Island Pond Cemetery is on Center and Chapin Streets. It is across the street from Haviland Pond. It was built and opened in 1892 as a large cemetery for all the people of Ludlow. The concept was developed in 1891 to have this new burial ground. It is a garden style cemetery. The pond at its front was called the Chapin but is now called the Haviland.
The earliest burial in this cemetery that was recorded in the Ludlow records as burial “Island Pond Cemetery” is David Sterling on September 19 1894. The cemetery was laid out in 1892 so there are most likely burials from 1892 and 1893 but not marked as such.
Island Pond Cemetery was not built as a substitute cemetery for the Jenksville Cemetery LINK which closed in the year 1901 since burials happened in the Jenksville Cemetery right up to 1901. The last burial in the Ludlow Village Cemetery was a Frederick Briggs (FINDAGRAVE) on the 24th of March 1901. All bodies and gravestones from the Jenksville Cemetery were moved here in 1902. Jenksville Cemetery is also called the Ludlow Village Cemetery.
The oldest burial is Ezra Parsons in 1818. He was most likely moved here from another cemetery in Ludlow besides the Jenksville Cemetery since it did not exist until the 1840s or so. Garden style cemeteries like this one are popular even to the extent that people buried in other town cemeteries were moved here.
Nemo me impune lacessit (No one provokes me with impunity)
Norcross History Center is at 89 Maple Street in East Longmeadow. It is in the James Franklin Norcross House that is from 1879. Just to its right is the East Longmeadow Museum and Historic Commission. That organization is the John Peaseley House from 1852.
Franklin Norcross the son of James Norcross was sent to Longmeadow to learn the brownstone quarry trade. The family would develop about a dozen quarry in town.
The Norcross is now a house museum and an event center. EXTERNAL LINK
The brownstone quarries of East Longmeadow were many. IMAGEIMAGE
Adolphus Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Church is at 30 Somers Road. It is from 1891. It is also called the Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church. In 1961 they moved to 181 Elm Street. The Saint Paul Lutheran Church Parsonage is at 79 Prospect Street.
East Longmeadow Grange Hall #152 took it over in the 1960s.