Lakenham Cemetery in Northern Carver, Plymouth County, Massachusetts is the resting place for members of several old Pilgrim families. Once part of Plympton, itself in the beginning western Plymouth, and before that Punkatussett, this area was settled early as the colonists moved out from the bounds of Plymouth. Numerous Shurtleff's are to be found here, along with large contingents of the Atwood, Lucas, Shaw, Nye, and Cole families. George� Bonum and wife Elizabeth Jenney are here, and so are John and Susanna (Gray) Cole. Benoni Lucas and wife Repentance Harlow, daughter of Sgt William Harlow and 2nd wife Mary Faunce, also rest here. As do Benoni Shaw and wife Lydia Waterman along many more of John Shaw's descendants through grandsons Benoni and Jonathan who are both buried here. Susanna (Lothrop) Shurtleff is here too, though her husband William� Shurtleff lies in Burial Hill at Plymouth. William's brother Abiel, posthumous son of the first William, is here with his sister-in-law, and William and Susanna's son Barnabas Shurtleff also.
Henry Griffith in his "History of the Town of Carver" explains that "the marsh meadows were the chief attraction, and many of the grants were of the meadows alone, the grantees holding their residences in Plymouth. These grants were located at South Meadows (which originally included all of the meadow lands on the Weweantic river from Swan Holt to Rochester), Doty's meadows, Six-Mile brook, and Crane brook. . . The first to take the Nemasket path was John Derby, who in 1637 took up a claim of sixty acres at Mounts hill, near the little lake that later became known as Derby pond. The following year he was joined by Thurston Clark, Edward Doty, and George Moore, while Stephen Hopkins went still further into the woods and took a grant at Six-Mile brook. It is probable that the grant of Doty's was the first land grant within (what later became) the municipal limits of Carver, although the grant of one hundred and fifty acres in 1637-38 to John Jenney on either side of the brook was the germ of this town in the woods. By the terms of this grant it was constituted a farm within the jurisdiction of Plymouth and to be known as Lakenham."
Mrs John Barclay (of my hometown Whitman, Mass.) was a writer of many significant articles for journal's such as "The American Genealogist" and "The New England Historical & Genealogical Register", and one of these was an article in TAG 41:200-205 on "Mary Lucas, Probable Wife of Nathaniel� Atwood". In this article she describes how she had found the gravestones in the old cemetery about 1956 "overgrown with brambles, scrub oak and poison ivy and not conducive to examination." Eight years later on Mrs Barclay's return here she found it had been cleaned-up and identification of the stones more easily made. Today, another quarter-of-a-century down the road, the stones are fading slowly, but one can still find and read the stones of Nathaniel Atwood and his wife Mary "probably Lucas" (the original identification of Nathaiel Atwood's wife as Mary Morey is today largely seen to be incorrect and Mrs Barclay's identification is accepted), along with those of their son Nathaniel and wife Mary (Adams) Atwood, as well as many of their kin. I have placed these pictures on this site to halp preserve them for all their descendants to enjoy; perhaps, if the belief that once a picture is placed on the internet it will exist forever is true, helping along with so many other "online" genealogists to insure our ancestors firmly held belief in their own immortality.
