The History of Oakhaven Cemetery
More than a century and a half of community life, told through the ground itself.
In 1854, Josiah Hale deeded nine acres on the hill above the millpond to a board of trustees “for use as a burying ground for the inhabitants of the village and their families forever.” That gift, and that promise, still shape this place today.
A gift to the village
The cemetery began, as many do, with a need and a neighbour willing to meet it. The village had grown for a decade without ground of its own; its dead were buried on scattered family plots, some already being lost to the plough. Josiah Hale set aside the hill above the mill — high, dry, and shaded — and the first trustees laid out the section now known as the Old Ground.
The earliest stones there are worn nearly smooth now, but the ledger the trustees began that first year survives, and from it we can still read the names of the families who built the village.
Growing with the community
As the village grew, so did the cemetery. New sections were opened as they were needed — Hillside in the 1880s, Chapel Lawn around the small stone chapel raised by subscription at the turn of the century, and Cedar Walk and Maple Rise in the decades after. Each addition was paid for the same way: by the families who would one day rest there.
Veterans' Field was dedicated after the Second World War, with a central flagstaff raised in memory of a young man of the village who did not come home. To this day, flags are placed on every veteran's grave each Memorial Day.
Cared for, generation to generation
The cemetery has never been a business. It has always been held in trust — by a volunteer board, supported by a care fund built from the bequests of those who loved this place. The first sexton kept its grounds for half a century and planted nearly every mature tree now standing. The trustees who follow him still meet, still keep the ledger, and still answer the letters of families searching for their own.
Today that ledger is searchable online, the work of volunteers who transcribed it by hand and checked it against the stones themselves. The promise made in 1854 — a resting place for the community, forever — is one this generation intends to keep.