The Putnam County Historic Cemetery Committee is looking for New Members!
If you love local history, and are interested in preserving historical sites in our County, please contact any of the committee members on the Contact page on this site. |
This website serves as a collective list of historic cemeteries in Putnam County. We endeavor to be as complete as possible, though this site will need to be continually updated. If you can provide or correct any information about family members buried in an historic cemetery in Putnam County, please call that Town's Historical Society. Contact information for each Town will be available on the Town's main page in this site.
In honor of Putnam County's Centennial, and because of the numbers of on-going burials in still-active cemeteries, this site only lists burials prior to 1912. You'll notice that some small historic cemeteries contain burials after this date -- this was done because the cemeteries are no longer active.
There are currently several active cemeteries in Putnam County which are not historic. They will be listed on each Town's page, but this website will not provide information on burials after 1912.
Carmel Historian Mike Troy has created a numbering system which includes all burials prior to 1912 in all Putnam County cemeteries. Other historians and researchers have created numbering systems (such as Buys, below), but many are incomplete. You may also note differing systems to locate each gravestone in a particular graveyard (due to different groups cataloging the cemeteries), but each stone will also have a Troy number.
Veterans of all wars are noted and linked to the Veterans pages.
Multiple sources have been used to compile the information on this website, yet it would be impossible to capture all the information here on this site. You will notice numbers listed by each name in each cemetery, which are important if you wish to find out more.
The only widely-published lists of burials in county cemeteries were the very abbreviated lists in William Pelletreau's “History of Putnam County, New York” (1886). When Pelletreau's research had become an obscure book, long out of print, Rev. Floyd Fisher revived the lists in "They All Rest Together" (1972) with much additional data and lore. Pelletreau was finally reprinted in 1975 by the Landmarks Preservation Society, Brewster.
Barbara Smith Buys published new research as "Old Gravestones of Putnam County, New York" (1975, out of print but still available in local libraries), listing 11,800 interments of persons born by 1850, including 10 cemeteries in adjacent Dutchess County; it is still the best guide under one cover to Putnam burials, and is cross-referenced here. Her one reference to Gilead as a Baptist cemetery is a typographical error.
If you wish to learn more about your ancestors or any persons buried here, contact that Town's historian and give the name and any other information you have. For a small fee, that historian will be able to send you, if available, information from school districts, census records, tax records, marriage/birth/death certificates and photographs.
Thank you for visiting! |