones replaced 2001-2006: 72 (over 150 repaired) Veteran stats: Total veterans, patriots, and Pre-Revolution officers: 274, 150 newly identified.
Between 1710-1808, the first two ministers of South Parish buried 1703 people. Samuel Phillips 892 in 61 years, and Jonathan French 811 in 37 years. Only 203 are remembered of the 1703. Both the Phillips and French families are buried here, as well as 3 children of the 4th pastor, Milton Badger.Of the original 35 members, only 3 remain on original stones, and 3 are on family monuments.
Often the only word readable on an eroded stone: DIED, or the carver’s name (!) An article in an 1898 Essex Antiquarian magazine lists all South Church stones (113) before 1800. It depicts a broken stone which is in the exact same condition now, as it was over 100 years ago, and mentions which stones were sunken then, making the epitaphs unreadable (we have dug them out!)
You may enter either a part of a name or a whole name. For example, entering “Bal” will yield all Baldwins and Ballards. You can enter either a first name, or a last name, or both. Since Abbots are spelled Abbott and Abbot, only enter “Abbot” to include both spellings. If you know a maiden name, enter it in the “First Name” field, preceded by %. For example, if the maiden name is Ballard, enter %Ballard in the “First Name” field. If the record refers to a monument, then the first name will be “monument”. The results will be limited to those names you entered. You can look up database records for people or monuments in the South Church Burial grounds.