Old Lyme – Old Lyme Cemetery Association

Duck River Cemetery Fence Restoration

In the fall of 2023 the the original stone post and iron bar fence surrounding Duck River Cemetery was restored.

Prince Griswold Crosley Honored by the Sons of the American Revolution

The Connecticut Society of the Sons of the American Revolution held a color guard ceremony at Duck River Cemetery on Saturday, May 2, 2024, to honor the African American Patriot Prince Crosley.

Duck River Restoration Project Featured in Lymeline.

Our restoration efforts were featured in an April 2024 Lymeline article. Learn more about our efforts and how you can join in.

Duck River July Restoration Workparty

On July 23, our volunteers were once again working in the Ancient section of the cemetery, uncovering inscriptions hidden by moss and dirt and discovering footstones that have be buried for years.

Repairing Phebe M. Greenfield’s Monumnen

On the morning of June 11, 2023, the Duck River Cemetery restoration team met to reset, mend, and stabilize the gravestone of Phebe M. Greenfield, in the Ancient Section of the cemetery.

Boy Scouts Honor Veterans in Duck River Cemetery

Members of Boy Scout Troop 26 gathered at Duck River Cemetery on May 25, 2023, to place 500 new flags at the gravesites of Old Lyme veterans prior to the May 29 Memorial Day ceremony.

Duck River Restoration Resumes

On May 21, volunteers cleaned 30 gravestones, excavated five, straightened five, and reset one mended stone.

Old Lyme Historical Society Tours Duck River Cemetery

On October 22, some 25 members of the Old Lyme Historical Society gathered on a spectacular autumn afternoon for a tour of Duck River Cemetery led by Jim Lampos and Michaele Pierson.

Fall Restoration at Duck River Cemetery

Work parties held in the Ancient section of the Duck River Cemetery in August and September made significant progress in cleaning, mending, and resetting damaged gravestones.

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.

Duck River Restoration, June 26, 2022

The Old Lyme Memorial Day Parade took place on Monday, May 30, and ended in the Duck River Cemetery with a ceremony hosted by VFW Post 1467 to honor the country’s fallen Veterans

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.

Witness Stones at Duck River Cemetery

Witness Stones placed beside the Duck River Cemetery’s gates on June 3, 2022, commemorate three African Americans and one Native American who labored in servitude nearby on Meeting House Hill (today’s Johnny Cake Hill).

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.