STORIES IN STONE
Gravestones in Duck River Cemetery have stories to tell about the lives of those who passed before us in the Lyme region and the events that shaped the development of a Connecticut town, distinguished by its prominent lawyers and ministers, its shipbuilding and maritime trade, its architecture and scenic landscape, and its contributions to education, conservation, and the arts.
Ernestina Fisher Coult’s Journey
Like Irish immigrants who found work in Lyme in the 1850s, members of the Fisher family were employed as farm laborers and domestic servants. Ernestina, in her mid-teens, was hired by the family of William E. Coult. Her parents and some of her siblings later sought greater opportunities and moved to Oregon. They urged Ernestina to follow them, but William and his mother Mary Marvin Coult persuaded her to continue her service in their home and large farm on Neck Road.
The Peck Cemetery
This early family cemetery is located on a private wooded lot near the southeast corner of Neck Road (Rte 156) and Saunders Hollow Road. Approximately thirty graves are located in the cemetery, which includes ten monuments, most with foot stones, and about twenty field stones. The gravestones commemorates deaths between 1759 and 1817.
African American Burials at Duck River
Between 1670 and 1820 more than 200 African Americans lived enslaved in the Lyme region. Eight who labored for decades in servitude are commemorated by gravestones in the Duck River Cemetery.
A Solitary Gravestone in South Lyme
For more than 250 years a solitary gravestone has stood on the north side of today’s Shore Road, adjacent to the Old Lyme Land Trust’s Goberis-Chadwick Preserve. Seven fieldstones scattered in the immediate area suggest that others, their names and dates unknown, were buried nearby.
Mary Lord’s Confession
When fourteen OLCA volunteers gathered in September 2021 to begin restoring the weathered gravestones in the ancient section of Duck River Cemetery, they raised and reset a simple brownstone marker …
Dr. Sylvester Wooster & Lyme’s Typhus Epidemic
Dr. Sylvester Wooster (1790-1825) provided medical care to Lyme families for eleven years before his death at age 35. He arrived in 1814, the year …
Lewis Lewia’s Epitaph
One of more than 200 enslaved African-descended farmers, mariners, artisans, and domestic workers who contributed to Lyme’s prosperity, Lewis Lewia (1773-1852) served …
Edward DeWolf’s Tavern
Edward DeWolf (1646-1712) played an important role in Lyme’s early history. He moved from Wethersfield with his father
Capt. Michael Huntley’s Voyage to Martinique
Capt. Michael Huntley (1777-1818), one of many Lyme mariners engaged in the West Indies trade, died on January 23, 1818, at age 40, on a return voyage from …
