            Bridge Street Cemetery Northampton Architecture Historic Markers    
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The Old Burial Grounds
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| The gravesite of Solomon Stoddard, Northampton’s 2nd Minister. |
The Bridge Street Cemetery was established in Northampton in 1662. After the town voted that no more burials should take place next to the Meetinghouse, a portion of a ten acre lot on the far edge of town, known as the "minister's lott" at Pine Plain, was allocated for use as a burial ground. In 1680, the bodies of those previously buried at the Meetinghouse were moved to the Bridge Street Cemetery. The cemetery contains the gravestones of notable historical figures, and examples of gravestone art spanning four centuries.
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| Dietary reformer Sylvester Graham had this brownstone obelisk prepared to mark his burial plot. |
Here you will find the red sandstone table over the resting place of Solomon Stoddard second Minister of Northampton. Born in Boston in 1643, he was a 1662 graduate of Harvard University and their first librarian. Stoddard was called to be a minister in Northampton in 1669. His grandson, Jonathan Edwards succeeded him in 1729. Nearby are the memorial tablets to Jonathan Edwards’ daughter Jerusha and to her betrothed, David Brainerd, whose missionary work contributed to the religious revival called the Great Awakening.
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| Sally Maminash belonged to a distinguished family of Native Americans who continued to live in their Connecticut Valley homelands. |
Here also is the tall brownstone obelisk marking the burial place of Sylvester Graham, popularly known for his namesake, the Graham cracker, but an important figure in the dietary reform movement of the 1830s. Senators Elijah Hunt Mills (1776-1829) and Isaac Chapman Bates (1779-1845) are buried here, as is Caleb Strong, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention who served several terms as Governor between 1800 and 1816.
One gravestone marks the grave of Sally Maminash who is misleadingly memorialized as “the last of the Indians here”. In reality, she was part of a distinguished family of Native Americans who fought in the American Revolution and continue to live in the region. The ancient Maminash gravestones on Hospital Hill, however, were vandalized. A member of the congregation at the First Church, Sally died in 1853 at the age of 88.Contents Historic Northampton.